Morning Star
1956. Kootenai National Forest, Montana. When smokejumper Nathan Garrett perishes in a raging wildfire, his surviving family's hopes and happiness turn to ashes. One year later, wife and mother of two Jolene Garrett takes her crumbling family to the Morning Star lookout seeking solace—to scatter her husband's remains. But something far beyond the reach of their wildest imaginings awaits the Garrett family in the Montana wilderness. No telephones. No electricity. No transportation. No escape.
📖 Mad Cave Studios • Started 2024
The year is 1956. Deep in Montana’s Kootenai National Forest, a wildfire rages—and smokejumper Nathan Garrett doesn’t make it out. His death leaves wife Jolene and their two children shattered, their world reduced to ash. One year later, Jolene loads up what’s left of her family and drives deep into the wilderness. Her destination: the Morning Star lookout tower, where she plans to scatter Nathan’s remains and maybe, just maybe, find a way to move on.
But the Montana wilderness has other plans.
No telephones. No electricity. No roads out. The Garretts are completely cut off—and they’re not alone. Something ancient and otherworldly is stirring in these woods, something that defies every rational explanation. What begins as a story of grief and healing descends into a nightmare where the boundary between the supernatural and the cosmic collapses.
Tim Daniel (Exura, Enormous) and David Andry (The Hurt Business, Enormous) weave a slow-burn family drama that tightens into a vise of cosmic horror, while Marco Finnegan’s linework renders the Montana landscape as both breathtakingly beautiful and deeply menacing. Jason Wordie’s colors shift from warm earth tones to cold, otherworldly palettes as the story descends into darker territory, and Justin Birch’s lettering gives every whisper and scream its proper weight.
Released by Mad Cave Studios in 2024 as a five-issue limited series and collected into a trade paperback in October 2024 (ISBN 9781960578761, 128 pages), Morning Star is a masterclass in atmosphere—a story that earns every ounce of its dread by making you care deeply about a family falling apart at the seams.
Perfect for fans of The Ritual, Jeff Lemire’s The Underwater Welder, The VVitch, and cosmic horror that anchors its terror in genuine human emotion.
