The Showtime TV show Dexter - based on Jeff Lindsay's series of novels - started its eighth and final season and now the sociopathic vigilante comes alive in the five-issue Marvel Comics miniseries also titled Dexter, debuted Wednesday and penned by Lindsay.

Dexter Morgan is s skilled forensic blood spatter expert with the Miami police department, but he's also the city's friendly neighborhood crime-fighting serial killer who has to face his greatest challenge yet - a high school reunion.

Dexter editor Bill Rosemann sees the character almost like one of Marvel Comics' various superheroes because of his secret identity. Rosemann said about Dexter, "He has a private life, a public life, and it's drama when you see the two sides of it bumping into each other."

One difference Dexter TV fans will see in the comic is that his "Dark Passenger" - the inner voice who pushes him to murder, albeit with a moral code his foster father Harry gave him - takes visual form as a shadowy presence so readers will get the sense that it's a character too.

Those heartbroken by the death of Dexter's wife Rita (played by Julie Benz) who was brutally murdered in a bathtub by the Trinity Killer will be happy to know she's alive and well in the comic.

When she died, Lindsay told USA Today, "I was on a book tour all around the world that year, and people would meet my airplane with angry signs: 'Why did you kill her!' And in different accents."

It has been almost 10 years after the release of Lindsay's first 2004 novel, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Sunday's episode marked the highest-rated Dexter season premiere ever for Showtime.

The continuing appeal? It's a fantasy thing, according to Lindsay.

"There's a guy who's worse than the bad guys but he's on our side. Every miserable bastard who ever did you wrong, Dexter'll get to him," the author said,

Tags: Dexter Marvel Marvel Comics serial killer