FISHFLIES 1-1

So, here we go...FISHFLIES begins! The plan is to post a new installment like this every Friday. Substack is still working on the best way to post comics and have you read them on your devices. But for the time being, we will post pages like this each week and then, when a complete chapter has been posted, I will provide subscribers with a complete digital download of the whole chapter. (Each chapter is between 50-60 pages).

So what is this story, who are these kids and what's up with the bugs?

I’m not saying anything. This new Substack platform provides a unique way for me to reveal the story to you without having any of it spoiled by solicits or previews. You just get to read the story cold and let it unfold week by week without any idea where it is going, and I love that. So often, the comics we buy have already been previewed or spoiled online before they even go on sale. FISHFLIES in particular will be great for this, because it contains some pretty crazy twists. All I will say is that nothing in FISHFLIES is what it first appears. This book, especially in the first chapter, goes in some places I don’t think any of you will predict.

Where did the idea for this book come from? Well, I grew up in Essex County, Ontario and in the summers, the communities by the Great Lakes are infested with these fishflies. They literally cover the streets and businesses for a few weeks each summer. I was driving back home two or three summers ago to visit my parents and I had this visceral memory of going to a mini-mart one night many years prior to get something and the parking lot was carpeted with these fishfies. They crunched under your feet as you walked across them. This memory started spinning around in my head and the very opening scene above took shape.

I didn't know where it would go at the time, but I kept going back to it. And then, this past January, after I finished drawing Sweet Tooth: The Return I was messing around in my sketchbooks searching for my next book and this scene came back along with some new ideas that unlocked the whole thing. I started drawing the book in January and as of today, I am on chapter 3 with about 150-pages drawn and the whole story plotted out.

This book will eventually be available in print, I just don't know when or in what format yet. So, for now, this Substack will be the exclusive home of FISHFLIES.

So, until next week, I will leave you with one last piece of the FISHFLIES puzzle…