'Tiger King' comic to be out in June, but viewers say they aren't interested in reading the 'insufferable' saga
It looks like Joe Exotic is a gift that simply keeps giving.
The journey of the immensely popular Netflix docu-series 'Tiger King' is far from over. On April 14, TidalWave Productions announced that it will be the subject of a new comic book arriving in June.
The comic will be written by Michael Frizell and illustrated by Joe Paradise and it will be added to TidalWave's 'Infamous' series of pop-culture comic books.
"You can't make this stuff up. I never imagined I'd be researching a book like this. It was a challenge to find a focus for the comic because there's so much happening," Frizell said.
"I just remember starting to watch the show saying to myself, 'Yeah that tracks.' We all have Joes and Caroles in our lives, and it's always interesting to me to learn how these extreme characters got to be where they wound up."
Netflix's seven-part documentary series 'Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness' took no time to become a worldwide sensation garnering more than 34.2M viewers in the first 10 days. The series was also on Netflix's list of Top Titles holding the first position for 15 straight days. A global pandemic and lockdown worked in the series' favor as more and more people started watching it for its escapism.
Even as TidalWave Productions "wanted to create a fun and entertaining distraction from the current state of the world", according to TidalWave publisher Darren G Davis said, and intended to tell the story of Joe Exotic in a different medium, Twitter has mixed feelings about the upcoming comic book. "Tiger King already completely insufferable," said a viewer.
"Isn't Tiger King a reality show? Isn't the reason people like it due to the fact that 'truth is stranger than fiction?' Why would anyone want to see a fictionalized version of this done by a shitty writer and artist in comic book form?" tweeted a user.
At this point, many viewers feel that the media world has milked the tale of Joe Exotic enough.
"Netflix Phenomenon TIGER KING Coming To Comic Books The f**k is 'phenomenal' about it? Those formulaic fabricated docudramas are the perfect grift of media at this point," an angry viewer tweeted.
The 22-page comic book is set to be available in print and digital with two collectible covers by Paradise and Jesse Johnson, the comic book cover artist. However, the project is not authorized by Netflix.
Actually, that brought Twitter to another controversy surrounding TidalWave. When a user asked which publisher has taken over the project, a whole can of worms was opened, mainly with respect to the publisher's ethics. "The industry's favourite purveyor of bio and celebrity comics that doesn't pay their creators and has been tied up in a number of plagiarism suits before."
