UFO comic Blue Book: 1947 investigates the origins of the flying saucer

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By Will Salmon
published

The true life mystery comic looks at the Kenneth Arnold case

Art from Blue Book: 1947
(Image credit: Dark Horse Comics)

UFOs - sorry, UAP - are so hot right now. Ever since the reveal of the infamous "Tic Tac" video a few years back the conversation around Unidentified Flying Objects has been heated, to say the least. 

Some time ago, horror comic master James Tynion IV and artist Michael Avon Oeming began retelling famous true cases of UFO encounters, first on Tynion IV's Substack and then in the pages of their Dark Horse comic, Blue Book.

A second five-issue run of the title is set to debut in February 2024. Blue Book: 1947 tells a brand new tale set some 14 years before the first volume, which documented Betty and Barney Hill's purported alien abduction. In fact, 1947 is going back to a case that many consider to be the starting point of modern UFOlogy, Kenneth Arnold's sighting near Mount Rainier.

Art from Blue Book: 1947

(Image credit: Dark Horse Comics)

Here's Dark Horse's official synopsis for the first issue.

"In 1947, Kenneth Arnold flew his Call-Air A-2 over the skies of the Pacific Northwest when all of a sudden, he saw a blinding flash of silver light. What followed was a bizarre and difficult to explain encounter with several flying objects that would change the course of his life forever."

In addition to Oeming's cover above there will be six variants. You can check them all out in the gallery below. These are by (from left to right) Fábio Moon, Michael Allred, Cully Hamner, Joe Quinones, Christian Ward, and a foiled version of Oeming's main cover. A further variant will follow in due course. 

Image 1 of 6
Art from Blue Book: 1947
(Image credit: Dark Horse Comics)

Kenneth Arnold's encounter is generally considered to be the first post-World War II UFO sighting. It was this event that led to the terms "flying saucer" and "flying discs" being used frequently in the press and other media. The more famous Roswell incident happened just a month later, cementing 1947 as the year of the UFO.

Blue Book: 1947 #1 is written by Tynion, illustrated by Oeming, and lettered by Tom Napolitano. It will also include a True Weird backup story by Zac Thompson, Gavin Fullerton, and Aditya Bidikar. 

Blue Book: 1947 #1 is published by Dark Horse Comics on February 7, 2024.

James Tynion IV has written some of the best horror comics of all time.

Will Salmon
Will Salmon
Comics Editor

Will Salmon is the Comics Editor for GamesRadar/Newsarama. He has been writing about comics, film, TV, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he has previously launched scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for over a decade. He sometimes feels very old, like Guy Pearce in Prometheus. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places and he runs the micro-label Modern Aviation, which puts out experimental music on cassette tape.

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