Morning Glories #19

Review By: Blake M. Petit BlakeMPetit@gmail.com
Quick Rating: Very Good
Rating: M

As Hunter flees for his life, we see a past consumed with death.

Writer: Nick Spencer
Art: Joe Eisma
Colors: Alex Sollazzo
Letters: Johnny Lowe
Cover Art: Rodin Esquejo
Editor: Jade Dodge
Publisher: Image Comics/Shadowline

The kids of Morning Glories Academy have had a pretty rough couple of days. Lost in the woods, surrounded by murdered classmates and their murderers, Hunter flees for his life. As he does, a flashback to his past show us the origin of his entry to the Academy, and just what it meant to an ailing mother.

There’s a nice simplicity to the structure here. For several issues now we’ve followed students caught up in the bizarre events of the hunt, bouncing back to the past of the characters. It’s the same sort of set-up as the show Lost in a lot of ways – a weird contemporary story that hails to the past to show us the bizarre backstory. It’s a format that works really well for a story of this sort, where even the characters aren’t aware of everything that’s gone on in their lives to lead them to this point.

Nick Spencer juggles the elements here nicely, tapping into Hunter’s life and relationship with his mother in the past, and setting it neatly against the contemporary adventure and the pretty shocking climax of the issue. This is a book that is extremely willing to take chances, and the shocking moments never feel like they only esixt for the sake of shocking us. The surprises are exciting and justified instead of cheap and forced, and that makes the book worth reading.

Joe Eisma and Alex Sollazzo are a really fine art team, showcasing some beautiful characters in drastically different and changing settings throughout the issue. The only small fault comes through Hunter’s mother. There are some moments where she simply looks young, when in fact she’s supposed to be sick and weak. That smallness about her comes across more as a youthful kind of innocence rather than a physical frailty.

This series keeps going to strange places, and I’m excited to see where Spencer is planning to go next.

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