Legendary Canadian comics creator Jeff Lemire delivers another addictively bizarre series of stories with Fishflies, which collects all seven issues. "They come for, like, a week every summer and then they all die at once," a boy explains about the fishfly infestation in small-town Belle River, Ontario. Lemire's author's note confirms the reality of the annual plague in the lakeside Essex County communities where he grew up.
Stranger things will happen over this fictional season. A barefoot dare among three friends to procure popsicles leaves young Paul hospitalized when he interrupts a convenience store robbery in progress. Young Franny--bullied for her constantly runny nose--befriends the criminal hiding in her family's barn, provoking her vicious alcoholic father's wrath. Paul's single mother has inexplicable visions about Belle River's first settlers. A pair of aging siblings clearly know too much. And Officer Danny Laraque is the single citizen determined to save the children.
As in his acclaimed, Netflix-adapted Sweet Tooth, Lemire again centers--and eventually empowers--neglected, abused, and abandoned kids. Here, he quickly moves Franny into the narrative spotlight: wearing her red coat, she's often the only bright color on the page. Lemire defaults to meticulous black-and-white illustrations washed over with muted grays, blues, and yellows. He tints the recent past in green, while depictions of the previous century turn virtually all green (except for bloody red), panels lose their frames, and the art becomes less detailed, with broader strokes. Dipterological transformations are nigh. --Terry Hong