The powerhouse team of James Tynion IV (Something is Killing the Children, The Nice House on the Lake), Michael Avon Oeming (Powers, William of Newbury), and Aditya Bidikar (Dawnrunner, The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos) have jumped into the world of alien encounters with their hit non-fiction series Blue Book, and Dark Horse has now revealed the first look at the brand new Blue Book: Library Edition. This new edition will collet volumes 1 and 2 of this based on true stories series and then will also include a cover gallery and sketchbook gallery, and you can get a preview of the sketchbook in the gallery below as well.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Stories of the unexplained have captivated us for ages, and Blue Book brings these true stories to life and analyzes them from a unique lens. Now fans have the chance to get both volumes of Blue Book in one convenient place, as Blue Book Library Edition collects both Blue Book: 1961 and Blue Book: 1947, as well as all of the covers for the series and behind the sketches from Oeming, and you can check out the snazzy new cover below.
In Blue Book: 1961, Tynion and Oeming retell the story of the Betty and Barney Hill
abduction, the widely publicized and very first abduction that went on to shape and
influence all future encounter stories. Then in Blue Book: 1947, the story follows pilot Kenneth Arnold, who flew his Call-Air A-2 over the skies of the Pacific Northwest and encountered otherworldly blinding flashes of silver light that would change the course of his life forever.
In the original announcement, Tynion revealed that he was inspired for Blue Book during the process of creating The Department of Truth, jumping into a genre he likes to call True Weird.
“While researching The Department of Truth, I found myself reading more and more about the strange histories of the world,” Tynion said. “The stories of people who have encountered what they can’t explain and then have to grapple with what they may or may not have seen. And reading those stories I kept having the same thought, over and over – This would make a really good comic book.”
“With Blue Book, I wanted to dig deeper into what I consider to be a strange cousin of the True Crime genre… Something I like to call True Weird. How do people tell the story of encountering something that defies all logic, and all the rules they’ve come to know about the world? What do those stories say about all of us? I couldn’t be more excited about exploring all of that with Michael,” Tynion said.
Blue Book: Library Edition Volume 1 hits bookstores on July 8th, 2025 and then soars into
comic shops on July 9th, 2025. It is now available to preorder at Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, TFAW, and your local comic shop and bookstore.
What have you thought of Blue Book, and will you be picking up the Library Editon? You can talk all things comics and graphic novels with me on Threads and Twitter @mattaguilarcb and on Bluesky @knightofoa!