Morning Star: Revealing The Effect of Loss

Morning Star from Mad Cave Studios gives readers an empathetic look at a family dealing with loss. Nothing about it is sturdy and sometimes the only thing keeping anybody going is a memory or a fantasy. So what happens when a getaway to say goodbye turns into something else?T

Morning Star Needs U

Tim Daniel and David “DB” Andry give a compelling look at how the memory of someone pushes the cast. But how can the reader feel that? One way is how the first pages introduce the character who set everything off. Nathan Garrett was a man with a lot of heart and care, ready to help anyone in danger. Part of that was how his old military squad mate got them out of WWII. Even if that current co-worker is having doubts of surviving a wildfire. It shows that Nate has faith in a memory’s ability to inspire him to push forward. So when a photograph of his family flies out of his and burns to ashes, it sells how Nate is stuck living a tragedy in the moment.

Now all that Nate’s family have left of him is his memory, with Nate’s urn not even having his ashes. But unlike Nate, they’re all stuck living in his loss. The mother and daughter have no plans on leaving Montana despite the grandmother’s insistence. She and the aunt want to help them get through the loss, despite how badly they’re handling it. Which considering the son Charlie invented reality shifting, maybe they’re onto something.

…It’s the fifties, who knows how far back this practice goes.

Mourning Star: That’s Better

Anyway, the Garrett family want to say goodbye to Nate to get their lives back on track. They still have a solid family dynamic despite Nate not being there. Marabeth can understand what her brother’s saying despite Charlie not speaking out loud. Meanwhile Jolene tries her best to be the family’s lynchpin despite struggling with her sister and mother. Even without his ashes, following Nate’s example should be enough to push forward right? I mean the journey to a camp site to throw what’s in Nate’s urn away was granted to them by a ranger friend of Nate’s.

Well it looks like whatever got Nate is now after his family as the vulnerable Charlie is the first to encounter it. And it looks like things are only going to get worse.

Experience The 50s

Marco Finnegan’s simpler artwork evokes 1950s comics best seen through Charlie. The bizarre science fiction characters he sees live in a world of levity. For a kid going through a dead parent, seeing a giant robot on a pee break feels more important than saying goodbye to his father. So when he sees a rocket man who looks like his dad glitch up, readers can only imagine what’s going through Charlie’s mind.

The coloring by Jason Wordie demonstrates these shifting contrasts by showing a real world town with dull oranges and browns. Meanwhile Charlie’s fantasies are a bright green-yellow much like the light shining from his flashlight when reading comic books. When Charlie confronts the space man wearing a suit with the same green-yellow colors, it feels out of place. Once it glitches up, the suit is mostly covered in shadows, breaking whatever illusion was there.

Or maybe that was the sudden change in lettering by Justin Birch. The word balloons look perfectly normal in one panel. By the next one, both the balloon and font start to crumple like it’s just static.

Morning Star: Until The Next Sunrise

Morning Star is full of experiences where you want to give a friend going through tough times a hug. Like how a memory isn’t just nostalgia bait, it’s an inspiration to connect with the world around you. It’s full of scary and depressing things you want to escape from. But when something tries to cut you off from everything, the journey to let it go is universal. So for now this series gets 8.5/10.

Thanks for coming to the end and as always, remember to look between the panels.