Absolute Superman writer Jason Aaron's new dark fantasy comic Bug Wars is "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Game of Thrones"

Art from Bug Wars #1. — (Image credit: Image Comics)

We published an interview with Jason Aaron yesterday about Absolute Superman – his upcoming revamp of the Man of Steel for DC. Well, it turns out that's not the only comic that's going to be keeping the in-demand writer busy... Image Comics has just announced Bug Wars, a brand new limited series written by Aaron with art from Conan the Barbarian and X-Men artist Mahmud Asrar, that launches in early 2025.

Described as a "dark fantasy epic" by the publisher, Bug Wars follows Slade Slaymaker, an average kid from Alabama who finds himself "lost in a vicious world beyond his imagining, a world of marauding ant armies, spell-casting spider witches, and beetle-riding barbarians. A kingdom of tiny but deadly warriors hidden in his own backyard." It turns out that this same world claimed the life of his father and now young Slade will find himself in the middle of the titular Bug War trying to save the rest of his family.

Covers for Bug Wars #1. — Mahmud Asrar's main cover for Bug Wars #1. (Image credit: Image Comics)

"When I was a kid, our backyard was a wondrous place, where I spent hours imagining epic adventures, action figures scattered all through the grass," said Aaron in a statement about the new series. "In a lot of ways, I still feel like that kid, running around the yard, making up stories. Only the stories have gotten a bit darker over the years. For Slade Slaymaker, the backyard of his home in Alabama turns out to be a place of terror and brutality, where sects of tiny sword-wielding Mytes and their armies of flesh-eating beetles and acid-spraying ants have declared war on his family. Think Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Game of Thrones."

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Check out some of the great variant covers for the first issue below.

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Artist Mahmud Asrar described the new comic as "the culmination of what I wanted to do in comics: A fantasy epic told with no holds barred. A tale where our imaginations run wild. A place where we reach the heights of escapism, all while keeping everything grounded with pure human emotion straight from the heart."

Bug Wars #1 is published by Image Comics on February 12, 2025.

Before he wrote Absolute Superman, Jason Aaron penned a great arc of Action Comics.

Will Salmon is the Streaming Editor for GamesRadar+. He has been writing about film, TV, comics, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he launched the scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for well over a decade. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places too.