If last year's live action The Last Airbender left a... less-than-sweet taste in your mouth, prepare to be thrilled. As previously reported, the cast of Nickelodeon's celebrated animated series returns this May 7 in a special Free Comic Book Day release from Dark Horse Comics. The bigger news, however, is that DH will collecting Nickelodeon Magazine's original and never-before-published content later in 2011 in Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Lost Adventures before bringing all-new tales to the fold in 2012 that pick up where the original show left off.

Dark Horse's FCBD release will come packaged with Star Wars: The Clone Wars and include two stories, Nickelodeon Magazine's unpublished "Relics" and "Dirty Is Only Skin Deep..."

The Lost Adventures will follow later in the year, containing 240 pages -- 70 of which are previously unpublished content. According to Dark Horse's official press release, all stories are in-continuity, meaning that even though they were "lost" to fans, their events reflect the original animated series.

New Avatar: TLAB stories set for 2012 will be published in a manga-like digest size, which seems to reflect the anime flavor of the original show. Similar to DH's Buffy series, the new adventures will act as a kind of "season four" and build upon the established continuity of previous animated episodes.

From Dark Horse's official press release:
"We had a great experience collaborating with Dark Horse on Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Art of the Animated Series," series co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino said. "We are excited to work closely with them once again to bring the further adventures of Avatar Aang and his friends to the comic world."
See Dark Horse's full teaser image below: