Morning Glories

"What's the Story?"

Cover volume 1

Story: Nick Spencer
Art: Joe Eisma
Covers: Rodin Esquejo (usually I don't mention covers, but here it is worth it)

Volume 1: For a better future (Mar 2011)
Volume 2: All will be free (Aug  2011)

Hey now! One day as I was walking through the shelves of the comics store, I bumped into this series. After asking what the story is about to the sales guys and doing some quick research on the internet, I decided to buy it. On the web, many reviews compare these books to the TV show Lost. As I quite enjoyed Lost - though did not follow it thoroughly- , I decided to buy volume one of Morning Glories and roll with it! That was my first mistake, my second mistake was to buy volume 2...So what went wrong?


The Story:
It's hard to find a beginning as there are so many things I did not like in this story. First let's talk about the main idea, or at least what I understood to be the main idea in the first two volumes. On the day of their 16th birthday, six kids from different backgrounds are sent by their parents to the Morning Glory Academy (MGA), allegedly one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country. Then the kids progressively discover that weird things happen in this school and that they are actually more prisoners than students. They thus try to escape from the school and unravel all the mysteries that surround the school, its students and what happens behind the gates of the Academy.

Cover Issue #8 (part of volume 2)

The school has some rather unconventional teaching methods. Indeed, its student are regularly sequestrated, tortured and sometimes killed - or their parents get killed. Moreover the story says that the school has been opened for 14 years, so supposedly this has been going on for 14 years. Ok let's take a step back here... what's the story? Morning Glory has just been torturing its students, killing their parents, for the past 14 years and no one raised an eyebrow, and the school is one of the most prestigious in the country? How am I supposed to accept that, if there is no element in the first two books that addresses this question!! That is the main problem in these books: too many questions are left unanswered, no matter in what volume they occur. Some might say this is part of the style, that readers are left wondering on purpose, but I'm sorry too much is too much! I find it ridiculous to close volume 2 and wonder the same things as in volume 1 PLUS a whole bunch of new things. It gives a very strong feeling of inconsistency to the reader, because not only does the story not make any sense when you read it, but the more you read it, and the less it makes sense! I'll take an example, at the end of volume 1, although you don't really understand why, and adult version of Jade -one of the six kids- presents herself as sort of a rep for the MGA. In volume two, while adult-Jade has not been mentioned yet, kid-Jade is invited to commit suicide in front of her class (wtf??!!!!). After she hangs herself in the middle of a class (again wtf??!!!) and the reader assumes she is dead, the following scene is a conversation between kid-Jade and adult-Jade about what the kid has seen so far at the MGA. Icing on the cake: eventually kid-Jade opens her eyes so you understand that she was not really dead, but that this was some sort of dream/imaginative conversation etc... Great! I am still wondering what is the signification of the scene at the end of volume 1. Is adult-Jade the one who is going to save the kid from the MGA? Is she her wonderwall? Only questions...no answers.

I don't expect comic books to tell a credible story. In fact most of them don't, there is often some super power, special ability or crazy stuff happening. However I expect the books to create an atmosphere, a world and a plot that are credible, in the sense that they make the reader buy what's going on and plunge into the story's world. In the case of Morning Glories, at no point did I buy anything of what was happening, nor did I feel intrigued and hooked to the world created in the books.

Moreover some of the characters are really weak. While the 6 kids - Casey, Hunter, Zoe,

MGA Teachers & Casey - (c) Spencer & Eisma

Jun, Jade, Ike - are somewhat different in their personality and aspirations, some of the other characters are really poor, affecting the reader's experience. Basically throughout the books, there are some chapters where you learn about the past of one of the six kids, a bit like in a Lost episode. One of the bright spots is the chapter on Jun, where you learn about his childhood in Japan and his reasons for joining the MGA. That is one of the rare entertaining moments that makes sense. So back to the lousy characters, let's take the example of the roommate of the 3 girls Casey, Zoe and Jade. Their roommate, Pamela, acts like an over-enthousiastic retard taken out from an epileptic manga, or just Jersey Shore. Then, out of the blue, she tries to kill Jade in her sleep....First: wtf? Why? Second: There is no reference to that later in the story! It appears like a minor event that just gets Jade and Zoe in detention, before they go back to their room and continue to live with Pamela. Again.... Hello! How am I supposed to buy that with no explanation or justification?

Cover Volume 2

One last misstep that I would like to point out, is the very unfortunate and uncanny travels in time. Indeed there are many flashbacks in the books. Whereas flashbacks usually give rhythm or insights on the story, these ones are just awkward. Sometimes the reader goes through the weirdest flashback, only to be left with no explanation or no reference to it in the same volume or the following one. I'll take just one example ( I can think of at least 2 others), from volume 1, For a better future. Chapter 3 begins by a flashback to 1490 (yes, you read well) where a girl who looks exactly like Zoe, but speaks Spanish, is prisoner in a castle. She has a quick peep at the cell of her neighbor and sees that everywhere on the walls is carved the same sentence. Then after that ... no reference to this rather weird flashback except for the sentence that was written on the walls. Indeed it appears 3 times: when a bold girl who seems to be a patient of the hidden psychiatric lab of the MGA, kills someone and writes that sentence with blood on the wall; when Casey writes it in her notebook during a class on an old Spanish Inquisitor, and when Jade has dreams about having a glance at Spanish-Zoe's neighbor cell with the writings on the wall. All that is very messy, at best unfortunate, if not completely inconsistent as there is no further reference to that later in book 2. Instead of clarifying things like the example mentioned above, the story keeps opening new doors and leaves the reader with more questions.

Many critics acclaimed the series, but let me cast no shadow on my view: counting to 1 million "in mississippi", or teaching how to play the drums to a bunch of one-eyed snails, would be less annoying than reading these books. I bought the first two books in the hope the series would improve or captivate me more as I went through it. Though I don't look back in anger for the time and money spent on these, I don't recommend them and I won't buy the next volumes.

The Art:
In this series the art is pretty interesting. At first when I flicked through the book, I quite like the drawings and enjoyed all the plays on shadows. Indeed the colors smoothly change from one to another thanks to the shadowing. However after reading the book, I found the art a little empty and bland. It's like eating a good looking dish but finding that it has no taste. Most of the drawings lack details in the background and appear empty. Whether it's rooms, landscapes, classrooms, walls, doors, tables, libraries, warehouses, the settings often lack details, thus looking empty, boring or
 way too even and symmetrical to be credible. This style prevents the art from grasping the reader even more in the story - especially given that the plot does a pretty poor job at that.

Casey & Hunter in the library - (c) Spencer & Eisma

Also I did not really understand the way Eisma draws the characters. Indeed, I was 16 once, and I looked at girls, and I can confidently say that absolutely no girls of 16 that I've ever seen, look like Casey or Zoe, ie two extremely gorgeous women who have bodies and faces of ladies at least in their 20s. Zoe, though she is 16, looks like a model in her late 20s. Same for Casey, she's electric and on top of that incredibly smart. Also, most of the female characters are represented with similar physical characteristics, gorgeous body and pretty face... This doesn't really give specific features to some of the characters. I would have enjoyed some specificities other than hair color for our characters, or for other women in the story. As for the boys, they do look like 16 year old kids, but again they kind of look all alike. Moreover, for the character of Ike, it doesn't really flow that he looks 16 given his lifestyle. As a kid of Upper East Side billionaire CEO, he is used to luxury, champagne, supernova-sized apartments, models and sleeping with whoever he feels like. If that were to actually happen to a 16 year old kid, I believe they would physically look a little older than their actual age.

One last note to underline the great quality of the covers by Esquejo. Twelve covers in total in the two books, and all of them are beautiful. Covers are probably among the most successful ones I have seen, along with those of James Jean (Fables) - absolutely amazing covers. Unfortunately covers are not enough to make me buy a comic book...

Cover Issue #10 (part of volume 2)

On a separate note:
You may have noticed that this review makes a reference to all the titled songs of the Oasis album "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?". Indeed, if one day you wake up thinking "today I am going to buy something that has 'morning glory' in its title" - not that this happens every morning, but hey, you never know -, I would strongly recommend to buy the album from the British rock band. Though a record and a comic book are not comparable, I believe that in terms of fun for the money put down, the Oasis record does a much better job than these comics.

• Overall: 2/10

• On a scale of annoyance from 0 to Morning Glories : Morning Glories

• If you don't like to understand why things happen and just take for granted whatever you are told: 5/10

• If you like pointless things such as walking on a lake covered by a layer of thin ice just to see what happens: 3/10 ... actually that is not really pointless