It is with sincere delight that we bring you the news that The Underwater Welder, the new original graphic novel by Jeff Lemire, is now available for pre-ordering from its publisher Top Shelf Productions. After a well received turn with superheroes in DC's Animal Man and Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., Lemire returns to the themes of family and human connectivity in The Underwater Welder, the story of a man whose construction job under the sea separates him both physically and emotionally from his wife and unborn child. Naturally, given Lemire's work with the spooky sci-fi of Sweet Tooth at Vertigo, the story introduces a mysterious, supernatural twist that's prompted Lost and Prometheus writer Damon Lindelof to call Underwater Welder "The most spectacular episode of The Twilight Zone that was never produced."

The graphic novel doesn't go on sale until August, but we've got ten pages for you to check out right now.


From Top Shelf's description of The Underwater Welder:

As an underwater welder on an oilrig off the coast of Nova Scotia, Jack Joseph is used to the immense pressures of deep-sea work. Nothing, however, could prepare him for the pressures of impending fatherhood. As Jack dives deeper and deeper, he seems to pull further and further away from his young wife and their unborn son. Then one night, deep in the icy solitude of the ocean floor, something unexplainable happens. Jack has a mysterious and supernatural encounter that will change the course of his life forever.

Equal parts blue-collar character study and mind-bending mystery, The Underwater Welder is a graphic novel about fathers and sons, birth and death, memory and reality, and the treasures we all bury deep below the surface.


Lemire has earned himself many new readers thanks to his writing in the high profile DC Comics superhero titles, so it's my hope that with The Underwater Welder they'll also discover his marvelous cartooning in books like Vertigo's Sweet Tooth and The Nobody and of course Top Shelf's hugely acclaimed Essex County Trilogy, which have made Lemire a standout talent of the last several years. Also praised by Lemire's DC colleague and collaborator, Swamp Thing writer Scott Snyder as "A masterpiece of visual storytelling," The Underwater Welder can be pre-ordered now from your local comic book shop or from Top Shelf directly.



















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