Science fiction and horror don’t have to necessarily be completely original to be good. Some might argue that many 
of the stories we enjoy are completely new but are instead repackaged tropes from past stories, only made different by adding a sprinkling of different characters or a completely different setting. And settings don’t get much more different from the norm than Golgotha Knob, Kentucky, the setting of Golgotha: Motor Mountain. This alien invasion into body horror and Appalachian fiction is written by Matthew Erman and Lonnie Nadler and illustrated by Robbi Rodriguez.
Golgotha Knob, Kentucky isn’t so much a town as much as it’s a stretch of land where the people who live on it either enjoy Golgotha Knob’s isolation or dream of escaping it. Those in the latter group are the Damnage Brothers, Elwood and Vernon. They’re meth cookers who dream of leaving Golgotha Knob behind to live in the utopia of Cincinnati, Ohio. They’re achingly close to their dream, but a chuck of space debris has mixed with their latest meth batch and they’ve got to fill a very large order made by some dangerous people.
Once people start sampling this new meth/meteor hybrid, Golgotha Knob becomes infested with mutants, mutant skinheads, and a angry sheriff who’s out for the Damnage’s blood (and perhaps other body parts).
Fans of a certain age will remember the 80s show The Dukes of Hazzard, which features two cousins on the run from the law, and Golgotha also features a narrator that interjects with information that’s not always important to the plot. This narrator not only provides information about the space rock and what it does but also adds a Southern folksy humor even as they discuss such obscure topics as the Muscagee people and the Hadron Collider. This narrator also adds to the plot’s overall cosmic insanity as the brothers encounter a world that is literally mutating around them. However, before the plot veers totally off into fever dream surreality, Erman and Nadler’s plot keeps it grounded with the brother’s obvious and heartfelt sibling bond.
But getting back to the surreality, which is expressed in Rodriguez’s artwork through illustrations of bodies changing, smooshing together, and becoming living nightmares, this world is saturated in Day-Glo colors and Lovecraftian monstrosities. Vernon and Elwood wear masks that look influenced by Lucha Libre wrestling and Mad Max films. They roam an increasingly apocalyptic wasteland in a car that looks to be flesh rather than metal. Those that might find Erman and Nadler’s story confusing might be drawn (or dragged) into Rodriguez’s gonzo artwork.
This book definitely takes the kitchen sink approach to graphic novel storytelling, incorporating everything from the Southern Gothic to Japanese Manga. Whether it belongs in an adult collection will depend on whether or not one’s patrons have a taste for mind-bending graphic storytelling. Golgotha takes a lot of chances that might turn more traditional graphic novel fans off, but for those that are more adventurous, they might enjoy taking a trip (hallucinatory or otherwise) to Golgotha Knob.
Golgotha: Motor Mountain
By Matthew Erman
Art by Robbi Rodriguez
IDW, 2024
ISBN: 9781684059676
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+)
