MORNING STAR

A family memorializing a dead father experiences weird happenings and bizarre cosmic visions in this graphic novel.

The story opens in 1956, with smokejumper Nathan Garrett fighting a wildfire in Montana’s Kootenai National Forest. Before he can say “cough…urk,” he and his squad are frozen in what looks like suspended animation. A year later, with Nathan pronounced dead and his body never recovered, his widow, Jolene, repairs to Kootenai’s Morning Star watchtower to sprinkle fake funerary ashes, taking along her teenage daughter, Marabeth, still angry at the world for depriving her of her dad, and young son, Charlie, who’s obsessed with SF adventures. Sleeping in the tower, Charlie has a vision of a spacefarer, complete with helmet and jet pack, who turns into Nathan. The next morning, Charlie has disappeared, leaving his toy ray gun behind, and the panicky Jolene and Marabeth split up to search for him in the woods, where they see strange visions. Marabeth’s visions include an aggressive squirrel, a purple buck deer that stands motionless on its hind legs, and a sinister forest ranger with reflective glasses who changes into a deer. Jolene has more disturbing visions of Charlie floating in the air, firefighters, Nathan, and her obstreperous sister. The apparitions say mysterious things like “Mooommmm…Help him…Help meeeee” and “Weeeee…R…Resp…onnnnsib…le”; Jolene finds them so upsetting that she starts hacking at them with an axe as they dissolve into thin air. Writers Andry and Daniel don’t put a lot of action into the story: Much of it is Marabeth and Jolene being baffled and traumatized by hallucinations until, toward the end, they miraculously resolve and impart lessons on fixing things, letting go, and working together. The scenarios and visuals have an effective, shadowy creepiness while characters’ entertainingly snarky voices leaven the lurid, psychedelic imagery. (“Great,” grouses Marabeth, “creepy moose lifting me up toward a huge floating ball of people.”) The graphics, by artist Finnegan, colorist Jason Wordie, and letterist Justin Birch, balance a throbbing orange-red-purple palette against somber blue-greens and sepia; the compositions feature oddball Mannerist perspectives, eclectic motifs from Lost in Space and the Sistine Chapel, and unstable figures that are constantly disintegrating into confetti. The storytelling lags, but there’s plenty of mood and style here to compensate.

An enigmatic family tale with vigorous writing, colorful art, and unsettling atmospherics.