Today in an exclusive CBR announcement, IDW Publishing revealed my brand-new series launching in 2024, Golgotha Motor Mountain, an offbeat science fiction/horror series about two brothers, Elwood and Vernon Damnage, in Golgotha Knob, Kentucky, who are trying to make one last meth sale before moving to Cincinnati when their lives are turned upside down by a meteor crashing in their town, causing the people in the surrounding mountain to mutate in horrible ways.
The series is written by me and Lonnie Nadler, with art by Robbi Rodriguez (the co-creator of Spider-Gwen), colors by Marissa Louise, letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and every issue will have a backup story that is drawn by Nikola Čižmešija.
Golgotha Motor Mountain is a hillbilly cosmic sludge southern gothic nightmare. It’s about two brothers, Vernon and Elwood, two idiots who hatch a cosmically stupid plan to sell a celestial body from space as meth to unsuspecting racists so they can leave their illicit lives behind and start fresh in Cincinnati. A story that spans from the creation of the universe to the meth barn mountains of the Kentucky Appalachia to the golden age of Shōnen Jump.
The art by Robbie and Marissa is unreal. Comic art like you’ve never seen before by some of the best artists who’ve ever worked in the industry all lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, arguably the most indemand letterer working today. I can’t even get into the art done by Nikola, who I feel is our silver bullet on this series.
Mark Doyle, Dave Wielgosz, Jake Williams and David Mariotte (who got us in the door at IDW) deserve a huge amount of credit for taking a chance on a series that wants to challenge and entertain and be something really special. Our intention from the start was to make a series that is unlike anything published in the last two decades and I think we’ve not only succeeded but have created something unique in how it approaches lore, history, memory and fiction as a whole. They’ve given us something that very few get to experience in their comics career which is real creative freedom to tell the story we thought could never be published, printed, or articulated.
On a personal level, It is about a place where I spent my summers visiting when I was a kid. My grandpa and his brother were named Vernon and Elwood. My grandmother lived on a knob and I still know the feeling of going up and down the terrifying roads that bend through the mountains and the hollers. My mom still lives there. So it was unbelievably cathartic to return to this setting to co-write this story with Lonnie. I hope everyone with an interest in cosmic horror, southern gothic and story-telling as an art form finds this series. It is a love letter from everyone’s heart to things we’ve all loved, it has been a true collaboration between everyone involved and it has been a highlight of my life creating it with such incredible people.
Much love forever and always, I hope you enjoy Golgotha Motor Mountain.
Looking forward to talking more about this wild series when it solicits.
Much love,
Matthew