Dark Horse brings James Tynion IV and Michael Avon Oeming’s latest Blue Book series to print with Blue Book: 1947. The five-issue miniseries will release with six variant covers February 7, 2024, retailing at $4.99.
Lettered by Tom Napolitano, Blue Book’s second series – 1947 – was originally serialised on James Tynion’s The Empire of the Tiny Onion Substack channel between August 2022 and April 2023. As with the first Dark Horse republished series, each issue will feature a new backup story – with Blue Book: 1947 #1 featuring a True Weird short by writer Zac Thompson, artist Gavin Fullerton, and original series letterer Aditya Bidikar.
The press release:
“Long before Betty and Barney Hill excited the public with their alien encounter story, there were years and years of suspected sightings and abductions. James Tynion IV, Michael Avon Oeming, Tom Napolitano, and Dark Horse Comics return with another deeply weird non-fiction tale exploring alien sightings in the upcoming comic, Blue Book: 1947.
“In 1947, Kenneth Arnold flew his Call-Air A-2 over the skies of the Pacific Northwest when all of a sudden, he saw a blinding flash of silver light. What followed was a bizarre and difficult to explain encounter with several flying objects that would change the course of his life forever.”
Blue Book: 1947 #1 will debut with six variant covers; five of which have been revealed by Dark Horse with the sixth to be announced later. Those revealed include work by Fábio Moon, Michael Allred, Cully Hammer, Joe Quinones, and Christian Ward – with Quinones and Ward’s covers being 1:10 virgin retailer incentive variants.
Dark Horse released the collection of Tynion and Oeming’s first series Blue Book: 1961 just last month. Solicited by Dark Horse as an “ambitious, non-fiction comic book experience depicting true stories of UFO abductions with an eye to capturing the strange essence of those encounters”, Blue Book: 1961 first debuted on Tynion’s Substack channel as Blue Book: Betty & Barney Hill. It was serialised in ten instalments between September 2021 and March 2022. In November 2022, Tynion and his Tiny Onion Studios imprint joined Dark Horse Comics with Blue Book serving as the first print entry, republishing it in five issues between February and June 2023 with each issue featuring True Weird bonus shorts by Tynion & Klaus Janson; Tynion & Oeming; Lonnie Nadler & Jenna Cha; Steve Foxe & John McCrea; and Genevieve Valentine & Ming Doyle — all lettered by Aditya Bidikar.
You can get a closer look at the revealed variants below:
