The superstar team of writer Jason Aaron (Southern Bastards, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Absolute Superman) and artist Mahmud Asrar (Conan the Barbarian, X-Men, Batman & Robin) join forces for the upcoming series, Bug Wars. The extra-length first issue of this dark fantasy, epic series is set to debut in February 2025 from Image Comics.

Aaron and Asrar will appear on the “Image Comics Presents: Breaking Ground” panel on Sunday, October 20 @ 11 a.m. in room 406.2 at New York Comic Con this week to share more details about the announcement. They can also be found in Artist Alley at tables H42 (Aaron) and D24 (Asrar) where a limited number of Bug Wars ashcans will be available for sale.

Slade Slaymaker is a kid from Alabama suddenly 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. The same world that saw his father eaten alive by insects and now plunges young Slade into the middle of a brutal Bug War to decide the fate of his family.

“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. 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,” said Aaron. “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.”

Asrar added: “Bug Wars is 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.”

A savage, bloody look at the world below our feet, enter: Bug Wars—where tiny warriors wage a violent war for dominance over an insect-driven kingdom.

Bug Wars #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, February 12, 2025. It will also be available across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.