Writer: Gregory Widen
Artist: Laci
Publisher: AWA, Vertigo Entertainment, September 2026
Created and written by acclaimed screenwriter, director, and producer Gregory Widen (the mind behind Highlander, The Prophecy, and Backdraft), The Rising is a 70-page horror one-shot illustrated by renowned artist Laci (Death Ratio’d, Sherlock Holmes).
The story takes place in a dying industrial town in the Badlands, where the local industry is a rather unusual one: maintaining an intercontinental ballistic missile base. With the base scheduled for closure, Ray and his daughter Atty are preparing to move on like everyone else. But something is very wrong at the facility. We are introduced to six coma patients have been asleep for forty years following a mysterious accident. Ray begins noticing strange glitches in the missile system. Then Atty discovers something even more unsettling: grass stains on the feet of the supposedly immobile patients. From there, The Rising gradually reveals the horror lurking beneath the surface.
The story deliberately structured as a slow-burn horror tale. There is a considerable amount of information to get across, particularly regarding the maintenance, security, decommissioning, and general protocols surrounding ICBMs. (Chillingly, the missiles have been given their own names by their keepers.) Yet Mr Widen manages to work this information into the dialogue and narrative without allowing the technical exposition to overwhelm the comic. The reader gets what they need to understand what is happening, but the pages never become walls of text.
The stage-building is similarly effective. The reader is gradually introduced to the town and its inhabitants, gleaning enough context to understand why the place feels so bleak even before the supernatural elements become apparent. There is a persistent sense that something is wrong. Mr Widen allows that feeling to build without giving away his hand. The story establishes its atmosphere early, but it does not immediately reveal exactly what kind of horror is coming.
That horror also goes beyond the more conventional physical manifestations. There are certainly moments of outright violence, including a disturbing sequence in which people turn on each other in a fit of murderous rage. But much of The Rising derives its tension from the possibility of something far larger and more catastrophic. The threat is not simply to the people trapped inside the missile base. It extends to the entire planet.
The Rising also incorporates creepy legends surrounding old Native American burial grounds, giving the supernatural elements a suitably ominous foundation. The long lit fuse of tension and mystery eventually explodes into a high-stakes action sequence inside an ICBM silo. The escalation works because the comic spends much of its runtime establishing the threat before finally letting it loose.
Laci’s artwork complements this approach particularly well. The pages rely heavily on dramatic lighting and deep shadows, with heavily inked blacks contrasted against stark highlights to create a moody, lurking atmosphere. The panels feature a gritty, speckled texture rather than the smooth, glossy gradients, giving the book a tactile quality. Strong silhouette work further helps maintain the focus on mood and character interaction, whether the surrounding environment is sparse or packed with detail.
The character designs also favor a realistic, slightly sketchy aesthetic. That works especially well during the quieter moments, where the characters feel like ordinary people, confused, scared, and caught in an increasingly extraordinary situation.
The Rising is a horror story, a science-fiction thriller, a disaster story, and a technical mystery involving one of the most dangerous pieces of military hardware ever created. Yet it manages to keep those elements moving without bogging itself down.
The result is a deliberately paced horror one-shot that understands the value of withholding information, establishing atmosphere, and letting the reader gradually realize just how bad things are about to become. Mr Widen’s experience with genre storytelling is plainly evident in the way the story moves from an ominous, localised mystery to something considerably larger, while Laci’s shadow-heavy artwork imbues an appropriately unsettling visual identity.
This title is available for sale here: https://awastudios.com/series/the-rising-future-of-fear/