Royal City

Jeff Lemire

In the fading industrial town of Royal City, the troubled Pike family is drawn back together when their aging patriarch suffers a devastating health crisis. As each family member confronts the past, the presence of a lost sibling seems to linger in the spaces between memory and reality, revealing long-buried tensions and unresolved grief. Blending intimate family drama with haunting magical realism, the story explores loss, guilt, identity, and the ways a hometown can shape—and imprison—those who grow up there. Jeff Lemire’s atmospheric, emotionally layered storytelling gives this opening volume the feel of both a ghost story and a deeply human portrait of a fractured family.