‘I became much happier and healthier when I started telling stories’: A talk with Jeff Lemire

8 hours ago 4

Jason Bergman | July 15, 2025

Jeff Lemire first gained notice for highly personal stories about life in rural Canada, most notably the Essex County trilogy (Top Shelf, 2008 - 2009, collected in 2011). Since then he has released a wide range of books, including solo works like Sweet Tooth (DC/Vertigo, 2009 - 2013), Mazebook (Dark Horse, 2022), and Royal City (Image Comics, 2017 - 2018), countless creator-owned collaborations such as Descender and its sequel series Ascender (with Dustin Nguyen, Image Comics, 2015 - 2021), and Gideon Falls (with Andrea Sorrentino, 2018 - 2020). On top of that, he’s also become one of the premiere writers of mainstream comics, contributing to DC, Marvel, and Valiant among others. In the last few years it’s been a rare month that there isn’t a new Jeff Lemire book in comics shops. Lately in fact, there have been three or four, not counting collections and reprints. And while doing all of that, Lemire still found time for work outside of comics, collaborating with musicians Gord Downie and Eddie Vedder on multimedia projects, and acting as showrunner for a miniseries for CBC based on Essex County.

With the publication of 10,000 Ink Stains: A Memoir this month from Dark Horse, it seemed like a good time to catch up with Lemire on Zoom to talk about his remarkable career, and his belief that comics, quite literally, saved his life.

— Jason Bergman

JASON BERGMAN: What made you want to write a memoir?

JEFF LEMIRE: Well, it started on Substack. A number of comic creators back in, I guess, 2021, were approached by Substack to do newsletters for them. And I was trying to think about what [an] opportunity that would be for me to create a sense of community with fans of my work, and to be able to share a lot of process material and sketchbook stuff that I had, that I'd never really shown. And when I started doing that, I started writing these little essays. I'd kind of pick a certain project, and write an essay about what was going on in my life at the time I was doing that book, and what was going on behind the scenes with each project. I did a few of those and it started to kind of build momentum where I could see it as something bigger. I hadn't really looked back on my career much. I'm the kind of person who's always really focused on whatever I'm working on at the moment and then right onto the next thing. I don't often look back. But it did feel like it was an interesting point in my life and career where it was good to look back and reassess some of the old work, and take stock of what I've accomplished and what I've done. So yeah, I think it's probably a combination of a midlife crisis thing [laughs] and reaching a milestone in my career where a couple of my books had been adapted for the screen. It just felt like I reached, I don't know, a midway point in my career. So it felt like the right time. And also I felt it would be like a document to get all those memories down and stuff for my son to have one day, to read about my life when he's older, in ways that you don't really talk about when you’re just hanging out.

The book is very focused on your work. You use that as the spine for the whole thing, as opposed to talking about your life first, and the work that came out of it second. But you go into some very personal things, like your struggles with depression and anxiety. Was that hard to put on the page?

Yeah, I mean, it's always hard. I think there's still a bit of a stigma around that stuff even though there shouldn't be. I struggled a lot with that, especially when I was younger. And for me, I felt like I could share that and show some people that you can live with that and still be successful and still achieve things that you want to achieve and not let it ruin your life. And I think just thinking back if I was a younger creator and when I was struggling, if someone I looked up to had shared that stuff, it would probably be very comforting. So I kept that in my mind as I was doing it. But yeah, it's always a balance between sharing too much of your personal life and just enough, you know? But I did feel like that was something that was important to share because like I said, maybe it can help someone else.

Well, you say - and I'm going to quote you - you say in the book, "It's not a stretch to say that comics saved my life." You mean that literally.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what I would have done with my life because I really was not a happy person. I'm talking about when I was in my late teens, early twenties. I was really floundering and really was probably, you know, drinking too much. I just wasn't a happy person, and comics gave me a focus and it gave me a routine and it gave me a purpose. And so it really did change my life and it gave me an outlet for all the stuff I was struggling with. You put it into the work. And often a lot of my work can be darker or whatever, but it's cathartic to get that stuff out through stories and then you don't have to carry it around with you in your real life. I became much happier and healthier when I started telling stories and making comics for sure.

We're going way back now, but what was it that attracted you to comics as a kid?

That's hard to say because I was drawn to comics when I was very young, like six, seven years old. So when you're that young, it's not really something conscious. It's almost like primordial. You're just drawn to this thing. And I was right away, you know? I think it had something to do with the drawings, the artwork. I think even at a young age I could see different artists’ styles and I was attracted to, “Oh, each artist has their own style.” They have different ways they draw faces. I could see an artist behind the work or something, even as a kid. That made me want to draw. So I think it started with that instinct of, “I love these drawings I want to draw too.” I was really drawn to that. And then of course, as a kid, you get into the characters and all that stuff too. But I think really it was the basics of drawing and that handmade kind of thing that pulled me in.

Was that unusual for your town? I mean, you grew up in a rural area, right?

Yeah, I mean, I didn't have anyone in my family who was involved in the arts in any way. Everyone in my family and surrounding me, they were either farmers or they worked in automotive factories. And yeah, the arts, having a life making art, I had no one to show me the way, how to do that. It just didn't seem like a realistic thing. But I just loved drawing and I drew all the time. It was always, even as a kid, it was my escape and I guess my outlet, you know? My mother's certainly a very creative person, but not of the traditional arts. And so yeah, it was unusual and as I got older and wanted to pursue it and wanted to leave home and study art and stuff, that was definitely not something that anyone I knew had ever done.

Was there anything resembling a comic scene?

No, not at all. I had a couple of friends who were really into comics with me, but they didn't draw or anything, they just loved reading comics. But no, there was no comic scene that I knew of. And even when I came to Toronto and started in film school, and when I started making comics, there was a really good comic scene here, but I didn't know anybody. I was really on my own. Most of my friends were like people who were into the film industry and stuff from school. So I didn't know any of the other cartoonists in town. And I was really kind of working in a vacuum by myself for quite a while.

You went to University of Guelph briefly, right?

Yeah, just for one year, yeah.

That’s Jay Stephens’ backyard, right? There was definitely a scene at the time.

Yeah, but I was a bit younger than that sort of generation of like, you know, Seth, Chester Brown, those guys. I was younger than them. So they were around, but I didn't have any contact with those guys.

Were you aware of the burgeoning alt comics scene?

Oh, definitely. Definitely. But I wasn't involved with it. I just was a fan of it. I loved Seth especially, [he] was super influential on me, because he told really Canadian stories. And I found that really refreshing and inspiring. But it was more as a fan, not as a peer. Like I didn't interact with those guys or whatever, you know. I would see them, sometimes I'd go to the Beguiling in Toronto just to get comics, and I'd kind of see them around, and it was like seeing a rock star or something. So yeah, and there certainly were a lot of cartoonists of my generation around, I just didn't know them yet, like Chip Zdarsky and those guys, but I didn't meet them until much later.

Was there any backup plan for you?

No [laughs]. Yeah, I mean, I was a cook, right? I was a line cook in restaurants when I started making comics. And I just thought that was what my life would be. I thought I'd work my day job, which was at night, but I'd work in kitchens to pay the rent, and then I would just do my comics as my passion, and I didn't ever expect to make a career out of it. And even when I first started getting published, like when I did the Essex County books at Top Shelf, I was still working in kitchens because those books weren't making a lot of money. They were getting published and getting out there, which was great, but it wasn't something I could live off of for sure. So yeah, I always figured that would be my life. Working in kitchens and then making comics.

Your first work was Soft Malleable Underbelly, which you eventually published as Ashtray, and you bravely include in 10,000 Ink Stains.

Yeah.

It's really interesting! What was it like revisiting that?

It’s hard, I mean, you just see how crude it all is. But I think it's cool to share that stuff. I always love seeing formative works by people I admire, whether it's a musician or an artist or whatever. So I think as long as you can put it in the right context that people understand, I don't mind sharing that stuff. But I certainly have fond memories of making those comics because I was just starting to get my first little footholds into figuring out a voice and a style. It's certainly not there yet, but you can see the little glimmers of something in there for sure. And it's kind of cool to look back on it now for sure.

It's surprisingly experimental. You've got some formal experiments in there, you're playing with panel layouts and stuff. Did you have any idea what you were doing at the time?

Yeah, I was really aware. I was really aware of that stuff, of trying to play with the language of comics and trying to experiment formally. I was very conscious of that. I don't know how successful I was, but that was something that right from the beginning I was always trying to push, finding new ways to use that language of comics and do cool, inventive things with it. I think that's one of the joys of the medium. So yeah, I was very aware of that stuff.

You later used that character Norton in Gideon Falls. How did you decide to bring him back?

I don't know. I mean, that book, that storyline had just sat there for a decade or more, at that point. I hadn't even really thought about it. I had moved on to other things. And I think at that point, that would have been 2016, 2015? So I was well into my career, I'd done a lot of stuff at DC and Marvel. I'd already done Sweet Tooth, I'd done all kinds of stuff. I was working with Andrea Sorrentino on some DC and Marvel stuff, and we started talking about doing an Image book together, a creator-owned thing. And you know, his style certainly leans more towards darker territory and horror and stuff. So for some reason, that idea of bringing that character back, just the foundation of that character, that sort of paranoid guy who was sort of searching for secrets in the city's trash, I thought that was still a cool starting point for something. I had been working on another idea too about a priest. And when I put those two ideas together, it really clicked into Gideon Falls. So yeah, I guess you just never throw anything away because it can come back.

You talk about another abandoned project in the book, which is The Adventures of Hawker Hurricane.

Oh yeah.

You say, “It’s too stupid and frankly a little embarrassing. Though I remember having fun doing it at the time." I'm guessing that one's never coming back.

[Laughs]. That one's not coming out. Yeah, it's pretty goofy. I don't even remember how that one started. I was in school again. I went back to a one-year postgrad in illustration in 2005. And it started as a project in one of my classes. It was just sort of a silly kind of spoof of old DC war comics. It was fun, but yeah, it's pretty goofy. I don't think I would publish this [laughs].

After you abandoned Soft Malleable Underbelly, you came back with Lost Dogs, which was a real creative breakthrough for you, right? It was almost like a complete pendulum swing in the other direction away from formal layouts into this much more free-flowing story.

Yeah, and it didn't really start as much. I think I had been working on that book, Soft Malleable Underbelly, and other things for years, and they weren't ever getting done. I think I was too rigid and almost trying too hard to be something. And then I think I finally just sort of let go on that project. It wasn't really anything. It was just a sketchbook experiment at first you know, of drawing really loose and fast with a brush. And then the story started to like take hold as I worked on it and it became an actual graphic novel. But yeah, it was really about letting go and that was an important step for sure.

I have my copy right here [holds up Lost Dogs]. I love this book. I think it feels like almost catharsis in a way, because it's so loose. You have these panels that are huge, they take up the whole page. And if you put it side by side with Soft Malleable Underbelly, like you can feel the tension you released in this book.

That’s exactly what it felt like for me, literally. I had just spent two or three years trying so hard, trying so hard, and then hitting walls and hitting walls and being frustrated. And then I just sort of said fuck it and started throwing ink down on a sketchbook and telling this story in this really raw, loose way with no plan or no restraints. And yeah, it was just a total release. And then after that, I know there was something about letting all that go and it freed me up to find Essex County and other things after it.

Yeah, well, it's interesting because a lot of your works since then fall into two different categories, right? You've got these very personal stories that evolve slowly, and you can see a very close relationship to Lost Dogs and the storytelling style there. But then you also have formally constructed stories, things like Mazebook, which are very tightly packed and plotted out. Is that an intentional decision when you’re starting something new?

I can kind of feel it. It's kind of like a pendulum, you know? Like you're always reacting to your previous work in a way. I'll do something that's sort of a little more, like you said, a little more personal and grounded and whatever. And then I'll kind of swing back and want to try something a little more inventive and formal. It just seems to be how my creative engine goes. It goes back and forth between those two things, one kind of playing off the other. Yeah, I can kind of feel it as it's happening, but it just seems to be the way.

You mentioned, of course, Lost Dogs led to Essex County, which was very personal to you. You talk about in 10,000 Ink Stains, that also right around this time, you dealt with your depression and that drawing Essex County made you feel happy.

Yeah, it was one of the happiest times of my life, I think. I mean, the book itself was a breakthrough for sure. Like it felt like I was doing something good for the first time. I could tell that it was a good story and my confidence started building as I worked on it. It was a very happy time in my life too, my personal life. I started getting treatment for depression and things. So that was different and just other things going on with my relationship with my wife and things were really strong at that time. Yeah, it was just a really good period where I felt like I came out of my formative years and started to become the cartoonist I dreamed that I could be, you know? And so it felt very good.

How much of your own upbringing and your childhood is reflected directly in Essex County?

Yeah, it's tricky. I always say it's a really personal book, and people presume that means autobiographical, but to me, it's not. It's more like the location and the vibe and the feel of it is very autobiographical. It's a real place and it has the feeling of how I felt as a kid, but the actual story and plot and character moments are pretty much all fictional, for the most part. So yeah, it's not really a story about my life so much as it captures the feeling of my childhood and the place that I grew up in.

Those themes in Essex County, complicated families, rural life, it seems like that's been threaded through almost all of your works ever since.

Yeah, it's just the thing I keep getting drawn back to. And I seem to never exhaust that well of inspiration, for whatever reason. I don't try to analyze it too much, I leave it for the work. But I think we're all formed by where we come from, you know, the things you feel as a kid are so impactful and they leave such a deep groove in you, and I guess that's what it is. You're so impressionable at that age and stuff gets in you and your DNA, where you grew up and your family life and stuff. That’s never stopped being a well of inspiration for me.

You've referenced Essex County in other things you've done, but you've never actually returned to the series. Other than the television adaptation, I guess. Is that something you ever want to do or are you content to leave that as is?

No, yeah, it is what it is. It's finished. I mean, all my books really are kind of little documents of wherever I am in my life at that time. It's hard to go back, you know? I was a different person when I did that, and I can always feel when something feels satisfying, like I feel like that book continues to stand on its own and find readers, it's better not to mess with it, just let it be what it was. I'd rather do new things. Like you said, you pull a lot of the same themes and a lot of the same stuff in a new work anyway, so I just let them be their own thing.

Well, it's interesting because while it’s not connected, I think Royal City almost feels like it's in conversation with Essex County.

It was, yeah. Definitely. It was like I'd done Essex, and then I kind of got into this world of mainstream comics. I was doing Sweet Tooth, which was also a really personal work, obviously, but it was a genre piece, it was just a different vibe in Essex County, which I needed to do at the time, that pendulum, something really personal and something a little more genre and whatever. So I'd done that and then I was writing all the superhero comics for DC and I just really felt like I needed to get back to whatever that stuff was from Essex County, that place creatively. So it was definitely a deliberate and conscious effort to try to tell that kind of story again, but with everything I've learned since. So it definitely isn't of the same world, but it's, like you said, it feels like it's in conversation with it.

And you are returning to Royal City, right?

Yeah, I was working on it right before we got on the Zoom actually. Yeah, so I'm working on a new story, it'll be like a six issue story. That world did feel like it wasn't complete. Unlike Essex County, I never felt totally satisfied with the ending. I think that was a really hard book to do because I was writing it, drawing it and painting it while I was writing six books from Marvel or DC or whatever. It was a really intense time and I think I just burnt out as I got into issue 13, 14 and ended it a little quicker than I wanted to. And there were some threads in there that just kept kind of coming back. I felt there was unfinished business.

Are you returning to the same characters or are just returning to the city itself?

It is the same characters, but not all of them. It's mostly focused on one character, Richie, Richie Pike, and I age him in real time from when I finished the series in 2018, I guess it was, 2019. So it's like the same amount of time has passed. He's my age now and it's dealing with a lot of things I'm dealing with at the age of 49. Just sort of that midlife feeling. He became a real vessel for a lot of the things I'm dealing with. So he's the focus, other characters from the original series do appear, but they're more like supporting characters.

So Essex County really established you and that's when you started to branch out, right, you did Underwater Welder, you did like an educational book for Scholastic. And then you kicked off Black Hammer, which is your longest running work at this point.

Yeah, I came up with Black Hammer right after Essex County, possibly as something I would draw myself as my next book. I came up with that and Sweet Tooth right around the same time, I guess it would have been 2008. And then Sweet Tooth just kind of took off at Vertigo and they accepted it and greenlit it, so that became my focus and Black Hammer kind of just sat in a sketchbook for a number of years. Then I guess around I don't know, 2013 or something, I realized, I really liked this Black Hammer story, but I'll never have time to draw myself because I had so many other things going on. So I approached another artist team to do it and yeah, it kind of took on its own life again after that.

Was Black Hammer intended to be this never ending, constantly evolving, constantly rebooting universe, or did you have a single storyline in mind at the beginning?

It was originally that one single storyline of those five or six superheroes wiped out of continuity and living on this farm. That was the original story and really all I had in mind. But then Dean Ormston the artist was ill, so he needed some time off to catch up. And I was talking to the editor, Daniel [Chabon], and I said, you know, I really wanna save the farm story for Dean, he should draw the whole thing. So we needed to do a fill-in and I was like, well, what if I just do like a one-off of this character? You know, and it was kind of like as soon as I branched off once, the whole multiverse, I couldn't stop [laughs]. So yeah, it kind of came out of necessity and then it just became too fun not to build a whole superhero universe out of this thing and go nuts and scratch every itch I had.

It's worth noting that Black Hammer is this superhero book, but at the same time, the place that those heroes are stuck in the first storyline, that’s essentially Essex County, right?

Yeah, I mean, the original concept before I was involved in any mainstream comics, I had done Top Shelf stuff with Essex County and like I said earlier, I just thought that that was the extent to my career. I'd probably just do these indie graphic novels and not really make a living, but it would be my passion. And I had done Essex County and Black Hammer was sort of like, I always loved superhero comics. I'll never get to do them myself for real, quote unquote. So why don't I do my version of all these characters I love but set them in Essex County or on a farm like that. That was really the impetus for it.

That's your longest running collaboration, as far as I know, I haven’t run the numbers.

I think so, yeah.

But you do have a lot of them at this point. When you're figuring out a book, do you always have a creator in mind?

At this point I do, yeah. I mean, I tend to work with the same people now over and over again. You know, you develop these relationships with people like Dustin Nguyen. So yeah, it kind of tends to be, oh, we're finishing up this project. I need to get something else going for Dustin. And I'll start thinking of ideas that suit him, you know, suit his style. So yeah, I am kind of coming up with things specifically for an artist at this point.

10,000 Ink Stains is mostly devoted to work you've done entirely on your own, for fairly obvious reasons. But you've done so much at this point as a writer for other artists, and you've had these ups and downs with mainstream comics. You're very complimentary in the book about some of it, but you also talk about regretting your exclusive deal with Marvel and your frustrations with DC in the past. But you’re still doing that stuff! I didn't realize just how much until Free Comic Book Day, and there’s Jeff Lemire, all over the latest DC books.

Yeah, it's like that pendulum thing. It goes in ebbs and flows, you know, where I'll be really into doing my own stuff for a couple of years. And then I'll get that itch again to play with those characters that I love. It goes back and forth. And right now I was really in it. It was a weird time when I was writing 10,000 Ink Stains. I talked about looking back, and I reached this point where a lot of the things I had been working on were all finishing around the same time. I think I was doing Little Monsters with Dustin, I was doing stuff with Andrea Sorrentino, the Black Hammer stuff, they were all coming to a stopping point. And I think I finished Mazebook. So yeah, all my creator-owned stuff was finishing around the same time, and I was working on the Essex County TV show and I was really burnt out. And the idea of coming up with new creator-owned stuff and building new worlds for myself felt…I just wasn't ready to do it yet. But I need to stay busy. So slipping back into the DC world was sort of like comfort food, you know. Like, I know the world, I don't need to build the world myself. I can just slip in and inhabit those characters. So last year, year before, I kind of got really into doing a few DC projects, obviously. But even now I can feel it, like going away. I'm like, okay, that was fun, but now I’m ready. I have a whole bunch of new creator-owned stuff I'm starting on. So the pendulum's starting to swing away from it.

Well, you do talk about your frustrations with mainstream companies in the past. Has the situation changed enough for you at this point? I’m guessing it must have.

Yeah, it has. I think it was different things at different points in my career too. At Marvel, I felt like a fish out of water. I just didn't really fit in there for whatever reason. And then there were times at DC that were frustrating, but that's natural with anything. I feel at this point, I have a really good relationship with them though, where they get me and let me do my thing mostly. And it's pretty, it's pretty good. But nothing really compares to doing your own stuff. You're never gonna have the amount of control and freedom that you have doing your own stuff. It's just the way it is, you know? So you kind of have to accept that going in.

If you look at the list of stuff you've done between Marvel and DC, you’ve pretty much played with all the major toys at this point. Is there something left? Is there some toy in that sandbox you haven't had a chance to touch?

No, not really [laughs]. Yeah, I think the Justice Society was like the last thing on my bucket list of like, “Oh, I really want to write those characters.” And I'm doing that now. Yeah, I've kind of done all the stuff I love. There is one other book coming out next year that was kind of a weird itch I wanted to scratch, which will be a character that no one else ever wanted to see again except me [laughs]. That's okay. It was sort of a fun, self-indulgent DC project. But yeah, I feel like I've scratched most of the itches. I'm ready to get back to doing my own stuff. I think in this coming year.

We've talked a bit about your mainstream work, and your collaborations, and your personal work. But I think it really needs to be stressed that you do a lot of it and you do it all at the same time. How is that possible? Like how do you do so much work?

Yeah, people always talk about that, but I don't know, I just, I've always been super organized, super structured. I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, when I was younger and I found this routine with comics and this work ethic. I guess I've always felt that the busier I am, the happier I am. The more I work, the less I think about things and I just can be in it, you know. So I like to be very busy and I structure my days and my weeks really well. I think most of my time is still spent drawing, which is really what I love to be doing. And then in terms of the writing, if you get ahead of your artists, you can really space those things out and really only be working on one or two of those books at a time. There's never as much at once as it looks like when it's coming out. I've usually worked so far ahead that it's really spaced out.

Alongside all of your comics work, you've done a couple of comics-adjacent things now. You've dabbled in animation with collaborations with Gord Downie and Eddie Vedder. And then you did the Essex County television series. I mean, those are all very different, but is that something you enjoy? Is that something you want to do more of? Or will you be focused exclusively on comics for the foreseeable future?

I don't think I can say exclusively because you get cool opportunities and you don't want to say no to them necessarily. But I mean, comics is definitely my main focus and I think always will be. Working on adaptations and film and TV stuff, it can be interesting and be a cool challenge, but it's never as gratifying as making comics. To me, anyway. Comics is so much more personal and intimate. It's either me by myself or me with one or two collaborators sitting down and creating something and it's in a reader's hand, pretty much unfiltered within a few months. Whereas film and TV takes years and years and there's so many voices and people involved, it's really hard to navigate and to sort of have some sort of control over it that you do with comics. So yeah, it's interesting, but it's not creatively nearly as satisfying to me as making comics.

I assume you have at least like half a dozen projects in the pipe at this point. Is the new Royal City your next solo work?

Well, I'm doing a monthly book for BOOM called Minor Arcana that I'm drawing and writing myself. So that's ongoing now, it's out. And then Royal City is somehow squeezing that one in between issues. So yeah, those two are definitely the two self-drawn books for the next couple of years. And then I'm working on a new book with Dustin and a couple of things with Teddy Kristiansen. And yeah, so I'm getting some creator-owned stuff up and running, which is fun.

One last question…looking back at all of your career, and all the books we've talked about, are there - normally I would say one, but I think in your case, two or three - works you point to as encompassing everything you wanted to do in comics?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've done a lot of stuff obviously, but there are a few that kind of keep coming back. I think Essex County and Underwater Welder are the two really personal books from the early part of my career. I hold Mazebook up as personally my favorite thing I've done. I feel like in a lot of ways I really love that one. And then in terms of collaborations, I think Black Hammer, that would be there. And Royal City. I don't know, I just start naming them all. I love them all. It’s hard to pick [laughs].