Writer Jason Aaron is re-teaming with Mahmud Asrar, who he worked with on Conan the Barbarian, for a new creator-owned six-issue series called Bug Wars. And yes, their new Image Comics series is literally about a kid fighting bugs in his backyard — bugs that cast spells, swings swords and generally have it out for the kid’s 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,” said Aaron. “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.”
Rejoining the two of them is colorist Matthew Wilson, who also worked on Conan. Letterer Becca Carey and editor Heather Antos round out the team.
Here’s how Image describes the series:
Slade Slaymaker is a kid from Alabama suddenly lost in a vicious world beyond his imagining, a world of marauding ant armies, spell-casting spider witches, and beetle-riding barbarians. A kingdom of tiny but deadly warriors hidden in his own backyard. The 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 family.
“Bug Wars is the culmination of what I wanted to do in comics: A fantasy epic told with no holds barred,” Asrar said. “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 first issue will feature variant covers by Peach Momoko, Pepe Larraz, Matías Bergara and Tony Daniel:
A special preview ashcan will be available this weekend at the New York Comic Con, which has a unique cover by Asrar and Wilson, the first 19 pages of story from issue #1, designs for the various sects of Mytes, preview pages from issue #2-4 and a prose story Aaron wrote as a prequel to the series.
“It’s the first prose I’ve written in probably 20 years, and it’s something that won’t be included in the actual first issue or even the first trade, so you can only get it in this ashcan,” Aaron said in his newsletter.
The first double-sized issue will arrive in February, and Aaron said he and Asrar have plans for additional volumes beyond these first six issues.
“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,” Aaron said.