Jeff Lemire (born 1976 in Canada) is an award-winning Canadian cartoonist, and the author of the Essex County Trilogy, Sweet Tooth and The Nobody. Lemire is known for a his moody, humanistic stories and sketchy, cinematic, black-and-white art.
Lemire was born and raised in a small farming town in Essex County, Ontario, near Lake Erie. Lemire attended film school, but decided to pursue comics when he realized that filmmaking didn't suit his solitary personality.
After self-publishing the Xeric Award-winning comic book Lost Dogs in 2005 via his Ashtray Press imprint, Lemire found a home at Top Shelf Productions. He produced the Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated Essex County Trilogy for Top Shelf in 2008—2009.
Lemire serializes a science-fiction strip called Fortress in the quarterly UR Magazine.
In 2009, the DC Comics Vertigo published Lemire's The Nobody, a two-color tale of identity, fear and paranoia in a small community. Lemire is currently writing and drawing the new monthly full-color Vertigo series Sweet Tooth. He then moved over to the DC Universe to write the one-shot Brightest Day: Atom, with Turkish artist Mahmud Asrar, designed to act as a springboard for an Atom story to co-feature in Adventure Comics. He also relaunched the Superboy series featuring the character Conner Kent.
He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is married and has a son.
In 2006 Lemire's work was included in an international symposium gathering artists, scholars, curators, publishers, librarians, critics, and writers at the Banff Center. Lemire's work was part of the "Comic Craze" exhibit, which showcased Canadian comics and narrative fiction.
The Collected Essex County (Top Shelf Productions, 2009)
Contains the three main stories "Tales From The Farm", "Ghost Stories" and "The Country Nurse"
Added short stories "The Essex County Boxing Club" and "The Sad and Lonely Life of Eddie Elephant Ears."
Bonus materials, such as: unused promotion art, a deleted scene, character designs and so on.
The Nobody (original graphic novel, Vertigo, 2009)
Sweet Tooth Book 1: Out of the Woods' (graphic novel, Vertigo, 2010)
Sweet Tooth Book 2: In Captivity (graphic novel, Vertigo, 2011)
Series
The Fortress (serialized comic strip in UR Magazine, June—September 2006)
Bio-Graphical - (3, 1-Page comic strips published in Driven magazine, June—December 2008)
Sweet Tooth (script and art, Vertigo, 2009-ongoing)
Brightest Day: Atom (with Mahmud Asrar, one-shot, DC Comics, 2010)
Atom (with Mahmud Asrar, 10 page co-feature in Adventure Comics, DC Comics, 2010)
Superboy (with Pier Gallo, DC Comics, forthcoming)
Collected series into trades
Out of the Woods collecting Sweet Tooth issues #1-5
Short stories
"The Essex County Boxing Club" found in The Collected Essex County also as a signed and numbered limited edition mini-comic (Top Shelf Productions, 2009)
"The Sad and Lonely Life of Eddie Elephant Ears." found in the The Collected Essex County also as a signed numbered limited edition mini-comic (Top Shelf Productions, 2009)
"The Old Silo" 10 page short found in the Dark Horse's NOIR anthology (Dark Horse, 2009)
"The Horseless Rider" 5 page short found in the AWESOMER: INDIE SPINNER ANTHOLOGY 2 (Top Shelf Productions)
"Coffin For Mr. Bishell" 10 page short in "Outlaw Territory Vol.2" anthology from Image Comics
Art only
Beowulf #5 (5 pages of art) (Speakeasy Comics, March 2006)
"The Tale of Brutus the Bold" (written by Matthew Sturges, in House of Mystery #18, Vertigo, 2009)
Ashtray Press - self-published
Ashtray 1 (Mini-Comic, June 2003)
Ashtray 2 (Mini-Comic, September 2003)
Lost Dogs (September 2005 New printing in the works for 2010)
Lemire won a Xeric Award in 2005 for his book Lost Dogs. He was a 2008 recipient of a Young Adult Library Services Association Alex Award for Essex County Volume 1: Tales from the Farm. Lemire received a Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Award for Outstanding Cartoonist in 2008, and the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent in 2008.
Lemire has also been nominated for an Ignatz, a Harvey, and two Eisner Awards.
