Fishflies #1 by Jeff Lemire Review

Every summer the small rural town is swarmed by fishflies which blanket everything for a week and then die en masse. Fran, a lonely kid with a permanently running nose, makes a startling discovery in her father’s barn - and a thief gets more than he bargained for.

Jeff Lemire is at his best when he writes small town dramas, like Essex County, The Nobody and Roughneck, so it’s good to see him return to this setting for his latest series, Fishflies, the first part of which is pretty decent.

The beginning scene of the three kids going to the store to get ice cream is a compelling one, especially once the kid goes into the store. The fishfly swarm feels both natural and eerie at the same time, building up this sense of unease and unreality. The non-linear storytelling adds another level of interest as you’re not always sure what’s happening, allowing Lemire to pull the rug out from under you effectively. Fran is a sympathetic and likeable character - she’s a sweet kid caught in a crappy situation, ostracised by her peers for her running nose and talked down to coldly by a horrible father.

All of which is to say the story is unpredictable and enjoyable for that, as well as including elements that draw you in further. I liked the subtle watercolours Lemire colours the comic in.

Fishflies #1 is an intriguing start that introduced the main character and the town and established the tone well, though, for its relatively high page count, it’s not clear what the story is and this first issue didn’t have enough going on in it to really impress me.

The ending is shocking but I found it disappointing - I’d prefer if Lemire kept things more reality-based than going off on some fantastical tangent, as that’s where he often gets unstuck and his stories tend to then descend into bizarre silliness. But we’ll see as the series progresses - maybe it’s an inspired choice after all.

Overall, this isn’t a bad beginning by any stretch and I want to see what happens next. If you like Lemire’s small town stories, Frogcatchers especially, then you’ll definitely want to check Fishflies out.