Zuko’s most famous disguise is getting an origin story. Dark Horse Books and Avatar Studios have announced Avatar: The Last Airbender—Enter the Blue Spirit, a standalone graphic novel about how the exiled Fire Nation prince first put on the mask. It arrives on February 23, 2027.
The book comes from the longtime Avatar comics team of writer Faith Erin Hicks, artist Peter Wartman, colorist Adele Matera, and letterer Tyler Smith of Comicraft. According to Dark Horse, it is set in the early months of Zuko’s exile, when he and his uncle Iroh find a long-forgotten Fire Nation colony on the coast of the Earth Kingdom. When the Fire Nation demands more of the valuable ore the village produces for the war effort, the colonists’ lives are put at risk. To protect them, even from his own homeland, Zuko becomes the Blue Spirit for the very first time. But if he’s caught defying the Fire Lord, he’ll lose any chance of regaining his honor and going home.
The Blue Spirit first appeared in the 13th episode of the animated series’ first season in 2005. In it, a masked Zuko rescues Aang from captivity, one of the first signs of the prince’s eventual turn toward the good guys. The persona has since shown up in the 2010 live-action film and Netflix’s live-action series, as The Beat notes.
Enter the Blue Spirit is an 80-page, 6-by-9-inch paperback priced at $13.99. It’s available to pre-order now from comic shops and bookstores.
Dark Horse has more Avatar coming before then. The Kyoshi Warriors series by Brandon Hoàng and BellBessa gets a trade paperback on November 10, and the Fire and Family Treasury Omnibus, which collects three earlier stories about Zuko and his family set after the show, follows on June 1. The announcement also lines up with the premiere of Avatar: Seven Havens, the franchise’s third animated series, on Paramount+.
Dark Horse has been busy with licensed comics lately. RCG also reported that Dark Horse is teasing Baldur’s Gate 3 comics.
