Toy Story (comic books)

Since its original release in 1995, Toy Story, Pixar's first feature-length animated film, has spun off into the comic book medium several times.

Disney Comic Hits! and Disney Adventures
Toy Story made its first appearance in the comic book medium in the form of a full-length adaptation in issue #4 of Disney Comic Hits!, published by the then-independent Marvel Comics right around the time of the movie's release. This adaptation, not unlike Tokyopop's Cine-Manga books and Joe Books' Cinestory Comics, was made using screenshots from the film. An excerpt of this comic appeared in the December 1995 issue of Disney Adventures, and the full adaptation was later reprinted as a 2-issue mini-series. Disney Comic Hits! featured more Toy Story comics in issues #5, 9 and 15.

Meanwhile, new Toy Story comic occasionally appeared in the pages of Disney Adventures, with the first of these appearing in the November 30, 1996 issue, to promote the movie's VHS and Laserdisc release. After the release of Toy Story 2, some issues featured comics based on the Woody's Roundup show seen within the movie, and comics based on Buzz Lightyear of Star Command appeared in the magazine during the show's original run in 2000 and 2001.

Boom! Kids
After Disney Adventures ended in 2007, Toy Story was among the Pixar films that was licensed to Boom! Studios to be adapted as part of their new kid-friendly comic imprint, Boom Kids! Boom!'s run with this particular series started off with a 4-issue mini-series, officially titled Toy Story: The Mysterious Stranger (ironically, the title referred only to the first issue of the mini-series). Each of the stories in this mini-series, which ran from June to August of 2009, took place between the first two films.

Following the mini-series, Boom! then launched a planned ongoing Toy Story comic in December of 2009. Like the mini-series, the stories in the ongoing comic were set between the first two films. However, this "ongoing" comic only reached a total of eight issues before Boom! inexplicably relaunched the series as Toy Story: Tales from the Toy Chest in October 2010. Finally bringing Jessie and Bullseye into the series, Tales from the Toy Chest was meant to feature stories that would bridge the gap between Toy Story 2 and 3, but due to Boom! losing the Pixar license to the now-owned-by-Disney Marvel, it only lasted for a single 4-issue arc.

Return to Marvel
While Boom!'s Toy Story comic book was running, a full-length comic adaptation of Toy Story 3, written by Alessandro Ferrari and drawn by Ettore Gula, appeared in the Toy Story 3 Official Movie Magazine, published just two months before the film's release. Over a year later, Marvel published newly-made comic adaptations of the first two films, both done by the same team as the third movie's adaptation, in issue #6 of their Disney-Pixar Giant-Size Comics magazine.

The following spring, Marvel published a new 4-issue Toy Story mini-series. Like The Mysterious Stranger mini-series that Boom! had published, each issue contained a single story, with the first two stories taking place between the first two films, and the latter two issues being set between the second and third films. (In fact, the stories in the first two issues were remakes of stories from the Boom! comics.) Unfortunately, due to poor sales of their Pixar and Muppet reprints, Marvel did not publish any more Toy Story comic books after this.

As of 2016, the Toy Story comic license, as with all Pixar comic licenses, is currently held by Joe Books, who reprinted the above-mentioned movie adaptations in Disney-Pixar Comics Treasury. However, it remains to be seen if Joe Books has plans to publish any new Toy Story comics, or reprint any of the previous ones.