Stranger Things may have taken its final bow on Netflix at New Year's, but the franchise keeps finding ways back onto our shelves. The latest is an official companion book, announced through Netflix's Tudum, billed as the definitive story behind the show's entire five-season run.
The package sounds built for the devoted. A foreword from the Duffer Brothers, behind-the-scenes material and concept art spanning the decade, and the fun part: hidden codes tucked through the pages that unlock bonus content.
It's set to be a Target exclusive in the US. Given that the finale handed Netflix its biggest New Year's Day of viewing ever while pulling $25 million in theaters on the side, the appetite is very much still there.
But some of you regular CBM users already know this: Hawkins never needed a companion book to live on the page. Dark Horse Comics has been building a Stranger Things print universe since 2018, and it's deeper than casual fans realize.
The line opened with The Other Side, a four-issue miniseries from writer Jody Houser and artist Stefano Martino that finally showed us Will Byers' Season 1 ordeal from INSIDE the Upside Down. Houser stuck around for SIX and Into the Fire, which dug into the other numbered children of Hawkins Lab, the test subjects the show only ever hinted at. Greg Pak's graphic novel Zombie Boys gave the boys a lighter post-Season 1 adventure, while Kamchatka followed the Soviet side of the story in the run-up to Season 4.
There's even a Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons crossover, The Rise of Hellfire, which is a personal favorite of mine, that traces how the Hellfire Club got its name.
Every one of those stories is still easy to track down in trade paperback, too.
For a show built on 80s nerd culture (D&D campaigns, arcade cabinets, and comic-shop kids), ending up as a comic book universe feels exactly right.
So while the companion book will get the headlines (and those hidden codes will get the Reddit threads), the deeper cut for print-loving fans has been sitting in comic shops all along. If the book sends new readers toward the back-issue bins, everybody wins.
Have you read the Dark Horse line, and if so, which series is the essential one? Does a making-of book with unlockable extras earn a spot on your shelf next to the comics? Share your thoughts below!
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