When The Dark Crystal swept into theaters in 1982, it captured imaginations and terrified children. Actually, the Skeksis still get under my skin. The film may have had a heavy tone, but it was balanced by wondrous creatures and groundbreaking animatronics. Archaia and The Jim Henson Company have worked together to translate the magic of the movie into a new novelization. Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: The Novelization will be available in June in a high quality hardcover.

This is the second in a series of novelization reprints of Henson properties from Archaia; Labyrinth: The Novelization was released in April and Storyteller: The Novelization will be out in August. These titles have been out of print and hard to track down for a long time, and it’s exciting to know that fans of Jim Henson’s works will be discovering them for the first time.

Archaia have already dived into the mythology of The Dark Crystal world with a series of graphic novels, and this reprint of the novel will combine prose with illustrations and concept art by artist Brian Froud. Those images have never before been published.

Besides the story by A.C.H. Smith (Jim Henson oversaw the adaptation process) and the images from Froud, The Dark Crystal: The Novelization has more than 20 pages of detailed notes from Henson. Those haven’t been seen before either! It’s kind of neat that you can still see fresh sides of the story and get a peek at how Henson worked over 30 years after The Dark Crystal was released.

The novelization goes on sale June 4th in comic book shops and specialty stores. Are you planning to snag a copy? Let us know in the comments!