A television adaptation of the Dark Horse comic book series Resident Alien is coming to SyFy on January 27, 2021, Bleeding Cool reports. The comic is drawn by Steve Parkhouse (The Bojeffries Saga, Black Knight) and written by Peter Hogan (Terra Obscura, Vector 13). SyFy Wire has uploaded a new video to their official YouTube channel that outlines several differences between the comic and the upcoming series and features excerpts from an interview with Hogan wherein he expresses his thoughts on the medium transfer process.

The show layers Silver Age science fiction over a mystery story set in an unassuming American town: “Resident Alien follows Harry, an alien played by Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) who crash lands on Earth and passes himself off as a small-town human doctor… but things get a bit rocky when he’s roped into solving a local murder and realizes he needs to assimilate,” via Bleeding Cool.

In his SyFy Wire interview, Hogan talked about how even though Resident Alien began its life as a comic, a large part of his inspiration came from television and film. “It’s a bit of a cross between My Favorite Martian, the old TV show, and The Man Who Fell to Earth,” he explained. Hogan claims to have remarked upon his story’s potential as a small screen enterprise early on in the writing process. “We did… the proposal, and I was about halfway through writing that, and I just thought, ‘This feels like a TV show and… nothing I’d ever done before in comics… had ever felt like that,” he recalled, via SyFy Wire. In a 2013 interview with AIPT Comics, Hogan even used explicit television terminology to impart how his series is structured: “It’s a pretty big story, composed of a series of miniseries. Each miniseries will have its own mystery to be solved.”

Hogan told SyFy Wire that Resident Alien‘s voyage to television has been a challenging one: “Right from minute one, [Dark Horse] thought, ‘Yes, this thing has legs.’ […] So it’s been very odd. It’s been a long, long wait. But Mike Richardson (47 Ronin, Hellboy: Sword of Storms) assures me this was one of the quick ones.” Having allegedly witnessed multiple screen adaptations of Resident Alien fall through during the 2010’s, the writer’s doubts persisted until he saw the first episode, which left him pleasantly surprised. “I was very nervous when I sat down to watch the pilot. After about ten minutes it won me over… It is very different, there’s no denying that, but I don’t really mind because it’s really good… The whole end product is enjoyable,” he concluded, via SyFy Wire. You can watch the official trailer below:

The Resident Alien series premiere lands on SyFy on January 27, 2021. The first five volumes of Hogan and Parkhouse’s original comic book series are available from most major book retailers. Volume six arrives on bookshelves in June 2021.