Buy used:
$69.58
FREE delivery May 15 - 23. Details
Or fastest delivery May 15 - 16. Details
Used: Very Good | Details
Sold by Libup Books!
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comment: Above average condition with very minor signs of use and unobstructed text.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Jeff Lemire
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Underwater Welder Hardcover – August 16, 2016

by Jeff Lemire (Author, Artist)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 669 ratings
See all formats and editions
The New York Times Bestseller returns in a stunning new hardcover edition, featuring bonus pages and new cover art by Jeff Lemire!

WARNING: CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE.

As an underwater welder on an oilrig off the coast of Nova Scotia, Jack Joseph is used to the immense pressures of deep-sea work ― but not the pressures of impending fatherhood. While Jack dives deeper and deeper, he seems to pull further and further away from his young wife and their unborn son. Then one night, deep in the icy solitude of the ocean floor, Jack has a mysterious and supernatural encounter that will change the course of his life forever.

Equal parts blue-collar character study and mind-bending mystery, The Underwater Welder is a graphic novel about fathers and sons, birth and death, memory and reality, and the treasures we all bury deep below the surface.
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. Part of Series
    Underwater Welder
  2. Print length
    232 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Top Shelf Productions
  5. Publication date
    August 16, 2016
  6. Reading age
    16 years and up
  7. Dimensions
    7.5 x 1.8 x 10.9 inches
  8. ISBN-10
    1603093923
  9. ISBN-13
    978-1603093927
  10. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most spectacular episode of The Twilight Zone that was never produced. I really, really care about the people in this story... And I can pretty much guarantee you will too." — From the introduction by Damon Lindelof (LOST, Star Trek, Prometheus, The Leftovers)

"With The Underwater Welder, Jeff Lemire has created a moving, brilliant, and fiercely original work about loss, longing, and love. Full of piercing moments that will stay with you for long after you've finished reading, The Underwater Welder is a testament to the basic truth that down in the depths or up on land, there's nothing more haunting and wondrous than the human heart. A masterpiece of visual storytelling." — Scott Snyder (Batman, Wytches, American Vampire)

"Lemire’s stylized art and inventive panel structure is the perfect vehicle for his well-told story, and the tale’s poignant moments make the moments of desolation even more heart-wrenching... A beautiful, moving, wholly satisfying story about fatherhood and growing up." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[Lemire] has not lost his ability to pack an emotional wallop." — George Gustines, The New York Times

"A striking evocation of the Canadian Maritimes, and a moving meditation on what haunts us and how we struggle to keep those specters at bay. And the use of ink wash has rarely been put to more apt use." — Dana Jennings, The New York Times

"The Underwater Welder... is all kinds of wonderful. Buy it. You will wet yourself with tears, your brain will spin from masterful storytelling, and you will love it." — Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly

"Haunting... Underwater Welder is just the right blend of action and abstraction, and greatly enhanced by Lemire's ability to signal movement, time and distance through clever arrangement of his panels on the page." — Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

About the Author

Jeff Lemire is a prolific, award-winning comic book writer and artist from Ontario, who's known for creating literary stories depicting the frailties, fears, and hopes of the human condition.

He's worked extensively with all the major comic book publishers, penning well-received runs on Animal Man, Green Arrow, Hawkeye, and Old Man Logan for DC and Marvel. His creator-owned works, which are even more highly aclaimed, include The Underwater Welder, The Essex County Trilogy, and Lost Dogs from Top Shelf Productions; Descender, A.D. After Death (with Scott Snyder,) and Royal City, from Image; and Sweet Tooth, Trillium, and The Nobody from Vertigo. His original graphic novel Roughneck was published by Simon and Schuster in 2017.

Jeff won the Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist in 2008 for Essex County, and again in 2013 for The Underwater Welder and Sweet Tooth. He's been a nominee for multiple Eisner awards, a Harvery Award, and the Ignatz Award. Descender and The Underwater Welder have both been optioned for major motion pictures.

He lives in Toronto with his family.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Top Shelf Productions; Reprint edition (August 16, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 232 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1603093923
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1603093927
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 16 years and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.03 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 1.8 x 10.9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 669 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Jeff Lemire

Jeff Lemire

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

New York Times Bestselling author Jeff Lemire has built a unique career as both the writer and artist of acclaimed literary graphic novels like Essex County, The Underwater Welder, Sweet Tooth and Trillium and also as one of the most popular writers of mainstream superhero comics with acclaimed runs on such titles as Green Arrow, Animal Man, Justice League and Hawkeye for Marvel and DC Comics.

Current projects include the original graphic novel ROUGHNECK to be published by Simon and Schuster in 2016, as well as the science fiction series DESCENDER with Dustin Nguyen and A.D. with Scott Snyder.

In 2008 and in 2013 Jeff won the Schuster Award for Best Canadian Cartoonist. He has also received The Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent and the American Library Association’s prestigious Alex Award, recognizing books for adults with specific teen appeal. He has also been nominated for 8 Eisner awards, 7 Harvey Awards and 8 Shuster Awards.

In 2010 Essex County became the first graphic novel to be included in the prestigious Canada Reads contest making it to the final five and winning the people’s choice vote as best Canadian novel of the decade.

He lives in Toronto with his wife and son.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
669 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Danielle Baum
5.0 out of 5 stars Hauntingly powerful
Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2012
Verified Purchase
Jeff Lemire has been one of my favorite writers and artists since I first stumbled across Essex County a few years ago. His ability to create such captivating stories that keep the reader on the edge of their seat wondering what will happen next and his sketchy art that captures the essence of the human characters so well, keeps me coming back for more. When I saw that Jeff had Underwater Welder coming out this year I eagerly preordered it without even reading the description. All I needed to see was that stunning cover image, the eyes of a diver peering out of his welding suit just watching us so intently. I cracked open the book as soon as it arrived and dived into the tale and was swept away.

Let's take a seemingly average 33 year old male named Jack Joseph. He has a steady job as an underwater welder on an oilrig, he has a seemingly happy marriage, and their first child is on the way. All in all a rather happy tale. But the thoughts of his father who disappeared twenty years ago on Halloween began to invade his dreams, both waking and sleeping. Jack begins to see and hear visions from the past, and the real world becomes less and less real. And then on Halloween, the dreams become real and reality becomes a dream. And Jack must find the way out of his dreams before everything he cherishes vanishes forever.

The story is like nothing I've read before, as Jeff weaves a tale of family, hope, mystery, and the stuff of nightmares all together to create a powerful tale. Jeff just creates these compelling characters that play off of each other really well. We have the main character of Jack, the father to be who slowly seems to be losing his mind, but really wants to do what is best for his family. And then we have Jack's father who vanished all of those years ago, who slowly succumbed to alcohol, but really did want what was best for his son. And their two world collide in such a powerful fashion years latter that it makes you stop and think on what you cherish and treasure the most in the world.

The artwork in this story is absolutely beautiful. Lemire shows a deft hand at capturing the emotions and expressions of his characters and the world that surrounds them with pen and ink. Each line on the craggy faces of the characters shows their age, experience, wisdom, and regrets at life gone by. And in the landscapes you see the beauty and the harshness of the world that they live in. Jeff's style works particularly well for this story, as the sketchy line work and the ink washes create the perfect moody atmosphere and the roiling sea.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
B R Sanders
5.0 out of 5 stars a maelstrom of Unresolved Childhood Issues
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2013
Verified Purchase
The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire is a beautifully drawn graphic novel about a man named Jack Joseph caught first metaphorically and then literally between his past and future. When I say beautifully drawn I mean it--the art has a sketch-like quality, an impressionistic rendering that has a surprising fullness in the details. It's rough and encompassing, much like the story itself. Lemire is a gifted visual storyteller (something I admire as I myself am so dependent on words); he makes great use of changes in the level of detail to signal disturbance. He uses the traditional panel structure of a comic to great effect and plays with it, too, stretching one scene across twelve panels on one page and using the crossbars of a window to mimic the boundaries of the panel in the next.

To understand Jack is to understand his father: a man named Pete who made his living by diving for odds and ends he sold at a pawn shop. A man who drove his wife away by drinking too much. Like a lot of alcoholics who find themselves embedded in families, Pete Joseph is desperately sad, desperately out of control, and makes a lot of promises to his son which he can't keep. He goes diving one Halloween night when Jack is a kid and disappears; the town presumes him dead but Jack can't shake the feeling his father is still out there somewhere.

Jack Joseph is thirty-three, the same age his father was when his father disappeared. Jack makes his way as an underwater welder on an offshore oil rig, diving just like his father used to, and he's married to a woman named Susan. They are expecting their first child any day. Jack can handle the immense pressures and darkness of the ocean floor, but he can't handle the looming pressure of his impending fatherhood or the dark shadow of his own father's disappearance. One day while diving he sees something that can't possibly be there. He fights with Susan and winds up diving again only to end up in a space that seems ripped out of time, a sort of purgatory-like holding tank of his own memories.

This book hit me very hard. I grew up with negligent, promise-breaking alcoholic parents. The imminent birth of my own kid sent me head-first into a maelstrom of Unresolved Childhood Issues, too. Like Jack, I had to make the choice between wallowing in the past and embracing the future. I, too, was haunted by the specter of turning into my parents. I didn't go into the book blind--the back copy talks about parenthood and the ghost of a father, etc--but I didn't expect Jack's story to mirror my own so closely. I wonder how much of this is drawn from Jeff Lemire's personal experiences. The book explores these feelings and themes so deftly, with such pitch-perfect resonance, that I wonder if it's possible for someone who hasn't lived through it to capture it so well. I can already see I will fpoist this book on people who are having difficulty navigating the tricky waters of becoming a parent. I can already see it's a book I'll return to over and over. I give it five stars out of five stars, but if you are not a parent who has grappled with the demons of your own unreliable parents your mileage may vary.
9 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Christina Matthews
5.0 out of 5 stars Genius
Reviewed in Canada on March 7, 2023
Verified Purchase
What can I say ? Lemier has taken me for a ride on another emotional roller coaster
Report
Patricia Oliveira
5.0 out of 5 stars Um oceano de lembranças
Reviewed in Brazil on November 16, 2021
Verified Purchase
Que história linda e profundamente triste sobre luto, família, paternidade e memória, com um toque de fantasia. Primeira vez lendo algo do Jeff Lemire, mas já virei fã, quero ler outros coisas dele. E agora preciso da edição física já que li pelo kindle unlimited.
One person found this helpful
 Report
Virgilio Francsico Sotillos Conesa
5.0 out of 5 stars Buen Lemire
Reviewed in Spain on January 20, 2022
Verified Purchase
Como todo lo que hace Jeff Lemire, un dibujo sencillo y no muy preciso, pero encantador, esconde una gran historia, y esta no podía ser de otra manera.
Report
Carlos Gonzalez
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente historia, bellisimas ilustraciones, calidad en el producto
Reviewed in Mexico on August 6, 2020
Verified Purchase
Una historia angustiante y llena de pesar. Una deconstruccion de como las obsesiones que tenemos con el pasado nos fuerzan a repetir los patrones, perder el control y sentirse alejados de las personas y eventualemtente de la realidad.

El libro de pasta dura esta excelente materiales y calidad desde la portada hasta la ultima pagina.
Report
Aigars
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2020
Verified Purchase
I started to read this late at night, just wanted to read first few pages, but I could not stop and read it all immediately. Lemire is amazing at writing human feelings and relationships with a bit of a fantasy/sci-fi twist.
Report