By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters)
The Story: Time traveling hijinks from the students of the Morning Glories Academy.
Review: “This is probably my last review of Morning Glories.” That’s what I thought as I read through the issue. Usually when that thought runs through my mind, it’s because I’m not enjoying the comic at all. With MG, I’m walking away from reviewing it even though I still enjoy the comic quite a bit; the problem is that I don’t understand anything that is going on and cannot offer any useful insight on the plot twists.
Once you lose a tight grasp on the narrative, it is a problem that builds on itself. That pushed me to the point where I was honestly confused about why we saw a “young Ms. Daramount” advising a pre-MGA Casey on how Casey needed to attend MGA. I was like, “Huh? Since when was Ms. Daramount at Casey’s high school in her pre-MGA days? Why is she calling herself Ms. Clarkson? Why is she being all NICE?” Well, the thing is that it isn’t Ms. Daramount. It’s actually an older version of Casey from the future who has come back (in disguise as Ms. Clarkson) specifically to tell a younger version of herself to attend MGA because it is important (for reasons unclear) that Casey attend MGA. And it turns out that Future Casey jumped back in time like that on orders from Lara Hodge.
Whoa–deep huh? All kinds of time-jumping paradoxes! If Casey Prime never attended MGA until being urged along by Future Casey who had been urged by Lara, how did Future Casey ever even meet Lara in the first place? You have to admit, it is kinda clever. It’s like watching a snake eat its tail.
Unfortunately for the comic, the only reason I understood any of that was because of a very helpful endpiece by Matthew Meylikhov from Multiversity Comics. He offers up a pretty good analysis of what is going on in MG and it helped to clarify a lot of things about the series. Now, it is important to note that his theories about the series aren’t officially endorsed by the creators; there is no note from Nick Spencer that says, “Matthew is 100% correct”. But, if Meylikhov is offering THAT level of insight on his website while I’m over here just saying, “I’m confused” then everyone should just go read the articles on Multiversity because they’re doing a better job than I am. That’s what I’m doing.
What was nifty about Meylikhov’s endpiece isn’t just that it clarified some questions I had about MG, but that it affirmed that there DOES SEEM TO BE A PLAN. That’s why I’ll always stick with this series. I just wanted to know that it ultimately makes sense and isn’t just a bunch of confusing stuff blobbed together. After reading this endpiece, I really feel like I’d gain a LOT of understanding from rereading the earlier issues.
A word about the art before I drop away from reviewing this confusing series. Joe Eisma is a beast. He’ll have to wait to get the mainstream credit he deserves because he’s going to be locked away drawing MG for another 6 years, but he really deserves it right now. Remember all those issues of Bendis’ Avengers when people complained that it was just people standing around talking? Well, that’s because those artists weren’t as talented as Eisma at drawing people “standing around talking.” Think of some of the great TV shows of the last 10 years and the great scenes in those shows. Most of the great scenes are just “two people talking”. Probably my favorite scene in The Wire was the scene of Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale talking on the balcony when you could tell by their body language that they were both planning to betray the other one. See, I think Joe Eisma could draw that scene in a comic. Most comic artists couldn’t, but Eisma probably could. He’s just so gifted at capturing emotions and whether a person is sad, confident, sneaky, angry, etc.
Conclusion: An issue that makes a lot of sense once someone explains it to you.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
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