By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (artist), Rodin Esquejo (cover), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters)
The Story: The climax of a story cycle as we return to where Zoe and Hunter are during the Woodrun game.
A few things (with SPOILERS): 1). Tense issue! – I’m of two-minds on the tension as Zoe chases Hunter through the forest with a knife. On one hand, the whole thing came off as very believable. A kinda pathetic kid like Hunter is usually “safe” in comics unless the writer is exploiting the death of said pathetic character for shock value, but Spencer and (especially) Eisma made me believe that Hunter was in mortal danger. Well done! On the other hand, why was Zoe trying to kill Hunter? One problem I have with MG is the way the story bounces around issue to issue making it tough for a single issues reader. This issue picks up directly from mid-January’s Morning Glories #15. My recollection is that Zoe and Hunter were actually getting kinda chummy. Maybe Zoe wasn’t going to actually hook up with Hunter, but she definitely liked that he was paying attention to her and when Hunter instead moved his attentions to the chubby girl, Zoe wasted no time in killing her; Zoe had to be the center of attention. So….why is she suddenly trying to kill Hunter? And why can’t Hunter just take the knife from Zoe? Even a pathetic guy should be able to disarm a teenage girl with a knife in a heartbeat.
2). Great body language from Eisma. – The tension all comes from Eisma. Eisma’s an interesting artist who really makes you reevaluate the term “beautiful”. Consider an artist everyone on the internet (me included) smashes on for lazy phototracing and only about a handful of poses and facial expressions in his bag of tricks: Greg Land. If you showed most humans a single picture drawn by Greg Land and a single picture drawn by Eisma, almost 100% of those people would say the image by Land is more “beautiful”. But…sequential art isn’t just about drawing a singular pretty picture; it’s about drawing a sequence of images that tell a story and this category is where Eisma is incredibly gifted. In every panel, Eisma is thinking of what the characters are feeling and how he can best draw the scene, their bodies, their faces, their hands, etc. to best convey that emotion/action to the reader. Just imagine how this issue would look with if Greg Land drew it: page after page of sexy, but wooden, woman with inappropriate facial expressions chasing boy with inappropriate facial expressions through the forest. It would suck. Just look the wordless pages 2-3 to see Eisma at his best. People don’t really walk like Zoe is here….she’d fall on her face with that forward posture…..but her body posture reminds me 100% of the resolute way the T1000 in Terminator 2 went after people. She just has a sense of menace and purpose that not a lot of artists could give to a 16-year old cheerleader. Running in a panic from a 16 year old girl is 100% silly; this scene SHOULDN’T work, but Eisma made us believe that Hunter was in real danger and running was the right course of action.
3). Who are those people on the final pages? – Is the woman with the gun the starlet we saw on the TV earlier in the issue? Or is that just a case of many women with short black hair looking the same? I’m not sure this series needs more characters.
4). The flashbacks are less enjoyable as the series progresses. – We’re about 2 years into the series and it’s time to drop the continual flashbacks as a narrative tool. The characters are who they are at this point. The time to add nuance to the characters by showing their relationships with their parents was in the first year of the series. Now the series should be much more about what is happening in the present. At some point, the flashbacks almost start to feel like reconning. I’m sure that Spencer has this all plotted out within an inch of it’s life, but even with that knowledge, it still doesn’t really work anymore.
5). Emotional reaction from a comic book? – Honestly, I was personally bummed at the end of this issue. Of all the characters in MG, Zoe was the one I enjoyed the most. She was a fully defined character (in a way that the other 5 kids are NOT….yet), she had a distinctive visual look (so she was easy to identify on a crowded page) and she was fun to read. I’m not that interested in the other kids. Maybe Ike is a little curious, but I’m not interested at all in Casey, Hunter, Jade or Jun. Do I want to keep reading a series about a bunch of kids I’m much less interested in? Probably for a little bit, but someone will need to assume that Zoe-level of interest asap because she was the best character in the series. On the other hand, ballsy choice to kill her by Spencer and Eisma. In this day and age, it’s tough to get an emotional reaction from a comic book, but this one worked for me. I hope you guys know what you’re doing.
Conclusion: A very well-done comic that might have killed the wrong character. Brave.
Grade: B (the highs and lows of this issue make it really hard to grade, so it averages out to a B)
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion