Granny is trying to understand Bug. He’s got issues...deep psychological issues that might have something to do with a human-sized fly, but might have something to do with deeper matters that area bit closer to the heart in Fishflies #7. Writer/artist Jeff Lemire concludes his seven-part story by bringing the story back to where it all began. Background assists come courtesy of Beatrix Greene. What started off as a surrealistic sort of psychological horror lands pretty heavily on the end of realism in a thoroughly comprehensible and earthbound emotional conclusion to the series. 

Bug ran away. Frannie didn’t understand why.  Bug didn’t go far, though. Frannie was able to catch-up to him and ask him about the situation. He’s not saying anything. (He’s a bug after all. Can’t really say much of anything.) He doesn’t have to say anything, though. He shows her a horror from the past. Something awful happened. And then something awful happens again. There’s drama in life and death. Frannie’s going to learn a little bit more about it all as she somewhere between a convenience story and a hospital bed. And with any luck, everything’s going to. Turn out alright.

The surrealism that Lemire had been working with early on in the series was brilliantly juxtaposed against a small-town American realism that felt refreshing. The emotional reality of what Lemire is bringing to the page in his big wrap-up is a bit of a let down...and really the whole series has been a gradual drag since the second issue. Lemire has gradually pulled the curtain back on the fantasy...and done so in a way that has brought the reader very, very close to the emotions of Frannie and Bug. Ultimately it comes together, but it’s a bit of a disappointment.

There’s a beautiful stillness in what Lemire is bringing to the page with the aid of Greene. There’s a washed-out color of much of the visuals. Keeping the color to a minimum continues to bring a rich feeling of emotional torpor to the page. Night scenes feel all the more magical. Day scenes feel all the more blinding. Full color wouldn’t have the same effect. The emotions being brought to the page feel strong and powerful as characters react to what’s going on nonverbally. There’s as hell of a lot of silence in a conclusion that doesn’t need a whole lot of words to bring everything across to its inevitable conclusion.  

The small-town restlessness and listlessness are drawn slowly and steadily across the page as intimate emotional horror gradually asserts itself in the big, final chapter of the series. And then there are a couple of really tense explosions of action and...the pacing is really well-executed in the final issue...as has it been over the course of much of the rest of the series. It’s been a provocative journey. In the end, it’s all remarkably well-developed. It’s just too bad it couldn’t have maintained the wonder of weird fantasy straight through to the end.

Grade: B