Jeff Lemire’s Fireflies, From Substack To Image Comics In July

Jeff Lemire is bringing his Substack series Fireflies to print with Image Comics in July, after a Free Comic Book Day preview in the 6th of May, bringing small town evils to life.

When a brutal and violent crime puts the life of an innocent teenage boy in the balance, it sets off a chain of events in bucolic Bell River, Ontario that will permanently change several residents’ lives. And as the manhunt heats up, a lonely girl named Franny Fox will form an unlikely friendship with a fugitive that leads them on an odyssey of discovery and redemption. Fishflies is a new tale of small-town surrealist horror that begins with a special extra-length debut issue.

Jeff Lemire: “For years the books I both write and draw seem to switch back and forth between grounded, slice-of-life human drama like Essex County and Royal City or more genre driven work like Sweet Tooth. With Fishflies I really tried to combine these two aesthetics into one big story. Fishflies has the scale and drama of my more grounded work but also the genre fun and mythology of things like Gideon Falls. I think the result makes it unlike anything I’ve done before, yet very familiar at the same time.”

Fishflies #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, the 12th of July, with a variant cover by Peach Momoko.

Jeff Lemire previously stated for the Substack launch in 2021, “FISHFLIES is a project I am both writing and illustrating, and I’ve been working on it since I finished Mazebook and Sweet Tooth: The Return at the end of 2020. At the time of writing this I have about 120 pages fully drawn, and the entire story is plotted out. It’s going to be a BIG book. Probably my longest book since I finished the original Sweet Tooth series. I’m projecting it to be at least 500+ pages long, and it will likely take me a couple more years to draw. In many ways FISHFLIES is a culmination of everything I’ve done in comics. I think it combines the best of all by books. It sits right beside Essex County in terms of tone and setting, but also brings in some of the weirder genre aspects of books like Sweet Tooth and Gideon Falls. Starting next week I will begin serializing FISHFLIES next week, posting approximately 5 pages a week (depending on natural stop points in the story) and then to also post extensive process material as I work on new pages. And, when I finish serializing a complete chapter of the book, I will then provide a digital copy for you to download. Essentially you will be able to read the new book and watch me create it in real time as well.”