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James Tynion IV heads to Dark Horse Comics with new imprint

The creator's new line at the publisher will include material from his Substack deal and more

Blue Book #1 Detail
Image credit: Dark Horse Comics

James Tynion IV made headlines last year when he left DC’s Batman title in order to focus on his creator-owned work via his Substack newsletter — and now he’s doing the same again with the news that his Tiny Onion Studios will be receiving its own boutique imprint at Dark Horse Comics.

The news, broken by the Hollywood Reporter, sees Tynion follow in the footsteps of his former mentor Scott Snyder, who similarly announced a deal for print editions of his digital titles late last year. Similarly, Dark Horse has recently announced an imprint for Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo, Kevin Smith’s Secret Stash Press, and Brian Michael Bendis’ Jinxworld.

“I started picturing an ad for Blue Book in the back pages of an issue of Hellboy, and something just clicked for me,” Tynion told THR. “Dark Horse is home to some of the best creator owned comics that have ever been published, and it’s a real honor to join their ranks of creative talent.”

The line will launch with the release of the first issue of Blue Book on February 22, 2023, and expand with the launch of The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos on June 7, 2023. Both titles have already appeared in Tynion’s Substack newsletter, but that won’t be the case for all of the titles in the line, the creator revealed.

“Blue Book and Christopher Chaos are just the beginning. There’s a whole universe of characters and concepts around the Christopher Chaos title I’m hoping that Tate, Isaac and I get to explore in our time there,” says Tynion. “Beyond that, there are so many stories in the ‘True Weird’ genre that I think are ripe to be told in the comics form. And that’s not counting all of the fun we’ve got in store for readers in the pages of Blue Book itself. We’ll be deciding title by title what makes sense to debut first in print, and what will make a fun addition to the comics I debut in my Substack newsletter.”

Writing in his newsletter Monday morning, he explained further: “Why Dark Horse? Well, honestly, I’ve always liked being able to silo similar projects together. I think Blue Book, all the True Weird stories we’re looking to tell, and the world of The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos fit very neatly on the shelves next to titles like Hellboy, Black Hammer, Norse Mythology, and a little-known series from Michael Avon Oeming called Powers (not to mention the whole Jinxworld library!). And like I told Dan Chabon and Tim Wiesch early in our conversations… I want a shelf of those gorgeous Dark Horse Library Editions. And as I’ve said to Tate [Brombal, co-writer on the Christopher Chaos series] a few times, now we can refer to the Chaosverse as the queer teenage cousin to the Mignolaverse!”

Outside of his new Dark Horse line, Tynion remains a busy man. He’s writing The Nice House on the Lake and The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country for DC’s Black Label imprint (The latter of which had a second — and third! — miniseries just announced last week), in addition to work for both Image Comics — where he’ll be publishing both The Department of Truth and his new series, W0rldtr33 — and his creator owned Something Is Killing The Children titles at Boom! Studios.


Watch Tynion talk about his Eisner Award win at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

Graeme McMillan

Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.

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