Image Comics First Look: Crowbound #1

Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen, the team behind Descender, Ascender, and Little Monsters, is back at it again with Crowbound for Image Comics. And you’re (crow)bound to love this first look at the new series.

Pitched as The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Road “with echoes of Kill Bill and Pan’s Labyrinth,” which is an intriguing mix, to say the least, the book is about a mother who makes a pact with an entity known as the Scarecrow Queen to stop the government from taking her daughter.

“One of the great privileges of my position is that I get to read a lot of great comics before they come out, and let me tell you, ‘great’ doesn’t even do this one justice,” said Eric Stephenson, Publisher and Chief Creative Officer at Image Comics, via press release. “As anyone familiar with their past collaborations knows, Jeff and Dustin never disappoint, but Crowbound is on another level. The first issue is one of most darkly beguiling series debuts I’ve had the pleasure to read and the really good news is that it’s just the beginning of a storytelling journey that gets better with each issue.”

Crowbound #1 Preview

Check out a preview of the September 2, 2026 publishing issue here! Click the thumbnails for larger versions:

Crowbound #1 Official Synopsis:

Rose isn’t special. She works in the Factory just like everyone else—a dark, sprawling monolithic structure that runs along the coast and cuts the world in two. All that’s left now are desolate settlements that exist in its shadow, made up of submerged villages, derelict woods, and deadly swamps. No one knows what’s left of the world on the other side…

But when Rose’s young daughter Ava is violently taken from their shanty town home a year before she is meant to join the work force, Rose will come face-to-face with the surreal, harrowing forces outside the Factory’s walls.

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