True Weird Volume 1

by James Tynion IV, Lonnie Nadler, Steve Foxe

Collecting the ambitious, non-fiction comic book series depicting some of the world’s strangest true tales.

From James Tynion IV, New York Times bestselling and multi-Eisner award-winning co-creator of Something is Killing the Children, The Nice House on the Lake, and The Department of Truth!

TRUE WEIRD is a black-and-white anthology series featuring stories of ordinary people going head to head against the extraordinary, based on true accounts.

Featuring an all-star lineup of writers and artists, describing encounters with cryptids, ghosts, paranormal phenomena, medical oddities, and all manner of the strange!

This volume features twelve of the strangest "true" stories from the world around us with some of the most exciting creators including James Tynion IV, Michael Avon Oeming, Klaus Janson, Ming Doyle, John McCrea, Genevieve Valentine, Aditya Bidikar, Anand RK, Gavin Fullerton, and many more.

Collects backup stories from Blue Book series I and II.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Horror, Graphic Novels Comics, Nonfiction, Short Stories, History

128 pages, Paperback

Published February 11, 2025

About the author

Prior to his first professional work, Tynion was a student of Scott Snyder's at Sarah Lawrence College. A few years later, he worked as for Vertigo as Fables editor Shelly Bond's intern. In late 2011, with DC deciding to give Batman (written by Snyder) a back up feature, Tynion was brought in by request of Snyder to script the back ups he had plotted. Tynion would later do the same with the Batman Annual #1, which was also co-plotted by Snyder. Beginning in September 2012, with DC's 0 issue month for the New 52, Tynion will be writing Talon, with art by Guillem March. In early 2013 it was announced that he'd take over writing duties for Red Hood and the Outlaws in April.

Tynion is also currently one of the writers in a rotating team in the weekly Batman Eternal series.

Reviews

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remember the Sunday comics? Remember a comic strip called "Ripley's Believe it Or Not"? It was basically three or four little stories of real-life weird stuff---Bigfoot sightings, UFO abduction stories, haunted house accounts, etc.---with creepy illustrations. I remember sitting on my grandpa's lap every Sunday as he would read me these (along with Prince Valiant, another of his favorite Sunday "funnies" as he called them.)

James Tynion IV has updated the old "RBION" comic strips into comic book form in his anthology series "True Weird", and they are very bit as fun and goosebump-raising as the old Sunday funny comic strips, if, perhaps, a bit more graphic and violent.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

From what I understand, True Weird ran as backups in Tynion's Blue Book. The tales within of cryptids and ghosts are well researched but the shifting creative teams mean that it doesn't feel like a unified work like Blue Book. Still fun, though.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories focusing on weird "true" events. It was like Weekly World News type stories, although in this case with more "truth" behind the stories. Overall this was okay, but I was really expecting more.

[kiki thelibrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable and, you know…weird.

[Nick Topakas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don’t bother, it’s got a bunch of folk tales (mostly spooky ones) and some of them are just plain bad - uninteresting stories, uninteresting drawing, uninteresting dialogue/format.

A couple of the best stories are okay (The Monkey Man of Delhi! & Come Along…To Clinton Road!) but even they weren’t amazing.
Overall, I just wasn’t interested in how this comic came together (or didn’t).

[Kristin Katsuye · Rating 1 out of 5]

These were too difficult to read on the kindle even with the comic book zoom in feature. I tried out a few stories. Got almost halfway & gave up. They weren’t interesting enough to struggle through. I wasn’t enjoying them at all.

[Alex Sarll]

Assorted short tales of the rum and uncanny. I had this down as simply another James Tynion project, which felt like quite an overlap with his Blue Book; turns out it's different creative teams each time. Which inevitably brings the unevenness of any anthology project – one or two are outright amateurish. But aside from most of the contributors being impressive names (Oeming, Anand BK, John McCrea...), the big benefit that comes with this is each story taking a different approach to the material, whether that be a straight recounting of the legend, a bunch of kids trading competing versions, a relatively sober account of the theories, or a fascinated gawp at a moment of hysteria. The topics, too, range wider than I'd feared: there's a canon of this stuff, especially nowadays, and I'm a little burnt out on the Mothman. But bless my soul, there's no sign of him, the subjects instead ranging from childhood favourites like spontaneous combustion and St. Germain to fresher material such as the Monkey Man of Delhi. And it's always a delight to be reminded of the green children of Woolpit; doesn't come much weirder than them.

[Clint · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars
The Monkey Man of Delhi was my favorite of this anthology of “true tales of the weird” (which end up mostly being about a variety of bold con artists from the past few centuries). It’s about an interesting recent mass panic event in India I’d never heard of, and Anand RK’s black and white art looks great.

Otherwise, this is a pretty middling collection overall and feels exactly like the repackaged backups from a substack comic experiment that it is. A few of the other stories also have nice black and white art, but many more of them look rushed and uncolored not as an artistic choice but simply because coloring would cost more.

Several entries are based on interesting enough weird history, but spend their handful of pages being less informative than a few paragraphs from a relevant wiki page.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wide variety of fairly short and fairly weird stories. Some are interesting. Some are kind of a waste of time. The highlight, as others have mentioned, is the Monkey Man of Delhi. Kind of a Ripley's Believe It (or Not) air to the whole thing. Worth the read.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hit or miss collection as most shorts are - 3/4 of the tales I've come across before and all of those seem to stick to the straightforward and neutral tone that the Blue Book issues they backed up took.

[Travisimo5 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read that will send you down YouTube rabbit holes for hours.

[Travis Duke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some are interesting stories, some are not. Worth a read if you like some historically true strange tales. Art is OK

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun black-and-white noir-style "true" stories. This is reminiscent of a Ripley's Believe it or Not! anthology.

[Amie · Rating 3 out of 5]

True Weird Vol. 1 by James Tynion IV (et al) dives into eerie, supernatural tales with his usual flair, but it didn’t grab me quite like some of his other work. The stories are inventive and the artwork is strong, yet the overall impact felt a bit uneven.

I found it okay - enjoyable in parts, but not my favourite Tynion series.