Jeff Lemire returns to both writing and art duties with this new ongoing from Image Comics, and with themes reminiscent of his work on “Essex County,” “A.D. After Death,” and “Trillium,” does “Royal City” hold up to such comparison? Read on for our spoiler free review.
Written and Illustrated by Jeff Lemire
DOUBLE-SIZED DEBUT ISSUE! NEW ONGOING SERIES written and illustrated by JEFF LEMIRE (DESCENDER, A.D., Sweet Tooth). ROYAL CITY charts the lives, loves, and losses of a troubled family and a vanishing town across three decades. Patrick Pike, a fading literary star who reluctantly returns to the once-thriving factory town where he grew up, is quickly drawn back into the dramas of his two adult siblings, his overbearing mother, and his brow-beaten father, all of whom are still haunted by different versions of his youngest brother, Tommy, who drowned decades ago. ROYAL CITY is a return to the literary and thematic territory of LEMIRE’s breakthrough graphic novel Essex County and is his most ambitious, and most personal, project to date.
Jeff Lemire’s finest work is his character focused studies into the human condition, and with that in mind, “Royal City” is shaping up to be among some of his best work yet. In equal measures personal and universal, ugly and beautiful, tightly focused but with a wide scope, this oversized debut issue works to establish all the characters, highlighting all the differences one family can contain, as well as the one joining thread that ultimately divides them all.
The issue opens on an image of a house, the modest family home of the Pike family, the narration contemplating how difficult it was growing up in Royal City, declaring there’s “just something different about this place.” This opening page captures the central theme of the issue, namely that where we live defines us, it is as much a part of what makes us who we are as anything else. There’s a reason the book is named after the town in which it’s set after all; the Pike family, and by extension all of us, are shaped by our surroundings, and this small house on page one, and Royal City as a whole location, is as much of a presence here as any member of the central family.
The other theme is that of loss, and how the passage of time both changes and accentuates that loss. Each member of the Pike family are trying to get back something that’s lost; be it son Patrick attempting to write a new novel that recaptures the success of a previous work (appropriately titled “Royal City”;) or his sister Tara, a property developer trying to return the town to its former glory by building a golf resort where the once thriving industrial heart of the community currently stands. We also see the parents Peter and Patti and another brother Richie, all dealing in their own ways with the loss of Tommy Pike, the son and brother who drowned in 1993. How Lemire handles this loss and illustrates this loss is intimate and as heartbreaking as it is unsettling.
The pacing of the issue is deliberate and steady, Lemire putting enough detail into his art to make you want to pore over every image, to take your time reading through the work, and the structure of each panel is more often than not one centrally focused on the character, reflective of the narrative. Often Lemire uses symmetry on the page to illustrate either subtle change or to highlight division; an example being a scene in a hospital room where a character lies in bed and, much like his presence there is central to the scene, Lemire ensures he is in the center of almost every page within that scene. The character also literally and figuratively divides two characters in conflict. It’s a subtle choreography that is nevertheless deliberate and effective throughout.
Much like the narrative, the art in “Royal City” is quiet and contemplative, some panels only changing very subtly to slow down your reading speed. Lemire uses space effectively, employing a few double page spreads which mostly serve to illustrate dream sequences until near the end of the issue where again symmetry comes into play to illustrate the difference between what the characters see versus what the reader sees, and in the middle, appropriately, is Patrick, who is witnessing something that is very much straddling those two realities.
Throughout “Royal City” #1, Lemire is conscious of maintaining the mystery surrounding the issue’s central conceit, and until the end (and perhaps beyond) we’re left wondering whether there is a supernatural element or whether this family really is coping with and reacting to loss in multiple ways. This could all purely be the consequence of psychological trauma, or the omnipresent narrator could be correct and there really could be ““something different about this place.” Either way, “Royal City” as a town and as a series is one that stays with you and ensures you won’t want to leave.
Final verdict: 9.2 – An intimate and affecting character study showcasing Jeff Lemire at his finest.
