The Lamplighters

[Art by Joe Studzinski]

In an industrial steampunk-esque (coalpunk) city, a group of teenage orphans navigate growing up while working as special lamplighters, all while uncovering the mysteries of their city’s underground crime syndicate.

The Lamplighters takes place in a fictional fantasy city called Flintport, in a sort of steampunk-ish industrial revolution world. The skies are gray with factory smoke, the streets are dirty, and the automobile has recently replaced horses. The series focuses on an orphanage in the city. The orphans there are of all ages, but the main characters are all in their older teen years. The orphans are used as unpaid child labor by the city. They go to school in the moring, work in factories in the afternoon, and then at dust they light the city’s special street lamps. The series focuses on the unofficial leader of the orphans, a 17 year old boy nicknamed Matches and the newest orphan nicknamed Wings. Some themes of the series are found family, LGBTQ, child and adolescent mental health, addiction, classism.