On the Coffee Table: Jeff Lemire

Title: The Underwater Welder

Writer and Artist: Jeff Lemire

via Amazon

Jack is an underwater welder for an oil well off the coast of Nova Scotia.  He's about to become a father and he's not handling the impending life change well.  He'd rather spend time fixing the rig than with his imminently expecting wife.  Meanwhile, he's haunted by memories of his own father who drowned in the ocean when Jack was a boy.

Jack has an accident on the rig and while he's blacked out, his subconscious dances between the present, the past and a supernatural dreamscape in which he's the only one left in his quiet coastal town.  The latter is seemingly what he wants, or at least the sort of existence his choices have been leading him to: no commitments, no betrayals, no emotional risks.  

via Goodreads

Lemire's style generates an intimate atmosphere.  People are crudely drawn, almost ghoulish, befitting the story.  The backgrounds are deceptively simple, suiting the desolation of the Nova Scotia seaside.  I would say the promotional materials - the back cover blurb and the intro - oversell the supernatural aspects of the story.  The dreamscape is clearly an hallucination, probably oxygen-depravation inspired.  Even so, the story is well told, based in raw emotion.