grandfather in their private investigations. Only appears in the 2019 film. Comic strip Between the release of the first Shaft film and the novel Shaft Among the Jews, Tidyman began developing a Shaft daily syndicated newspaper comic strip. He commissioned artist Don Rico, with whom he produced 24 sample strips, but despite the character's popularity in both novels and films he was unable to find a syndicate interested in distributing the Shaft strip, which remains unpublished. Comic book series The Shaft! comic book was published by Dynamite Entertainment, written by David F. Walker and illustrated by Bilquis Evely, beginning in December 2014. New stories following young John Shaft's earliest adventures were adapted closely from the Ernest Tidyman novels. Shaft: A Complicated Man (2014) (writer: David F. Walker, artist: Bilquis Evely) Shaft: Imitation of Life (2016) (writer: David F. Walker, artist: Dietrich Smith) Film and television franchise Film series Television films The television show ran from 1973 to 1974, with Richard Roundtree reprising the role of John Shaft. There were seven 90-minute movies, part of the New CBS Tuesday Night Movies, rotating with Hawkins, which starred James Stewart. Cast and characters A dark grey cell indicates the character was not in the film. John Shaft in other media Burger King utilized the Shaft character for promotion, and even somewhat parodied Shaft utilizing Shaquille O'Neal. The USA Network's promo for their series Monk was modeled after the Shaft remake in 2000. Geena Davis parodied the Shaft remake/sequel in promos for her short-lived television series, The Geena Davis Show. In Season 2's episode "Ants in Pants!", The Tick featured the Tick meeting "Taft." On confirming that it is he, the man says "Darn right." This would be reprised in the Season 3 episode, "That Moustache Feeling". A song entitled "Shaft in Greenland" appeared on The Dead Milkmen's album Soul Rotation. In the TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith frequently references Shaft as one of his favorite film characters, believing the character to be a real person (Richard Roundtree himself guest-starred in two episodes of the show, playing two different characters.) In the anime TV series Cowboy Bebop episode "Mushroom Samba", he is the namesake of one of the Shaft brothers, hoping to avenge his brother's death. He is voiced by Hōchū Ōtsuka in the 1999 Japanese version and by Beau Billingslea in the 2001 English dub. Broomhilda Von Shaft, a