Adi Shankar, showrunner on Netflix's Castlevania series and director of the recently released The Guardians of Justice, said that he likely won't be turning his work into comics anytime soon.
Shankar appeared in the Spec Tales podcast and was asked if there was a chance of Guardians of Justice being adapted into a comic book. "Very low," he responded. "And here's why: I don't know if the comic book industry is going to survive." He elaborated, "The cost of shipping, distribution, printing and publishing comic books, it's just not a viable business model. The pandemic completely decimated the comic book industry." In regards to the rise of popularity in comics due to superhero films, Shankar said, "That's not the sign of a thriving, healthy ecosystem -- if you're making something to pitch something to another industry...That's a sign of a problem."
He further touched on digital and digital-first comics. "Once it transitions into digital, it's no longer comic books," Shankar said. "I'm being difficult and I'm arguing over semantics, but there's a thing with comic books -- the physical comic books. Comic in a book. Once it goes into -- okay, there's an iPad that is trying to emulate the comic book. That's not going to work." He later added, "Once it moves into digital, now this is the birth of a completely new thing. The more people are like, 'We're just going to upload our comic book onto the internet because we don't have the cash to print it,' well now you're not leaning into what is and you're leaning into nostalgia of what was. If you're going to make a 'digital comic book,' let's not call it a comic book. Throw that word out. Throw out the nomenclature. If it's on the iPad, now you can have sounds. You can have music. You can have music incorporated into it. It's just a file, at this point."
"You asked if there's going to be a comic book -- maybe for like an ego, like my own nostalgia thing, it'd be fun to have a comic book that you can kind of flip and I'll feel really good," Shankar also noted. "The paper will disintegrate and no one will care. Could do that. I also want to release [The Guardians of Justice] on a VHS tape, but it's not leaning into what is. What I'd rather do is use what was to create something that doesn't exist currently."
The Guardians of Justice is a Netflix superhero series created, directed, written and executive produced by Shankar that released in March. Along with being the showrunner for Netflix's animated Castlevania series, Shankar created a number of "Bootleg Universe" one-shot films, including 2012's The Punisher: Dirty Laundry, 2013's Venom: Truth in Journalism, 2014's Judge Dredd: Superfiend, 2015's Power/Rangers and more.
Source: Spec Tales