John Wagner and Arthur Ranson’s Button Man finally getting its Netflix series?…

A long-awaited, always-feted series, John Wagner and Arthur Ranson‘s classic 2000 AD tale, Button Man, might be inching closer to the small screen…

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Well, way back in 2019 (as I recall), we had news thatWagner and Ranson’s classic 2000 AD series, Button Man, was being developed for a TV series with L.A. Confidential‘s Brian Helgeland set to write and direct for Netflix.

That seems to have died a death, but now we have more rumours, pretty strong ones, that we now have something moving closer to production, with David Leitch, he of The Fall Guy, developing the series. The word is that Fifth Season has acquired the comic from co-creator Wagner with 87North (Leitch and Kelly McCormick) onboard.

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Now, if you didn’t already know about Button Man… oh boy, are you missing a beauty of a book by Wagner and Ranson.

Over four tales, all by Wagner and Ranson, The Killing Game (1992), The Confession of Harry Exton (1994), Killer Killer (2001), and The Hitman’s Daughter (2007), we had something exquisitely beautiful (well, it is Arthur Ranson on art, what else did you expect?) and brutal in equal measure.

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Harry Exton’s a former soldier who left service and sold his skills as a mercenary. But as merc jobs dried up, Harry returned to England and got himself a regular job.

Until a friend tells him about The Killing Game, modern-day gladiatorial contests played out by the world’s best killers, one-on-one, to the death. It’s murder as a game, all backed by the shadowy backers known as ‘the Voices’ who set everything up, tell the combatants where and when and who they need to kill, who’s looking to kill them. The end result – you get rich or you die trying.

So that’s it, Harry Exton’s life changes in an instant the day he decides to become a Button Man.

It’s another classic bit of 2000 AD that should be on your reading list. Wagner’s perfect writing coupled with Ranson’s perfect artwork? Definitely one for the bookshelf. And it’s one that could, if it’s done just right, really translate to the small screen well.

Anyway, more as and when. But it would be rude to leave you without just a little more of that gloriously good Ranson art and Wagner writing, don’t you think? Well, here you go, from the first story, The Killing Game…