Crowbound #1 Ashcan Promo

A rare pre-release ashcan for the next major collaboration from Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen. Crowbound reunites the bestselling, award-winning team behind Descender, Ascender, and Little Monsters for an all-new dark fantasy epic. Pitched as The Handmaid's Tale meets The Road with echoes of Kill Bill and Pan's Labyrinth, the story follows Rose, who strikes a soul-bargain with the mysterious Scarecrow Queen to save her daughter after the sinister Factory Men take her.

Ashcans are miniature, low-print promotional editions distributed ahead of a series launch to build advance buzz among retailers and collectors — scarce by design, not by chance. Lemire and Nguyen are signing a very limited preview ashcan of Crowbound #1 at SDCC 2026, keeping print runs tight.

Series specs: Crowbound #1 launches September 2026, with variant covers by Jeffrey Alan Love, Martin Simmonds, and Peach Momoko, plus a Dustin Nguyen wraparound edition.

Why it matters for collectors: Lemire and Nguyen's Descender/Ascender run is one of the modern era's strongest creator-owned sales stories, and their prior books carry real long-term collector demand. An ashcan tied to their next "huge in scope" collaboration — signed at SDCC — is a classic ground-floor pickup before the full series builds momentum.