As announced at New York Comicon, the battle for the backyard begins in February.
Slade Slaymaker is a kid from the backwoods of Alabama who stumbles upon a vicious world beyond his imagining, a world of marauding ant armies, spell-casting spider witches, and beetle-riding barbarians. A civilization of tiny but deadly warriors hidden in the grass, the brush piles and the weeds of his own backyard. This is same world that saw his father eaten alive by insects and now plunges young Slade into the middle of a brutal Bug War to decide the fate of his entire family.When I was a kid, our backyard was a wondrous place, where I spent hours imagining epic adventures, action figures scattered all through the grass. In a lot of ways, I still feel like that kid, running around the yard, making up stories. Only the stories have gotten a bit darker over the years. For Slade Slaymaker, the backyard of his home in Alabama turns out to be a place of terror and brutality, where sects of tiny sword-wielding Mytes and their armies of flesh-eating beetles and acid-spraying ants have declared war on his family.
Think Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Game of Thrones.
With BUG WARS, I'm reunited with artist Mahmud Asrar and colorist Matthew Wilson, the celebrated art team of CONAN THE BARBARIAN and KING CONAN. And we're joined by letterer and designer Becca Carey and editor Heather Antos.
The first issue features variant covers by Peach Momoko, Pepe Larraz, Matías Bergara, and Tony Daniel.
Mahmud says, “BUG WARS is the culmination of what I wanted to do in comics: A fantasy epic told with no holds barred. A tale where our imaginations run wild. A place where we reach the heights of escapism, all while keeping everything grounded with pure human emotion straight from the heart."
The double-sized BUG WARS issue #1 launches in February 2025 from Image Comics. And that’s just Book One of what Mahmud and I plan on being a long fantasy saga, exploring all the many characters, kingdoms and stories within this massive world we’ve been working to build for years now.
We debuted a limited-edition ashcan of BUG WARS at New York Comic Con that almost completely sold out. Be sure to follow my newsletter for any updates on future copies.
