Morning Glories #2 – Advance Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors) & Johnny Lowe (letters)

The Story: Mysteries abound, as our teen protagonists start to realize that the boarding school for gifted kids they have been sent to is seriously screwy.

What’s Good: When we first started hearing the pitches for Morning Glories over the summer, creator Nick Spencer made a lot of references to Lost.  Now, that I’ve read the first two issues, I can see the comparison because the mysteries are coming at us left and right.  Many “mysterious” comic series get by with a single hook, but Morning Glories introduced about 5 in the first issue and I counted 4 completely new weird things in this issue.

As this is an advance review, I’m not doing any spoilers, but the issue takes place with the kids all in detention.  The whole thing immediately reminded me of the Breakfast Club as the kids discuss what they did to get detention and all of their stories revolve around their either stumbling into or being accosted by the serious weirdness of the Morning Glories Academy.  My favorite was probably the young ladies encounter with a demented upperclassman.  Holy creepy!  The weirdness is great, and just like Lost, I really want to know more.

Spencer has a gift for snarky young person dialog.  All of the characters are written pretty well, but my favorite so far is the slightly disturbed young boy why keeps making highly inappropriate remarks towards the girls from the class.  There are also pop culture references galore.  Those can be overdone, but they all work here (esp. the Breakfast Club mention).

Like issue #1, I thought the art in issue #2 was serviceable.  That may sound like a dirty word, but I really don’t mean it that way.  I think of comics like two people singing together and someone needs to sing the harmony most of the time.  You can have both writer and artist both going for it at one time, but I think that is really dangerous because it usually just doesn’t work.  So, I’m very happy to see art that stays within itself, tells the story and kinda just bides its time (especially at the beginning of a story).

Before switching over to the few things that troubled me, I also want to toss a bone to Alex Sollazzo (the colorist).  The poor colorists never get any kudos and people act like they are just using MS Paint to do their work and argue that they don’t even deserve to be mentioned in the credits.  When you check out the panels, you will see that a LOT of the texture and sense of depth you get from the characters are coming via the coloring.  I LOVE that because I think that it looks silly to have harshly inked contour lines all over something that should be smooth (like a teenage girl’s face or a silk shirt).

What’s Not So Good: Minor quibbles…  I’m having a heck of a time remembering what these kids’ names are.  They all have a unique visual style, but other than the one demented boy from the weird, rich family, I’m having a hard time matching these kids up with the origin stories we had in the first issue.  I know I could go up to my comic closet and rummage out #1, but I really feel that comics should be reference material free.  This isn’t a major criticism and is probably due to the fact that I’ve probably read 100 comics since last month, but it stood out to me as a minor flaw.  Just toss us a few more reminders of who they are!

The only other item is just a cautionary warning.  This series invited its comparisons to Lost, so I’m hoping that it doesn’t follow Lost’s example of showing lots of cool stuff and then not explaining it.  And, I’m not talking about the metaphysical part of Lost that was supposed to make you think.  I’m talking about the truly unresolved stuff that was going on.  I’m not already hoping for these mysteries to be paid off in issue #3 or anything of that sort, it is just the Spencer has gotten a LOT of toys out to play with and I will want to see a coherency among the weird plot elements before too long.  We can’t just keep getting 5 new weird things each issue (and I’m sure that isn’t what Spencer has in mind because he’s ended his other stories really well).

Conclusion: Another “must read” issue.  I love this.

Grade: A-

– Dean Stell