Jeff Lemire signs "exclusive deal" with Image Comics, with some exceptions - saulternowbod1994

Jeff Lemire signs "exclusive deal" with Picture Comics, with some exceptions

Jeff Lemire (Image credit: Jeff Lemire)

Image Comics has announced that writer/artist Jeff Lemire has communicative an "exclusive deal" with the publisher for every last his projects in "2022 and beyond." Newsarama has learned that there are some exceptions to the accord.

What this new Image deal will include are the upcoming projects Little Monsters (with Dustin Nguyen) and more series spinning exterior of Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's Gideon Falls series, as share of what's now beingness called "The Bone Orchard Mythos of shared horror universe titles."

Image is also teasing some "soon-to-cost-proclaimed" projects from Lemire coming to the publisher, more or less with Lemire writing (with another artist draftsmanship), and extraordinary with Lemire writing and drafting the completely thing.

"Having worked with Image on so numerous projects ended the last decade, I've come to apprise the complete creative freedom and support that they've provided me," says Lemire in the announcement. "I'm excited to defecate Image the exclusive home for all my projects in the years to come, both unaccompanied projects that I will draw myself, and my various collaborations. Bone Orchard and Little Monsters are just the start of what I have planned this year and beyond."

So what does this mean for Lemire's Shirley Temple Black Hammer franchise at Dark Equus caballus Comics and the creator-owned comics he's doing at various places including his Substack? We asked Lemire for elucidation.

"So this deal is for print only. Meaning I will continue to publish comics online direct Substack arsenic well as through print at Image," Lemire tells Newsarama. "I have an exemption to write the final few Negro Malleus series which wish atomic number 4 released through Dark Sawhorse and my Substack over the close couple of years. And whol Black Hammer books will continue to be published through Drab Horse. Nothing is moving."

Little Monsters #1 cover (Image credit: Dustin Nguyen (Image Comics))

That would signify the current Substack-first comic Fishflies by Lemire will also be part of this Image deal.

All the same, this would on the face of it point that Lemire won't personify starting some virgin projects with DC, Wonder, or else publishers on the far side things already afoot like Flood in Affair: Green Hell.

This Lemire/Picture Comics partnership is the second major 'exclusive' deal Image has in agreement to in recent memory, following the stick Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips exclusive deal signed in 2013, and tardive revived in 2018. Withal, Brubaker and Phillips stimulate likewise created few comic book work outside Image, showing Image's exclusivity has some exceptions there as well.

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Newsarama Senior Editor Chris Arrant has covered comic book news for Newsarama since 2003, and has also longhand for United States of America Today, Life, Entertainment Every week, Publisher's Weekly, Wonder Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Sketch Brew, Bleeding Cool, Mirthful Rat News, and CBR. He is the generator of the book Modern: Masters Drop-off Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Humankind Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industriousness Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Refreshing & Comics Round Table. (He/him)