By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (artist), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) and Rodin Esquejo (cover)
The Story: Miss Daramount and Miss Hodge as kids.
The Review:
1. Really does remind me of Lost. – I remember when this series was first being teased several years ago and it was compared to the TV show Lost. That was a market-savvy comparison to make since Lost was a wildly popular TV show. Now that we’re 20 issues in, I can see that it is a very good comparison for better and for worse. Like Lost, there are TONS of little things going on in the background that might be important – or they might not. For example, was pretty neat to see a young Nurse Nine in this issue acting as a young nurse/executioner in one of the flashbacks. So, Nurse Nice has always been a grim little bitch. Cool. But, you never know when some of these background elements are just background noise designed to make you look. Some of them are surely like the shark in Lost that had the Dharma Initiative logo tattooed on it’s back. God, remember that shark? People were posting screen caps of the damn shark online, analyzing the hell out of why Dharma would tattoo a shark, blah, blah… And the shark was never important at all.
Some of your enjoyment of the series will come down to your attitude and mood. If you want ALL the pieces to click into place someday, you should probably go somewhere else because I strongly doubt that will happen. If it is going to piss you off that we never know precisely WHY the father flogged the hell out of a young Georgina Daramount before the opening scene of this issue, then you should go somewhere else. But, if you kinda enjoy the hunt, looking for clues and trying to piece together which elements are important and which are just background noise… Well, then this series can be fun.
2. But, lacking Lost’s online community. – Now, I do have a little problem with Spencer choosing this Lost-like narrative structure. Lost had a viewership of 10-17MM people. The day after the show, everything got ripped apart and analyzed by a very active online community. I remember USA Today had a wonderful blog where the community could piece together the breadcrumbs and decide what was BS and what was important. Morning Glories sells about 9K issues per month. I know this series does well in trade, but those trade readers aren’t real-time and can’t help us solve the mysteries; they are the people who didn’t watch Lost until the DVD set came out. Part of the reason Lost’s mysteries were so cool was that you could chat about them at work and online the next day. MG’s audience is just too small to have such a robust sense of community and that saps some of the fun from the narrative structure.
So, if you read this and think you have insights, post it in the comments. I’m just a reader and reviewer, not an expert on the minute details of the series. Just don’t be a troll. 🙂
3. Are there any good guys? – Kinda some brutal news about Miss Hodge, huh? Ever since we first met her, she’s seems like the friendly version of the Daramount/Hodge sisters. It seemed like she might actually be on the kids’ side (whatever that means). Well, she pretty much dispelled that notion when she splattered that Vanessa girl all over the place. Or, is it is case where she just has her own agenda? Maybe she can be nice to the kids sometimes, or when it serves her needs…
4. Lots of neat stuff in the flashbacks. – Well, just the introduction to “Vanessa” shows that someone has been running the Morning Glories Academy for a long time. At least 10 years, right? Have “they” been working towards some goal this whole time and just haven’t gotten the result they wanted OR where these kids from years ago starting something that Casey/Hunter and Company are finishing now? Speaking of which, when does the next “class” arrive at the MGA?
We also got some interesting insight into what that cave is and how the shadows work. But, the mysteries really piled up too: Who was the hobo man? Where did he come from? Is it just me, or were the girls implying that he was part of a breeding program? Who was Miss Hodge’s biological mother and who was that woman who took her? Is Nurse Nine from a similar biological origin as Hodge and Daramount? Who is the Father? What’s with this superpower that Hodge has? And at the ending, when they say, “get them away from HER…” Who do they mean?
5. Wonderful art (again). – Each month Joe Eisma does wonderful acting with his linework. It’s easy to take this stuff for granted, but I can’t tell you how many artists would struggle with a comic like Morning Glories. Plus, it gives Spencer a lot more latitude in how he writes since he knows that Eisma can tell part of the story through the characters’ body language. Just pause on any panel in the issue and there’s almost always something to appreciate: the tilt of a head, the furrowed eyebrows, how someone is holding their arms, where their eyes are looking, etc. Now….I do have to say that I’m not a huge fan of the way the issue/series is colored. It’s much softer and more highlighted than I like to see my comic art. And, a lot of the shadow is added via color instead of via ink. I understand that’s a workflow issue and this IS a 31-page comic (for $2.99). If Eisma inked all those shadows, the issue wouldn’t come out “on time”. I know so little about coloring, but I’d love to see what this would look like with flatter colors.
Conclusion: Another strong issue of MG. True, it isn’t answering all of the questions and is tossing out a lot of misleading things, but that’s kinda how real life works too. I’m still waiting for another “knock my socks off” issue, though.
Grade: B+
-Dean Stell
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Conclusion