Jeff Lemire (born March 21, 1976) is a Canadian comic artist and writer, most famous for his Vertigo Comics series Sweet Tooth and his work in various DC Comics titles. He rose to prominence by writing the Top Shelf published Essex County Trilogy and later joined Vertigo Comics to publish Sweet Tooth. He was then offered Adventure Comics and Superboy.
As part of the DC New 52 Relaunch, Jeff Lemire handled writing duties for Animal Man and Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E, and later took over Justice League Dark and Green Arrow, all to much critical acclaim.
Following the end of his exclusive contract with DC, he's taken a variety of projects including Bloodshot for Valiant Comics, and Hawkeye for Marvel Comics, as well as a lot of creator-owned titles published by Image Comics. He also wrote Black Hammer for Dark Horse Comics and has worked on many of its spinoffs. In 2022, he and artist Andrea Sorrentino, who had previously created Gideon Falls together, started publishing comics as part of their Bone Orchard Mythos, meant to be a series of graphic novels and comic book miniseries taking place in the same universe and timeline but being readable independently.
Similar to Geoff Johns, Jeff Lemire has specialised in mining relatively obscure characters from DC history or "silly" concepts, and re-formatting them to fit with modern audiences; for the most part, he's been very successful.
Selected bibliography:
Ashtray Press
- Lost Dogs (2005)
Dark Horse Comics
- Black Hammer (2016 — present)
- Sherlock Frankenstein and the Legion of Evil (2017)
- Doctor Andromeda and the Kingdom of Lost Tomorrows (2018)
- Skulldigger + Skeleton Boy (2019 — 2021)
- Colonel Weird: Cosmagog (2020)
- The Unbelievable Unteens (2021)
- Snow Angels (2021)note
DC Comics
- Superboy vol. 5 (2011)
- Animal Man (2011) (2011 — 2014)
- Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. (2011 — 2012) [#1 — #10]
- Green Arrow (Jeff Lemire) vol. 5 (2013 — 2014) [#17 — #34]
- Justice League Dark vol. 1 (2011 — 2013) [#1 — #23]
- Rotworld (2012 — 2013)
- Justice League United (2014 — 2015) [#1 — #10]
- Teen Titans: Earth One vols. 1 & 2 (2015 — 2016)
- The Terrifics (2018 — 2019) [#1 — #14]
Gallery 13 Comics
- Frogcatchers (2019)
Image Comics
- Descender (2015 — 2018)
- Plutona (2015 — 2016)
- Royal City (2017—2018)
- Gideon Falls (2018 — 2020)
- Family Tree (2019 — 2021)
- Ascender (2019 — 2021)
- Primordial (2021 — 2022)note
- The Bone Orchard Mythos:
- Prelude: Shadow Eater (2022)note
- The Passageway (2022)
- Ten Thousand Black Feathers (2022)
- Tenement (2023)
- Starseed (2024)
Marvel Comics
- All-New Hawkeye vols. 1 & 2 (2015 — 2016)
- Extraordinary X-Men (2015 — 2017)
- Old Man Logan (2016) vol. 2 (2016 — 2017) [#1 — #24]
- Moon Knight vol. 8 (2016 — 2017)
- Death of X (with Charles Soule, 2016)
Top Shelf
- The Essex County Trilogy (2008 — 2009)
- The Underwater Welder (2012)
Valiant Comics
- Bloodshot:
- Bloodshot Reborn (2015 — 2016)
- Bloodshot U.S.A. (2016 — 2017)
- Bloodshot Salvation (2017 — 2018)
- The Valiant (2015)
- Divinity III: Komandar Bloodshot (2016)
Vertigo Comics
- The Nobody (2009)
- Sweet Tooth (2009 — 2013)
Tropes associated with Jeff Lemire's work:
- Anti-Hero: More prevalent in his creator owned works, though also present in Justice League Dark.
- Canada: He's proudly Canadian, and he's featured his home country in his work.
- Character Development: Especially evident in his creator-owned works; none of the characters are exactly the same as when they started.
- Deadpan Snarker
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Sweet Tooth most notably.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Gus and Jeppard in Sweet Tooth, Kate and Clint in All-New Hawkeye, and definitely shows up in his team books, where he's prone to picking casts with mentor-mentee relationships.
- Production Posse: Often collaborates with artists Matt Kindt, Emi Lenox, Dustin Nguyen and Andrea Sorrentino. Also, most of his creator-owned books are lettered by Steve Wands.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: His work tends to be idealistic.
- True Companions
