Image Comics’ Crowbound #1 Exclusive Preview

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with echoes of Kill Bill and Pan’s Labyrinth when a noncompliant mother makes a dark pact with an ancient, violent Scarecrow Queen to stop a totalitarian government from taking her daughter.

Rose isn’t special. She works in the Factory just like everyone else—a dark, sprawling monolithic structure that runs along the coast and cuts the world in two. All that’s left now are desolate settlements that exist in its shadow, made up of submerged villages, derelict woods, and deadly swamps. No one knows what’s left of the world on the other side…

But when Rose’s young daughter Ava is violently taken from their shanty town home a year before she is meant to join the work force, Rose will come face-to-face with the surreal, harrowing forces outside the Factory’s walls—including a terrifying figure called the Scarecrow Queen, who has an offer: one last chance to save her daughter, in exchange for her soul.

“Crowbound is the darkest book Dustin and I have done together but still filled with heart and hope,” Lemire tells IGN. “It’s been rewarding building the expansive southern gothic sci-fi world of Crowbound and we can’t wait to unleash it on readers.”

Nguyen adds, “I’m very excited to explore this new world and new ways to tell a story with Jeff again, it’s always a great time when we get together like this. Hope everyone joins us for the adventures as they did on Descender and Little Monsters.”

Crowbound #1 will be released on September 2, 2026. You can preorder a copy at your local comic shop.

For more, see our exclusive interview with Punisher vs. Spider-Man writer Dan Abnett and learn more about Batman’s mysterious new butler.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.