After years in development, Essex County is coming to life. The slice-of-life collection of short stories first saw publication in 2008, serving as Jeff Lemire’s first earnest foray into the world of comics. Wednesday, the comic creator shared the first trailer for the series, which will released within the next month on Canada’s Gem streaming service, a platform owned and operation by the CBC.
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Filmed last fall in Ontario, the series follows Lester (Finaly Wojtak-Hissong), who’s forced to live with his uncles Ken (Brian J. Smith) and Jimmy (Kevin Durand) after his mother’s untimely death. A second family, Anne (Molly Parker) and Lou (Stephen McHattie), also play a prominent role in the series. You can see the trailer yourself below.
Joining the ensemble for the five-episode mini-series include Tamara Podemski, Rossif Sutherland, Jim Calarco, and Jordyn GIllis. The show was written by Lemire and Eilis Kirwan, with directing by Andrew Cividino.
The first volume of Essex County was published in 2008 by Top Shelf Productions, winning Lemire a Harvey Award that same year for Best New Talent. It was first optioned in 2011 as John Dykstra had plans to adapt the “Super Zero” short into a feature film. Four years later, it was then optioned by First Generation FIlms, which saw it through to production.
“Like I said, there was no social media. So I was literally hand-mailing my work to publishers and hand delivering it to local bookstores and comic shops begging them to carry a copy or two,” Lemire said about the earliest days of his comics career in a recent newsletter post. “I started focusing seriously on comics around 2000. I didn’t make any money at all doing it until about 2007. So that was a long seven or eight years in my twenties and thirties where I was working a day job as a one cook to pay rent, and drawing as much as I could in my off time. I did Essex County and Lost Dogs for myself with no publisher involved. I did them because they were my passion and, luckily publishers started to take notice after that.”
He added, “So the biggest struggles for me were keeping the faith in myself during those long years of not making any money doing comics, and not really being able to get published or get any sort of validation in the industry.”
Essex County is set for released on March 19th.
