Jason McNamara Comes Home to Horror with The Estranged | Comic Crusaders Podcast #780

Going back home can already be uncomfortable when everybody remembers who you were twenty years ago. Imagine doing it when half the town still thinks you might be a murderer.

Writer Jason McNamara joins me on the Comic Crusaders Podcast to talk about The Estranged, a new five-issue supernatural horror series with artist Matthieu Pereira, colorist Dave Kemp and editor Konner Knudsen.

The story follows Heather, who returns to Braddock, Texas, thirteen years after surviving a brutal attack and being blamed for the violence herself. She wants another shot at life and a chance to reconnect with Albion, but the town has a long memory. When people begin disappearing again, suspicion lands right back on Heather.

That setup gives The Estranged a hook that goes well beyond monsters. Jason is digging into identity, heartbreak and the ugly way communities can trap somebody inside the worst version of their past. He has said the idea grew partly from returning to his own hometown and realizing how much people still remembered the teenager he used to be rather than the adult he had become.

Of course, this is still horror, so the emotional damage comes with a supernatural threat. Jason has described the tone through influences such as Twin Peaks, Salem’s Lot, Hellraiser and even Mean Girls, which should tell you this book is just as interested in social cruelty as it is in blood and demons.

We talk about making a small town feel like a character, writing queer horror, building tension around reputation and memory, collaborating with Pereira and Kemp, and why the best horror usually works because the human pain underneath it feels real.

The Estranged #1 is a 32-page mature-readers comic currently live on Kickstarter through November 11, 2026.

Check out my conversation with Jason McNamara as we get into heartbreak, horror, hometown baggage, independent comics and the monsters people carry with them long after they think they escaped.

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