TINY UPDATE 3/21: Let's Go To Print!

“Tiny Update” is a weekly free newsletter that keeps you up to date on the latest news, comic book projects and merchandise offerings from James Tynion IV and Tiny Onion Studios

It’s been a very good weekend, in contrast to a few stressful weeks.

I went to the wedding of a good friend from college. I got to hug some folks I don’t get to see nearly as often as I like and danced and sang until my voice got hoarse. I feel like I should be exhausted (and it’s frankly a miracle I’m not a hungover wreck today), but honestly, I feel more centered than I have in a minute.

Writing is a lonely profession. You spend a lot of time alone with your computer staring at blank word documents. And then when you walk away from the computer, the documents stay in your head. Part of comes from a desire to be open to inspiration. I always want to be able to follow a little thread of curiosity and be open to where it might take me and what I might learn. But there’s an isolation to it. You end up spending a lot of time with your own thoughts, rather than living out in the world. There’s a part of me that’s always envied the people whose work starts and ends at a specific time. You can always tell when someone is really, truly off the clock. They’re present in their lives in a way that comes a bit easier to them. Or at least that’s how it feels from the outside.

It’s never been easy for me to be present. When deadlines compound, and the pressure compounds, I can feel far away from everyone in my life, even if I’m sharing a room with them. Sometimes, I need to be yanked out of my head and forced to live in a moment, deadlines and anxieties be damned. This weekend did that for me. The tactile presence of real friends and real history hit me like a truck. It felt like drinking a tall glass of water when you haven’t even been fully conscious of how thirsty you were.

It just hammers in that I need to spend a bit of time this summer rebalancing my priorities and making sure that I’m not forgetting to live in the world.

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So, an exciting bit of news dropped in last week’s Image Comics Solicits. The first of my Substack comics has found a publisher! THE CLOSET will be released in three oversized issues starting this June from Image, with a collected edition to follow later in the year. You can read the press release here. Me and the whole CLOSET team, Gavin, Chris, and Tom, are crazy excited to finally hold this project in our hands. You can see it here, all dressed up with that iconic Image “I.”

We’ve got some cool variant covers for the series that I’m going to unveil closer to the release of Issue #1 in print. The comic will continue to be available here on Substack for all paid subscribers. You can read the first issue here, and the second issue here. The third and final digital issue will drop at the end of April. I can also say that I’ve started some interesting conversations about bringing my other Substack projects to print. I’m excited to let these books hit the stands and find an even wider audience, but more than anything I just want to say that I would not be able to do these books without your support.

Subscribers can expect a few more goodies in store this week. I’m going to be diving into another one of the key characters of THE ODDLY PEDESTRIAN LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER CHAOS, and that post will be available for all subscribers. On Friday we’ll be dropping the last chapter of the first season of BLUE BOOK (Sorry for the delay, there! We needed a little extra time to put the final touches on this one). If you want to check out all of the cool stuff we’ve got cooking for you here in Tiny Onion country, you know what to do!

THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH #17

W: James Tynion IV / A: Jorge Fornés / L: Aditya Bidikar / D: Dylan Todd / E: Steve Foxe / P: Image Comics / COVER A: Martin Simmonds / COVER B: Jorge Fornés

The third arc of Eisner-nominated THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH concludes here, as breakout star JORGE FORNES (Rorschach) joins the team to reveal the long-awaited secrets behind one of the biggest conspiracy theories of all time. Strap in, folks: Richard Nixon has a moon landing to fake.

• PLANET COMIC CON - Kansas City, MO - April 22-24

• MEGACON - Orlando, FL - May 19-22

More details about my schedule at these conventions to come as we get closer to the date in question, along with the perks offered to members of the Onion Club at shows. Just want to keep these on folks’ radar.

• I watched the Park Chan-Wook miniseries THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL (adapted from the John Le Carre novel) as a bit of a tone-check for a project I’m working on. I walked away with the same reaction I always have to watching any Le Carre adaptations which is that one of these days I want to read a stack of John Le Carre books. Florence Pugh was really great in this, as she continues to be in pretty much everything she’s cast in.

• I also read through about three HELLBOY universe Omnibii over the weekend, and think I might keep going down that road for a while. I’m not sure there’s a line of books in all of comics that has managed to keep the quality and cohesion up across the line for so damn long. It’s such a good model of a long-form comics property. A profoundly interesting world, populated with profoundly interesting characters who look really fucking cool on the page. It’s also great to be revisiting all of this with a bit more background on early 20th Century occult and esoteric thought than I had when I first read through it all as a teenager. I was looking for a comic book world to get lost in as a reader for a while, and I’m going to keep going for a bit.

That’s it for this Tiny Update, friends. I’ll be back later this week with more Tiny Onion goodies to share with you.

Be good to each other out there.

James Tynion IV
Brooklyn, NY
3.21.22