Prepare To Be Adapted: At Stories End

Recently Brian K. Vaughan’s acclaimed comic book series “Y: The Last Man” came to an end with Issue 60. No, it wasn’t canceled. It just ended. Vaughan decided it was time to finish the story.

Now New Line Cinema is developing a film with screenwriter Carl Ellsworth (“Disturbia”), director D. J. Caruso (“Disturbia”) and producer David S. Goyer.

Now, I’m puzzled. How strange, an ongoing comic book series ending? It seems so logical, but if you look at all the ongoing comic book titles out there (I’m not counting miniseries) I can think of only a few that had real endings. Not just some half-ass attempt to wrap up some storylines and try to leave things so open that the characters could get picked up elsewhere for another title or the book could later be brought back.

And you know what? The same thing goes for genre TV shows. A series of stories has to come to an end sometime, but do the writers ever think about how they would like to end the series? We, as fans, get so upset about a favorite show getting canceled, but how often do the writers ever give us a satisfying ending?

ACT II

So, let us take a peak at some TV shows that gave us good endings and ones that did not.

Many of these shows didn’t get a proper ending, because they were canceled. Sadly, there are many of those. Some of these great shows that should have not ended so quickly: "Adventures of Brisco County Jr.," "American Gothic," "Angel," "Crusade," "Firefly," "Odyssey 5," "Strange Luck," "VR.5," "The Tick" and "Automan" (OK, just kidding with that last one).

It is a subtle difference between a show that couldn’t have proper ending due to being axed by the Power That Be and one that bowed out with a bad ending. Sometimes the creators know in advance, sometimes they don’t and sometimes they know but they don’t care (remember how “Farscape” ended?).

I think the worst endings that come to mind are “Crusade,” “Sliders,” “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Twin Peaks” and “X-Files.”

Can you get anymore of a cliffhanger than the entire population of Earth possibly dying? Because of TNT’s crappy handling of “Crusade” we may never know how they save Earth. Man, is there a show that needs a direct-to-DVD movie or comic book series to wrap it up more?

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