Welcome to The Empire Of The Tiny Onion

James Tynion IV breaks down the many exciting offerings available to anybody subscribing to The Empire Of The Tiny Onion

Hey Friends! 

Excuse me for the double newsletter drop today! I’m doing a bit of housekeeping here on Substack to make for a better experience when anybody comes and visits jamestynioniv.substack.com. I realized earlier today that the number of paid subscribers have doubled since our first week, and a bunch of folks may have signed up for my Thinking Bat Thoughts posts or Blue Book posts without knowing about what else they’ll be getting over the course of the next year, and without knowing about the more premium offerings in store. I encourage everyone go back and read the big announcement post from last month, but I want all that information as accessible as possible.

The post below is going to be pinned at the top of the main page on Substack, and it’s also going to live over on the “About” page. Over time, I figure it’ll also work as a good FAQ page. If you are a paid subscriber and want to hit up the comment section below with questions about the Tiny Onion Substack experience, please do! I know I can ramble, and need to be prodded into explaining things in clear, direct terms, so please. Prod away. We’ll keep both the pinned post AND the about page updated as we move forward.

I also wanted to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has subscribed over the last month. When I was given a Substack Pro grant to develop new comic book projects on this platform, I didn’t know what to expect, but as of today I’ve nearly earned back half my grant and my first comic doesn’t even start dropping in earnest until this Friday! I’m using pretty much every penny I’ve been given to develop exciting new comic projects, and I’m starting to think about what a year two might look like on the platform. Your support on titles like Department of Truth and Something is Killing the Children mean I can get creative over here. Some long-shot dreams I’ve been dying to make a reality in the comic format look much more in my grasp.

I also wanted to formerly announce that I have renamed The Founders Tier subscription level THE ONION CLUB, and that I’m going to be making and sending out special membership cards to members on that subscription level. I have some ideas about how to make membership to that level even more attractive as we move forward (so you’ll want to have it on hand when you go to a convention I’m attending!). Stay tuned. More to come on that front, and we’ll be announcing the first ONION CLUB EXCLUSIVE variant cover later this month. Read more about everything The Onion Club entails below, and subscribe today!

My plane is starting to descend into Portland, so I should wrap this up. Thanks again, everybody. I couldn’t be more grateful to you all.

James Tynion IV
The Sky Over Oregon
9.6.21

Welcome to the Empire of the Tiny Onion

Hello Friends. My name is James Tynion IV. I am an Eisner Award winning, New York Times bestselling author and publisher of comic books of all shapes and sizes. I am probably best known as a writer of horror comics, co-creating SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN with Werther Dell’Edera for Boom! Studios, THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH with Martin Simmonds for Image Comics, and THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE for DC Black Label. I also write manga-infused genre stories for teens, like the fantasy epic, WYND, co-created with Michael Dialynas for Boom! Studios.

For the last ten years, my day job was writing superhero comics for DC, culminating in a bestselling, award winning run on BATMAN with Jorge Jimenez, where we created exciting new characters like Punchline, Ghost-Maker, Clownhunter, Miracle Molly, and Peacekeeper-01. But in Summer 2021, I was offered a Substack Pro grant that allowed me to step away from my day job and move full time into writing and publishing my own comic book projects through my personal Tiny Onion Studios label. I’ll be documenting that process and releasing those comic books digitally through this Newsletter. You can subscribe by hitting the button below…

Between now and late summer 2022, I will be launching a series of digital-first projects by myself and many members of the extended Tiny Onion Studios family as an exclusive offering to paid subscribers to The Empire of the Tiny Onion.

These projects will include the following…

BLUE BOOK

BLUE BOOK is an original comic series in what I call the TRUE WEIRD genre — the strange cousin of True Crime, that focuses on true stories of the unexplained. This project, co-created by myself and Michael Avon Oeming, and lettered by Aditya Bidikar, is going to adapt first person accounts of famous UFO Encounters in the comic book form, looking not to sensationalize the events, and trying to capture the essential weirdness of the real encounters that often get washed out in adaptations. The first chapter is available to read for free here on Substack, and paid subscribers will each new entry in their inboxes twice a month.

THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH: WILD FICTIONS

THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH: WILD FICTIONS is the second ongoing feature here on my Substack, spinning out from the pages of my hit Image Comics series THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, co-created with Martin Simmonds. Another entry in the “True Weird” genre, every case file we post will feature an original illustration of a notable cryptid by one of my favorite comic or horror artists, and a case file from the Field Office of the DOT getting into the history and folklore behind each cryptid. The first case file will be free to read here on Substack, and paid subscribers will get new entries in their inbox twice a month.

“OPERATION TOPLOCK”

ANNOUNCING Q4 2021 - Stay Tuned!

“OPERATION NIGHTMARE”

ANNOUNCING Q1 2022 - Stay Tuned!

“OPERATION DIAL-UP”

ANNOUNCING SUMMER 2022 - Stay Tuned!

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU TELL US?

All of the above projects will find their way to print over the next few years, but paying for a subscription to the Empire of the Tiny Onion will give you a front row seat in watching us take these new properties and developing them into their final forms. This is a rare look at seeing the process of starting a comic book from scratch, and you get to be there right at the ground floor, and read these comics long before everyone waiting for hard copies. If you’re interested in reading these comics on day one, you should Subscribe to the Empire of the Tiny Onion today for $7 a month, or a discounted annual rate of $75 a month!

Even if you’re not sure about signing up for a paid subscription today, I recommend you sign up for the Free version of the newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news and thoughts from me about my projects on Substack and off of it. Free Subscribers will get the weekly TINY UPDATE newsletter, covering which of my books are coming out in comic shops any given week, and find out about my latest merchandise offerings through the Tiny Onion Webstore, where you can buy exclusive enamel pins and comics not available through any distributor.

Speaking of Merchandise… Paid Subscribers are also going to get early access to purchasing exclusive variant covers, enamel pins, and much more. We are aggressively expanding the merch operations here at Tiny Onion Studios and I’ll be able to get into the details there very soon… But if you want cool, limited edition shirts and pins and prints from Department of Truth, Something is Killing the Children, and much much more, and you want to be able to get those things before they sell out, you should subscribe today!

THE ONION CLUB

Formerly known as the “Founders Tier” option, members of THE ONION CLUB will receive SIX exclusive variant covers over the course of the next year (these covers may be to my existing print projects, or to as of yet unannounced projects). These covers will not available to purchase ANYWHERE else, and will be mailed directly to your home. This offering is currently available to international customers, though shipping costs may make this a domestic US offering in the near future (though all members who sign up now will be grandfathered in). I am also making an exclusive ONION CLUB card that I will send to all members that will allow you to purchase exclusive merch from my table at conventions not available to anybody else. It costs $250/year to be a member of the Onion Club, and I am going to do everything I can to make this a really exciting group to be a member of.

Existing Onion Club/Founders Tier members will be receiving a private email in the next few weeks to get your shipping information, around the time that we announce the first Onion Club exclusive cover. Sign up today!

Join the Tiny Onion Community!

Paid Subscribers are able to comment on all posts here at the Empire of the Tiny Onion! I am no longer using my old Twitter profile and will be shutting it down over the next few months (though you should follow @ReadTinyOnion if you want to keep up to date with the comics I’m releasing each with). If you want to interact with me, this newsletter is the place to do it! We’re exploring some cool options to expand the community offerings, and create more discussion threads where I can interact with you all, but I’m already grateful to the growing community here. As I discussed in a recent Tiny Update, I’ve already started reading your book recommendations!

And More To Come!

The most exciting thing about this whole experiment is that it can grow and evolve over the course of the year. I’m already playing with a bunch of possibilities of what I might be able to build for you here on Substack. Even when the current behind the scenes essay series, THINKING BAT THOUGHTS wraps in November… I’ve got plans on what else I might be able to talk about as we gear up for big new arcs of Something is Killing the Children and Department of Truth. This Newsletter is going to be the best place to get behind the scenes content about all of your favorite books that I write, and the place to go to learn about my next big series releasing in print in 2022.

I’m staying busy, and I’m freaking THRILLED to be making all of this cool stuff for all of you. I can’t wait to let you know more about everything we’ve got in store for you.

If you have any other questions…

Please ask them in the comments below! We’ll keep this About page a living organism, trying to answer any and all questions you have about how this process works. Thanks again for checking out The Empire of The Tiny Onion.

Much more to come!

James Tynion IV
Last Edited
9.6.21