Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen are back together with Crowbound, a brand new Image Comics series coming next year that… I guess? Was just announced at New York Comic Con, likely as part of the convention’s Retailer Day.
I only say “I guess” because the news actually comes from Lemire’s Substack newsletter, alongside the longest graphic I have ever seen in my life (see below), where he announces it with a press release. However, that press release has yet to be shared by Image, and I haven’t seen a mention of this book online otherwise. But who cares! New Lemire and Nguyen book!
“Crowbound has been a project Dustin and I have been developing for several years, and we are incredibly excited to finally unleash it,” Lemire said via release. “This is our next major collaboration, something huge in scope like Descender was, but this story will also break uncharted territory for us creatively. If Descender was a sprawling space opera, then Crowbound is a sprawling dark fantasy revenge saga filled with heart, emotion, and rage, all rendered in the way only Dustin Nguyen can.”
Added Nguyen, “Not only am I excited to explore this entirely new world with Jeff, but also excited to discover entirely new ways to tell stories and an exciting new direction for my art on this next book as well- this happens everytime I collaborate with Jeff.”
The duo have collaborated before for image on Descender, Ascender and Little Monsters, as well as a duo of Batman and Robin books for DC Comics. And now comes Crowbound, which is described as a dark, ongoing fantasy series.
In it, we’re following a girl named Ava who… Actually, it’s complicated, so here’s the synopsis:
At thirteen, every child begins their life inside The Factory—a vast, monolithic superstructure that cleaves the world in two—pulling levers, pushing buttons, and never knowing why. But Ava is a beautiful girl and the sinister Factory Men decide hers will be a fate of “special service” up the coast. Left reeling from their violent separation, her mother, Rose, embarks on a desperate rescue attempt when she strikes an uncertain bargain with the eerie, otherworldly Scarecrow Queen…
Fueled by fury, grief, and an undying love, Rose sets out on a nightmarish journey across the lowlands—a haunted, post-apocalyptic dreamscape crawling with strange creatures, forgotten gods, and the twisted remains of the old world—to find her daughter at any cost.
Lemire (or rather this mysterious press release) further goes on to call it a “blood-soaked fairytale, steeped in Southern Gothic dread and Neo-Western grit,” which come on, you had me at “Lemire and Nguyen,” no need to gild the lily.
Crowbound #1 will hit stores in March 2026. Here’s that crazy long graphic I mentioned:
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