Morning Glories #27
Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Joe Eisma
Colors by Alex Sollazzo
Letters by Johnny Lowe
Study Hall by Matthew Meylikhov
Review by Joey Braccino
So Morning Glories season 1 was all about this mysterious boarding school and the strange staff, strange dungeons, and strange general atmosphere at said boarding school. And then Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma took us into the woods for like 10 issues and we came out in season 2 trying to wrap our heads around some insane causality and time travel befuddlement. But hey, that’s Morning Glories, and when you sign up for what has frequently been called Image’s answer to LOST, you’re signing up for some good ol’ fashioned befuddlement.
Fortunately, Morning Glories #27 starts uncovering some of the dense cloud of threads (mixed metaphors much?) that have piled up over the last few issues. Between the Truants mystical adventure into the primeval temple of doom to Hunter’s strange time platform to Irina and Jade’s tense stand-off to Casey’s shocking return in issue #25, Nick Spencer has certainly been laying down questions and more questions at quite the clip recently. A throwaway comment from Jade early in this issue reminds the reader that it’s only been less than a day since… well, since issue #15, but man, the plot has thickened.
As is often the case, as the plot ebbs and flows, the characterization remains a high point of Spencer’s writing. The double-sized nature of this Season 2 debut allows Spencer to hit most of his primary players and really focus on the nuanced personalities and motivations of these characters. The climactic scene between Casey’s mother and Miss Clarkson (spoiler?) is incredibly powerful. A big factor in the effectiveness of the climax is Joe Eisma and Alex Sollazzo’s artwork, as well; the naturalism and emphasis on facial expression helps lend Morning Glories a deeply personal aesthetic that other, more exaggerated styles would miss.
With the launch of season 2, Spencer seems ready to start giving us some crucial information. I won’t go into it here so as to give you the opportunity to unravel the mystery yourself (because you really should be reading this book), but to make matters even clearer, Matthew Meylikhov of Multiversity Comics drops by for a fantastic back-up text that tries to make sense of some of the timeline and character questions we’ve been grappling with over the course of the series. Meylikhov’s accessible analysis of Morning Glories also helps catch up readers new and old to some of the minutia that we may have forgotten or missed in earlier issues (that, to Spencer’s credit, is coming back into play in Season 2)!!!
Verdict
Buy it! I’m always hesitant to say “Great Jumping On-Point!” with a series like Morning Glories, but man, you should really be reading this comic book. If anything, pick up the $1 Season 2 prologue issue from last month and this double-sized Season 2 premiere and read on, brothers and sisters! Join the confusion wagon as we stumble along the time-traveling, teen-drama comics storytelling brouhaha!
