Jeff Lemire: Conversations

by Dale Jacobs (Editor)

In a 2019 interview with the webzine DC in the 80s, Jeff Lemire (b. 1976) discusses the comics he read as a child growing up in Essex County, Ontario—his early exposure to reprints of Silver Age DC material, how influential Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC’s Who’s Who were on him as a developing comics fan, his first reading of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, and his transition to reading the first wave of Vertigo titles when he was sixteen. In other interviews, he describes discovering independent comics when he moved to Toronto, days of browsing comics at the Beguiling, and coming to understand what was possible in the medium of comics, lessons he would take to heart as he began to establish himself as a cartoonist.

Many cartoonists deflect from questions about their history with comics and the influences of other artists, while others indulge the interviewer briefly before attempting to steer the questions in another direction. But Lemire, creator of Essex County Trilogy, Sweet Tooth, The Nobody, and Trillium, seems to bask in these discussions. Before he was ever a comics professional, he was a fan.

What can be traced in these interviews is the story of the movement from comics fan to comics professional. In the twenty-nine interviews collected in Jeff Lemire: Conversations, readers see Lemire come to understand the process of collaboration, the balancing act involved in working for different kinds of comics publishers like DC and Marvel, the responsibilities involved in representing characters outside his own culture, and the possibilities that exist in the comics medium. We see him embrace a variety of genres, using each of them to explore the issues and themes most important to him. And we see a cartoonist and writer growing in confidence, a working professional coming into his own.

Genres: Comics

222 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2022

Reviews

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice addition to the Conversations with Comics Artists series (volume 31), and I am happy to see another Canadian make the list. Jacobs has gathered interviews from quite early in Lemire's career right up to 2019, which must have been about as far as was realistically possible, given production lead times. Selected illustrations help clarify one's understanding of Lemire's style and focus. The introduction is brief and primarily descriptive, so it provides some necessary context and detail, but it could have been longer and more in-depth, I think (it is only nine pages). I would have liked to see it devote a bit of space to explaining why Lemire is a significant enough figure to merit such a collection. One can infer the reasons, but it could be made more clear. A lot of the interviews are fairly short (some only four or five pages) and often are fairly superficial. Some come from explicitly promotional sources (e. g. Diamond), but many are fairly fan-oriented, rather than interviews involving probing questions and deep critical engagement with the work (I was impressed when one interviewer quite late in the book pointed out a recurrent motif in Lemire's work--submergence in water--that nobody else had commented on). There are a few interviews that do probe--generally the longer ones--and some address the uncomfortable topic of cultural appropriation, given Lemire's several instances of major works and characters using Indigenous characters. Lemire's answers seem genuine and honest, and he acknowledges the potential problems, but he's never really pushed (not that he should be, necessarily). I would have liked to see one Comics Journal-style career retrospective/deep dive, but as far as I know, no such interview exists (certainly, I find no evidence that the Comics Journal has interviewed Lemire). Perhaps Lemire was unwilling to sit down with Jacobs (I know my own score on this front was under 50% new original interviews). However, there's lots of interesting insight here into Lemire's working methods, his collaborative style, his bridging of the mainstream and alternative worlds, his influences (David Lynch is a major one! I don't know why I had not already guessed that) etc. The hardcover is not priced for the average reader, but the paperback is reasonably-priced and would be a nice addition to any Lemire fan's collection, or of value to anyone interested in doing scholarly work on him.