Arguably the most prolific creator in the comics industry today is at it again. Jeff Lemire, in an ambitious and, reportedly, very personal project, spins this yarn about a family from the small factory town of Royal City and the ghosts that haunt them. What will you believe of what you see?
Jeff Lemire recently made a return to the literary and thematic territory from which he first gained fame in his graphic novel Essex County. I’m referring to his passion project of Roughneck, of course. There, Lemire looked at a bruised and battered relationship of a fallen idol brother and a lost sister. Like Royal City, family secrets, history, and inherited flaws were examined. In the town of Royal City, he casts his net a bit wider focusing on a family that’s on the brink of losing its grip by having to sacrifice its legacy.
Lemire first directs your focus on Patrick Pike (sounds like a superhero from his other wonderful series, Black Hammer). Patrick’s a “fading literary star” who returns to the town he grew up in. But Royal City is not thriving as it once did. No, the factory that has been its lifeline is failing and the Pike family must make a change that will transform the town for the sake of progress. Patrick though is going to be entangled in the dramas of his two adult siblings, his overbearing mother, and his browbeaten father. To be fair, the dramas are pretty interconnected: They’re each dealing with seeing different versions of Patrick’s youngest brother, Tommy, who died decades earlier.
Except Tommy’s death is only scratching the surface of the secrets that the members of the Pike family are keeping. Secrets that are threatening to bubble up and drown the family. Will each member of the family be able to resolve their own guilt over Tommy’s drowning? Can they each make peace with the many versions of Tommy that haunts them? Or will the most traumatic event of their lives drag them down below the river with his lingering ghost?
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