This month’s #1 Spotlight is coming from Image Comics, Morning Glories. It was sitting in Marylou’s stack of comic books that have yet to be read; it looked interesting so I decided to give it a try. Morning Glories is written by Nick Spencer with artwork by Joe Eisma, colors by Alex Sollazzo, lettering by Johnny Lowe, design by Tim Daniel, edited by Kristen Simon, published by Jim Valentino, and cover art by Rodin Esquejo.
The first thing that got my attention was the paper used for this comic book, it was heavy. They evidently wanted to get your attention with this book, so using quality paper is a great first step. It’s also 44 pages and at $3.99 I think it’s priced right.
The story starts with someone receiving not so good news at a hospital, then immediately cuts into a teacher talking to her students at some school. The teacher then decides to quiz the student on the science project that they’re supposed to be working on. The student has no problem with the quiz; she even goes so far as to get into great detail about it, but with a slight twist. Then boom! The action starts, and that’s at the fourth page.
Ok, you got my attention Nick Spencer I’m all in. The action then continues with two individuals running through the school in what seems like an escape, and then a mysterious character appears to do some major harm on one of the supposed escapees.
The action pauses to introduce us to some new characters. Six of them actually, once they arrive at the school, they begin to notice strange things. After a brief orientation, one of the students asks about the strange occurrences. She is then taken to a room where there are two people hanging from a wall, with plenty of blood on the ground.
Are these students? Are they dead? What kind of school is this? Do these six new students have some kind of ability? Nick Spencer has my curiosity aroused with Morning Glories and apparently he has your too. Morning Glories #1 was reported as a sellout by CBR, and gamerpoop reported that issue #1 has gone through its 4th printing. On Image Comics website, they’ve reported that issue #2 has gone through its 2nd printing. That’s good news overall and what’s interesting to me is that the story of kids in a “special” school that harnesses their abilities might be gaining popularity. The X-Men is a story that we’re all familiar with, but we have a new live-action TV series produced by Paul Dini that will be premiering on the Cartoon Network on October 16, 2010 that touches on this same subject. It’s called Tower Prep and I found out about it a day after reading Morning Glories. The commercial for Tower Prep came on while I was trying to find something to watch on our cable’s On Demand service, and it felt like I was watching a live-action version of Morning Glories. I don’t have issue #2 yet, so I don’t know how similar the stories are or even if they are connected somehow but regardless of that, Morning Glories issue one is a great start for this independent comic book.
Nick Spencer’s other works include Existence 2.0/3.0, Forgetless, Shuddertown, and coming in November he’s writing the DC Comics re-release of T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents. I may be talking about Morning Glories #1 after the fact (it was released in September), but Nick Spencer put up a teaser to issue #3 on his Twitter account two days ago which you can see here, so talking about issue #1 was in fact good timing, for all you current readers and especially for some of the new readers that will be coming on-board.