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TNT has renewed the Witchblade live-action series for a second season, The Continuum has learned.

Thirteen episodes will be produced in Toronto, with Yancy Butler starring in the title role.

The first season of Witchblade ended on Tuesday with a turn-the-clock back episode that opens the door for all of the cast members to return.

Top Cow's Marc Silvestri, an executive producer of the series, said that he was pleased with the way Witchblade has been adapted for television.

"We love to read comic books, but a lot of the rest of the population of the world doesn't get what we do," Silvestri said at Top Cow's panel at Wizard World last weekend. "So we have to service that population. Because, quite frankly, as much as we love you guys, you're not going to finance this TV show.

"That's what the network does. That's what the studio does. It's their dime. So they're going to go, in the development process, 'Yeah, Witchblade looks great with three inches of chain-mail bikini, but I don't think that Mr. and Mrs. Smith are going to appreciate that at 8 o'clock when their kids are watching TV, so we're going to have to do something about that.'

"We kind of go with the rule that we understand that things have to be changed for the mass media, but we have to be true to the basic concept of what we've got. With Witchblade, and everything else we have in development in Hollywood, we're holding pretty true to that.

"The Witchblade concept is pretty intact. We had to make some changes, obviously, so that is why we have the whole Joan of Arc look so heavily in Witchblade, even though it may not be all that important part of mythology in the comic book. It's something that the general populace understands. Everybody knows who Joan of Arc is, so we will hook into that, use that as a launching pad. Or at least a solid reference point. We have this whole bloodline thing that we use so the people get it, the studio gets it, the network gets it and they cut the check.

"You have to make compromises and I think with Witchblade we made some good compromises. We held true to the concept, and it's an outstanding show."

Look for more on Witchblade's second season soon here in The Continuum.