Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: Gabriel Walta, jeff lemire, Phantom Road
Jeff Lemire & Gabriel Walta’s Phantom Road On Hold For A Year Or More
Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta’s Phantom Road from Image Comics is on hold for a year or more
Published Thu, 09 Jul 2026 05:57:09 -0500
by Rich Johnston
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Last updated Thu, 09 Jul 2026 06:21:34 -0500
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Article Summary
- Jeff Lemire confirms Phantom Road is on hold again, with sales too low to sustain the Image Comics series monthly.
- Gabriel Hernández Walta has taken other work, forcing Phantom Road into a longer hiatus after issue #15 in 2025.
- The current Phantom Road plan is a Fall 2027 return for the next arc, with the series set to end at issue #25.
- Lemire says he, Walta, Jordie Bellaire and Steve Wands remain committed to giving Phantom Road a proper ending.
Jeff Lemire, fresh from announcing he’ll be off JSA with October’s issue, has talked about another of his comic books that won’t be on the shelves this year,Phantom Road
Phantom Road is an (allegedly) ongoing supernatural horror/fantasy comic written by Jeff Lemire ofSweet Tooth, with art by Gabriel Hernández Walta ofThe Vision, with colours byJordie Bellaire, and lettering by Steve Wands. And stars Dom, a long-haul truck driver trying to outrun a tragic past, who stops to help Birdie, a survivor of a horrific car crash. Together, they recover a mysterious artefact from the wreckage, which catapults them into a surreal, otherworldly nightmare, and their midnight drive turns into a desperate journey across phantom roads, pursued by terrifying monsters. All the time, FBI Agent Theresa Weaver, investigating the crash scene, gets drawn into a deeper conspiracy tied to Project Jackknife, strange ley lines, Billy Bear truck stops, and connections to the “Other Place.” The series launched in 2023, ran for ten issues until October 2024, went on hiatus, and returned in April 2025. The last issue published, Phantom Road #15, was in September 2025, and then it went on hiatus again. On his Substack, Jeff Lemire posted,
“I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the return of Phantom Road lately, so I thought I’d drop an update and some explanations. First off, I love Phantom Road. I wish Gabriel Walta, Jordie Bellaire and I could keep it going monthly, but the truth is that the sales have just not been there to make the books sustainable. Phantom Road launched at an odd time a couple years back when the comics industry was in a real lull and the initial sales were not what we’d hoped. And, unfortunately, it got to the point where Gabriel had to take other work to make his living and we’ve had to put Phantom Road on another hiatus.”
“The current plan is to return in Fall 2027 for the next arc, and then finish the series up at Issue #25. We’re all really proud of the book and are committed to seeing the story to it’s conclusion, so we hope you can be patient with us. We’ll do our best. to make it will be worth the wait!”
The collections are available now, until it returns… maybe you should pay the toll?
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