The Underwater Welder

by Jeff Lemire

Overview

Pressure. An underwater welder on an oil rig off the Nova Scotia coast, Jack is used to the 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. But then, something happens deep on the ocean floor. Jack has a strange and mind-bending encounter that will change the course of his life forever!

Equal parts blue-collar character study and mind-bending science fiction epic, The Underwater Welder explores fathers and sons, birth and death, memory and truth, and the treasures we all bury deep down inside.

"It's a striking evocation of the Canadian Maritimes, and a moving meditation on what haunts us and how we struggle to keep those specters at bay." - New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603090742
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Publication date:	08/07/2012
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	526,505
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 10.40(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Jeff Lemire is a prolific, award-winning comic book writer and artist from Ontario, who's known for creating literary stories depicting the frailties, fears, and hopes of the human condition.

He's worked extensively with all the major comic book publishers, penning well-received runs on Animal Man, Green Arrow, Hawkeye, and Old Man Logan for DC and Marvel. His creator-owned works, which are even more highly aclaimed, include The Underwater Welder, The Essex County Trilogy, and Lost Dogs from Top Shelf Productions; Descender, A.D. After Death (with Scott Snyder,) and Royal City, from Image; and Sweet Tooth, Trillium, and The Nobody from Vertigo. His original graphic novel Roughneck was published by Simon and Schuster in 2017.

Jeff won the Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist in 2008 for Essex County, and again in 2013 for The Underwater Welder and Sweet Tooth. He's been a nominee for multiple Eisner awards, a Harvery Award, and the Ignatz Award. Descender and The Underwater Welder have both been optioned for major motion pictures.

He lives in Toronto with his family.

Editorial Reviews

Lemire (Essex County) returns with another Twilight Zone–style story of horror, love, and redemption. Jack Joseph lost his father, a diver and treasure hunter, on Halloween night as a child. As an adult, Jack, an underwater welder, is still looking for answers; about to become a father himself, Jack has a dive accident that begins a series of otherworldly, or alternate reality, experiences. As his past forces itself into the present, Jack’s world is stripped of the living, leaving him to confront the memories binding him to his childhood. Flawed but utterly sympathetic, Jack is a lost soul whose life beneath the waves is beautifully depicted in several glorious two-page spreads. Lemire’s stylized art and inventive panel structure is the perfect vehicle for his well-told story, and the tale’s poignant moments make the moments of desolation even more heart-wrenching. Lemire seeds details throughout the early pages that resonate across the book, giving the story the feel of a carefully threaded whole. A beautiful, moving, wholly satisfying story about fatherhood and growing up. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"The most spectacular episode of The Twilight Zone that was never produced. I really, really care about the people in this story... And I can pretty much guarantee you will too." — From the introduction by Damon Lindelof (LOST, Star Trek, Prometheus, The Leftovers)

"With The Underwater Welder, Jeff Lemire has created a moving, brilliant, and fiercely original work about loss, longing, and love. Full of piercing moments that will stay with you for long after you've finished reading, The Underwater Welder is a testament to the basic truth that down in the depths or up on land, there's nothing more haunting and wondrous than the human heart. A masterpiece of visual storytelling." — Scott Snyder (Batman, Wytches, American Vampire)

"Lemire’s stylized art and inventive panel structure is the perfect vehicle for his well-told story, and the tale’s poignant moments make the moments of desolation even more heart-wrenching... A beautiful, moving, wholly satisfying story about fatherhood and growing up." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[Lemire] has not lost his ability to pack an emotional wallop." — George Gustines, The New York Times

"A striking evocation of the Canadian Maritimes, and a moving meditation on what haunts us and how we struggle to keep those specters at bay. And the use of ink wash has rarely been put to more apt use." — Dana Jennings, The New York Times

"The Underwater Welder... is all kinds of wonderful. Buy it. You will wet yourself with tears, your brain will spin from masterful storytelling, and you will love it." — Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly

"Haunting... Underwater Welder is just the right blend of action and abstraction, and greatly enhanced by Lemire's ability to signal movement, time and distance through clever arrangement of his panels on the page." — Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

From the Publisher