In a press release, writer James Tynion IV has announced he is launching a new line of titles from his imprint Tiny Onion Studios at website Substack. The comics will be released exclusively through his newsletter on the website. The first title will be “Blue Book,” a UFO series with artist Michael Avon Oeming (“Powers”), and letterer Aditya Bidikar (“The Department of Truth”), which will begin in early September. Tynion will be stepping down from writing “Batman” and “Joker” at DC Comics to concentrate on the new series, but he will continue to pen creator-owned books like “The Nice House on the Lake” at Black Label, Image, and BOOM! Studios.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a better deal in comics than what Substack is offering,” Tynion said. “We have complete creative control, we retain all of the rights for publishing and other media with no restrictions, and we have the money to pay people the kind of rates they might expect at one of the larger corporate publishers. If the creators taking this deal play their cards right, it means that we can rewrite the rules of the entire comic book industry on our terms, not the publishers. I don’t think people are going to realize how big this can be right away, but if we’re smart about it, this could be the start of a whole new paradigm in creator-owned comics.”
“Blue Book” will depict historical claims of UFO sightings from various real-life “witnesses,” beginning with the story of Betty and Barney Hill and their “abduction” in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in September 1961. The comic is named after the United States Air Force’s Project Blue Book in the 1950s and ’60s, which recorded stories like these, and it will have a black, white and blue color palette. Oeming said, “I’ve been obsessed with the ‘what if’ aspect of UFOs all my life. I hope drawing the true events around ‘Blue Book’ with James awakens that same curiosity in others.”
Readers will able to read “Blue Book” by subscribing to Tynion’s newsletter, “The Empire of the Tiny Onion,” for $7 a month, or at a discounted rate of $75 a year. New issues will arrive in email inboxes, and subscribers will be able to read them on Substack. Readers will also get early access to exclusive variant covers of Tynion’s print comics, as well as new Tiny Onion Studios merchandise. You can read more from Tynion about his plans, and check out more art for the series, here. He has also confirmed on Twitter that these books will be released in print at some point.
