Morning Glories #17 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) and Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: What were Jade and Ike doing while Casey and Ms. Hodge vanished from the cave?
A few things:

Long! – 34 pages for the same $2.99 price.  Isn’t that nice?  You know how when Marvel or DC does an “extra sized” issue, they charge $4.99 for it?  Well, none of that here.  Nice job fellas!  By making this issue longer, the creators are able do the roadwork they needed to with the main story and also weave in some tidbits on the side.  With a shorter issue, something would have dropped.

Lots of talking. – There are positives and negatives to this issue’s length, though.  The best thing it is that we get to learn more about Jade.  She is probably the least explored of the “main” characters in this title (along with Jun) and there’s no replacement for page-time for fleshing out a character.  Spencer is clearly devoted to developing all of his characters, and that’s going to take some time at 22 pages per issue.  So, he decided to quicken the process with a extra-sized issue.  I do kinda admire how Spencer is telling his own story at his own pace and isn’t being distracted by silly reviewers yelling to “Hurry up!”.  Isn’t that the point of creator-owned comics?  Now, the negative of this issue is that the A-story is mostly Jade and Ike talking to each other.  It isn’t very exciting. It’s kinda like eating your vegetables.  Even though we learned a lot more about Jade in this issue, I think I’d rather go see what Zoe is doing.
Interesting moments happen in the B-stories. – One other benefit of the extra length is that the B-stories got full treatment.  Compared to the main story, it was far more interesting to see Jade in the flashback sequences.  THERE you really connect with her as a person.  Then, there is a scene (I think) from around the time the Morning Glories Academy was built.  THAT scene was curious and is the kind of catnip that MG fans enjoy.  Finally, we have the return of a character we haven’t scene since the early, early issues of the series.  This dude was kinda like the polar bear on Lost.  It’s nice to see him back because it reinforces that Spencer does have a plan for this series.  Sometimes you worry with these slow developing stories that the writer might be making it up as they go along, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Morning Glories #15 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: Zoe and Hunter have to team-up for the mysterious Woodrun game.

Four Things:

1. A focused issue. – There wasn’t a lot of background noise in this issue.  Morning Glories usually does focus on a character or two, but this issue felt much tighter (and better).  It’s really just Zoe and Hunter out in the woods and some Zoe flashbacks (more about that below).  Other than a few moments of Jun and some discussion of Casey, this was all Zoe/Hunter.  No teachers, no Ike, etc.  That really helped the readability of the issue because we were able to focus on the characters in front of us and not worry so much about the 50 other mysteries with the other characters.  Now, the challenge for the creators is that when we DO revisit those characters, we’ll have been away from those mysteries for months and they’re going to have to remind us a little bit!

2. We know a LOT more about Zoe. – So she’s a killer.  But, as is normal for the series, just as we learn something, they give us some more mysteries.  The folks she’s killed have been for different reasons.  One was nominally to help a friend, one was to save her own butt and the final one was a possible romantic rival. It also seems like each murder got a little easier for her going from impulsive to calculated.  Hmm…  And, just the fact that she talked so much in this issue makes me feel like I know her better.  I seriously wouldn’t mind if all the issues got a little “wordy” just to enhance our familiarity with the characters.

3. Weird romantic vibes. – Did anyone else get the feeling that Zoe might let Hunter take a pass at her?  It was very weird, especially given that she was telling Hunter how Casey was WAY out of his league (and she clearly thinks of herself as better than Casey).  Who’d think that Hunter would end up being the ladies man of the series??  I’m sure some of it is that Zoe likes the attention, but why put on airs when alone in the woods?  Anyway, I love me some romance that plays up the soap opera aspects of comics.

Morning Glories #14 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: More mysteries, Zoe and Hunter have a few “moments” and we learn more about Woodrun.

Five Things: 

1. Lots of teases.  This issue had a lot of scenes where if you joined the scene a panel sooner OR if you were allowed to linger for a panel more OR if you were just permitted to change your visual perspective …..you would have learned something important.  That’s the tease of Morning Glories and it’s either your kind of thing or it isn’t.  I work professionally with legal contracts and reading Morning Glories sometimes reminds me of reading an except from a contract without any of the definitions of terms: Sometimes you think you might know what the characters are talking about, but you almost never know for sure.   This is obviously what Spencer and Eisma are going for and they do it very well.

2. Nice coloring.  My ability to comment technically on coloring is weak, but I really do like what Sollazzo does in MG month-after-month. Eisma’s art is very clean.  There aren’t many stray lines, spot blacks, crosshatching or anything else that would add a lot of depth to a page.  So, a lot of that work is on Sollazzo’s plate and he really does a nice job.  I usually say that I’m not a fan of such highlighted color art, but this works for me because he isn’t cutting corners.  Lots of color artists will do things like highlight a head like it is a sphere when we all know that heads are NOT spheres.  Sollazzo really seems to understand and care about contouring.  It kinda goes without saying at this point that Eisma’s characters are really “acting” well, but Sollazzo adds that extra touch without ever screwing up the line art.

3. Different point of view.  Some of the scenes in this issue were lifted straight out of last issue.  I wouldn’t want that every month, but it is a neat literary tick when it is used effectively.  It’s neat to see how a scene unfolds from multiple angles.  That month we followed one group of characters and here we get to see what happened to the people who got “left behind”.  Man….Zoe….what a B!$%#.

Xenoholics #1 – Review

By: Joshua Williamson (writer), Seth Damoose (art), Paul Little (colors) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: A support group for people who have been abducted by aliens.

Four things:

1). Not as funny as I’d thought.  The teaser campaign for this was full of oddball humor featuring a page of sequential art of a chubby guy (think the dad in Family Guy) saying how he’d been kidnapped by aliens who anally probed him and….  he “thinks he liked it.”  That was what I expected from this issue and I didn’t really get it.  The issue also committed the sin of kinda assuming you’d seen that teaser campaign as there were references to enjoying anal probing, but we didn’t actually see THE scene from the marketing materials.  The overall effect was a comic that wasn’t funny when the marketing materials were very funny.

2).  Cute art.  That might not seem like the kindest way to describe art: cute.  But, it is the word that comes to mind and it is meant in the most positive fashion possible.  The light and cartoony art gives this comic almost its entire feel and is probably the best thing about the issue.

Morning Glories #13 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Solazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: The new arrival, Miss. Hodge, is making things happen at the Morning Glories Academy?  Is she a good guy or what?

Five Things:

1.  Artist Joe Eisma is really good at making his character “act”.  If you doubt this, go take a look at his original art at The Interior Pages.  Here you can see his art without any lettering and in most panels, you can get a rough idea of what is going on or at least the emotions of the characters at the time.  This is a tricky thing to do.  For one thing, Eisma first has to be aware enough of human body language and facial expressions to know what cues he can give to express “surprise” or “anger”.  Then he has to actually be able to draw a face and body that convey that emotion.  It’s impressive stuff that adds a lot to Morning Glories.

2.  Miss Hodge is stirring the drink.  This is a great new character.  Since being introduced in issue #12, she has been a real force of constructive chaos for the reader.  Granted, there are still lots of unresolved questions about this series, but Hodge makes us feel like we’re headed in a positive direction.  With just the kids as protagonists, it was harder to be so optimistic because he kids were so at the mercy of the teachers and staff of MGA that it was hard to fathom they would figure this stuff out on their own.  Now we have Lodge who is able to get things done and seems to be slightly on the kids’ side.  This is really propelling the narrative forward.

3.  The pacing of the series has improved.  Or at least, the reader’s perception of the pacing has improved.  There was a time when this series seemed to be spinning its wheels and just flinging out mysteries but never giving us any answers (kinda like Lost, Season 3).  Part of it is the addition of Lodge and the pattern of having a cool reveal towards the end of the last two issues, but some of it might just be the readers getting acclimated to the pacing of the story.  This is a problem for all ongoing, self-contained series.  When we watch a movie, we know the running time and we can look at our watch.  If there is an hour left in the movie, the climax is NOT about to happen, but when there are only 20 minutes left, it’s time to hold onto your seat.  With an ongoing comic, we don’t have that and start to wonder if this is going to be a ~30 issue series (Promethea, Planetary) and ~60 issue series (Y the Last Man, Scalped, Transmetropolitan) or 100+ issues (100 Bullets, Fables, The Walking Dead).  It makes a difference because we can’t tell if these reveals are leading to a climax or not.  By now, it’s pretty clear that this is not a 30 issue series; it will be longer.  So, now is time to just kick back and enjoy the ride, knowing that the story will be in “cruise” mode for a couple years.

4. A Team Rundown on the inside front cover!  Maybe I’m getting old, but as time passes, I have a harder time remembering the names of characters in comics.  So, it is much appreciated that we get a team rundown to help us keep track of the action.  Now, it would help if they let Eisma draw the characters for the run down, but it still helps a lot to be able to easily say, “Who’s the redhead?  Oh yeah, that’s Jade!”  Plus, if comics include rundowns then writers don’t have to use the characters’ names in dialog all the time (“Hey Jade!  Do you want to get ice cream, Jade”  “Yes, Hunter, I would love to get some ice cream.”) since we know they hate doing that.

5.  It could be we’re getting some main characters.  It isn’t that MG has an impossibly large cast: 6 kids, plus a few teachers who matter.  The trouble was that the kids all seemed equally important and that made it hard for the reader to identify with any of them strongly.  The last few issues, it seems like we’re headed towards Casey and Hunter being the “main” characters with the other kids in more supporting roles.  That’s fine with me.  Ike and Zoe are fun to watch, but too unlikeable to really center a story around.  And Jun and Jade are just not quite as interesting so they can be supporting characters.  Keep it the Casey and Hunter show and I’ll be happy.

Conclusion: This series is really finding it’s footing after a small rough patch and the story is humming along nicely.  If you drifted away, it’s time to come back because this is a very well written and drawn series.

Grade: B+

-Dean Stell
[Note: Obviously, a bit of a new format on this review.  Like it?  Hate it?  Comments below, please…]

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Morning Glories #12 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (artist), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: Another new face shows up at the Morning Glories Academy and it isn’t really clear whose side she is on.

What’s Good: I’ve been urging this enjoyable series for a few months to “get on with it” and reveal some mysteries.  This issue was a little odd.  Now that I’m finished, I can’t really put my fingers on any big mysteries that were solved, but for some reason, I walked away from the issue feeling as if I’d learned some good stuff.  I’m not really sure why that was and it could be as simple as I might have been in a better state of mind when I read the comic, but the fact remains that I felt fulfilled when I put this down instead of feeling teased.  Some if it was little stuff like the fact that Ms. Daramount’s first name is Georgina.

I still feel as if I reread this series from the beginning with a notepad, I might learn some stuff and I have a feeling that when the mysteries are revealed in the end, that the signs will have been there since the beginning if you knew were to look.  That’s a good feeling to have about a series like this.

One very positive thing in this issue is that it touches base with a LOT of the main characters.  For a while, we’ve been in a cycle where the action is heavily focused on a singular character.  We have learned some juicy tidbits about the characters this way, but losing contact with the rest of the characters has been tricky because I still don’t feel like I have instant recall of even what their names are yet.  But, in this issue we check in with just about everyone and it serves as a good reminder of who everyone is in this very complex story.

And what a cool new character we get in this issue.  Is Miss Hodge a teacher?  Is she in charge of the place?  An ally for the students?  Who knows, but she is intriguing.

Morning Glories #11 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: A focus on Ike (the sociopath kid) both in the past and in the present at Morning Glories Academy.

What’s Good: This an enjoyable issue that drills into Ike, who is one of the more interesting characters in Morning Glories.  All the other kids in MG have kinda adopted an all-for-one attitude, but Ike was a punk from the start and later revealed himself to be a sociopath who is playing his own game.  As a character, he is up to something and that makes the concept of a focus issue tantalizing and this issue really emphasizes his scheming nature.  We’ve known since the beginning of the series that the adults at the MGA are up to something, but Ike’s plans could evolve into a very entertaining B-Story.  He’s a little like that contestant on the reality show who has figured out how to break the game.

In typical, MG fashion this Ike story is told in a very mysterious way.  The moments we see from the past have to do with Ike’s involvement with – and behavior after – his father’s death and they do a nice job of setting up what a sick little bastard Ike is.  This combines with a puzzling present day story where the adults of MGA want to use Ike’s murderous talents for their own ends leading to a very, “Huh???  Wha????” ending that tosses yet another mystery on the pile.  There’s also a neat little scene where Miss Daramount brings Ike into her office and explains (in the best adult movie fashion) how he can earn some “extra credit.”

Two really nice things jump out about the art in this issue.  One is that Eisma really draws ladies well.  His ladies are attractive and sexy even if they are quite idealized.  Hey! …I’ve got no complaints.  He also really grasps how to graphically tell a story and get his characters to act.  For example, when Miss Daramount invites Ike into her office, Eisma knows how to make her stand so that her body language says, “Come hither you young vigorous boy!” when the dialog just says, “Oh, Good Ike — Come on in, dear, have a seat.”  Due to this one panel, we instantly know that she’s coming on to Ike and if Eisma had flubbed that initial panel, the entire scene would have suffered.

Morning Glories #10 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: In this Jade-centric story, the main character has a few funky dreams.  Or are they dreams?

What’s Good: This may seem a small thing, but it made a world of difference in my enjoyment of this issue: Spencer put a lot more character names into the word balloons.  A complaint I’ve had in the past with Morning Glories was that I simply forget what these kids’ names are.  But, because the characters were always introduced in this issue, I was able to free my entire brain to trying to comprehend the mysterious stuff that Spencer has going on.

When Morning Glories first launched, there were heavy comparisons to the TV show, Lost.  Those comparisons remain apt as Spencer keeps laying on the mysteries.  Sometimes you read a section and you aren’t really sure what the heck you’re reading, but in a good way.  The two weird events in this issue both revolve around Jade…..One is her having a strange lucid dream featuring her mother and the other seems to be a kinda out-of-body experience where she seems to be collaborating with her future self.  If you like mysteries in your comics and trying to figure out what the heck is going on, you’ll enjoy this series.

Eisma’s art is really starting to grow on me.  He still has panels where a character’s face kinda get’s away from him a little bit.  But, what he really nails are the body language moments that are so important to story telling.  The page where Casey and Hunter discuss their kinda relationship is a great example with the two characters doing lots of the gestures that help us understand their emotions: looking at their shoes, open armed gestures, etc.

Green Wake #1 – Review

By: Kurtis Wiebe (story), Riley Rossmo (art), Kelly Tindall (letters) & Jade Dodge (edits)

The Story: A detective, noirish murder-mystery set in a purgatory-like environment.

What’s Good: Riley Rossmo (Proof, Cowboy Ninja Viking) has been good for a long time, but this is his best work yet.  This issue has all of his sketchy roughness such that the emotion of the scene just bleeds off the page, but due to the darker subject matter of the story, he’s allowed to go even further with this style (or clean it up less).  The other thing that he’s really adding here is cool architecture.  I’m always a sucker for guys who draw buildings and streetscapes well and Rossmo’s city (?) of Green Wake establishes much of the mood for the story.

Rossmo also does a lot of Templesmith-style digital work on his drawings to punch them up even more.  Like giving a scene a green wash to establish a mood that is only broken by the riot of red from the bleeding man in the street.  It’s just really powerful art and the art alone is worth the price of admission for this issue.

What’s Not So Good: I don’t get the story.  The Green Wake setting seems to be some sort of purgatory where the characters are stuck.  I’m sure that the mystery of “what is Green Wake” will be part of the point to the whole series.  But, this opaqueness really loomed over the entire story (for me) and made it such that I couldn’t concentrate on (and enjoy) the otherwise solid murder-mystery that is on the surface.

Bomb Queen vs. Hack/Slash One-Shot – Review

By: Jimmie Robinson (writer & art), Paul Little (colors) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: Cassie Hack & Vlad go through a dimensional portal to New Port City, the land of the Bomb Queen.

What’s Good: What a delightfully funny, risque and well-done comic this was!  As a disclaimer, I’ve been a fan of Hack/Slash for some time, but I’ve never experienced Bomb Queen before.  It is always there on the LCS shelf or lurking on Comixology beckoning me, but I’ve never quite pulled the trigger because I’ve got so much other comic stuff to read.  That will change as a result of this issue.

If the purpose of this one-shot was to expose fans of either Hack/Slash or Bomb Queen to the other property (with the hope that they’ll jump on), this comic gets a Gold Star because I’ll be carving out time to catch up on Bomb Queen asap.

The story is pretty simple: Cassie Hack, Vlad and Pooch from Hack/Slash end up in Bomb Queen’s world while they are chasing a demon who manifests as a cat and while there they run into Bomb Queen.  Whether they triumph over the demon is really irrelevant to the story because the whole point is to showcase the attractions of the two series.  Speaking from a Hack/Slash fan’s point of view, it does that well as we see some of Cassie’s trademark violence (hits one criminal dude in the crotch with her spiky baseball bat!), Vlad’s humor (being called a MF and remarking that “I don’t know my mother.”) and Pooch’s earnest loyalty.  I presume that the Bomb Queen teasers are authentic (since the issue is done by Bomb Queen creator Jimmie Robinson) but they feature the scantily clad heroine, with her g-string that is overly “tight” in the front, incredibly raunchy dialog and word balloons that often point to her nether regions.

27 #4 – Review

By: Charles Soule (writer), Renzo Podesta (art), Shawn Depasquale (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: 27 comes to a very strong close.  Will it just continue the freaky-good story about numbers or does it have something to say?

What’s Good: I LOVE reading a creator-owned comic that ends strongly.  The joy of reading lots of creator-owned comics is getting exposed to all the weird and whacky ideas out there, but the agony is that you realize how difficult endings are.  This isn’t a problem with X-Men; they avoid this problem by simply never ending the story.  Most stories that have a strong hook simply don’t end all that well.  That’s just life….

So, I was incredibly tickled to see 27 smoothly shift gears from all the fun with numbers, weird demons manifesting through dead pigeons and naked mad scientists sacrificing cats in warehouses (which was AWESOME) to really having something to say and doing so in a way that makes you revisit concepts from earlier in the series.  As it turns out, once you smear all the funky stuff away, 27 is really a comic story about genius and how one obtains genius.  Is it the product of fate?  Is it pushing a button?  Does everyone have an allocated quota of genius within them?  Is genius earned via hard work?  That’s kinda what this series is about.  It’s just stellar storytelling because you can tell that Soule had this “genius” theme for his story, and all the other stuff is just trappings that he hung on the story to make it more fun.  Love that!

Term Life – OGN Review

By: AJ Lieberman (writer), Nick Thornborrow (art), Brandon DeStefano (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: A criminal on the run from the Russian mob and dirty cops is forced to take his estranged daughter with him on the lam.

What’s Good: This is a very solid 144 page softcover OGN from Image.  If you enjoy crime stories, this is something you might want to check out.

The trick with any crime story is to give us a main character we can root for.  That isn’t always an easy thing when the main character is a criminal, but Lieberman has a pretty good concept to make Nick Barrow seem not quite so bad: Nick just plans the crimes and then sells the plans to other dudes to do the actual robbing, shooting and killing.  So, Nick’s hands are relatively clean and we can want good things for him.

As with many crime stories, the action revolves around a heist-gone-bad.  When the dust settles, the big Russian gangster’s son is dead and he thinks that Nick is responsible, and here is where the story deviates from the norm (which would be to show Nick somehow take down the mob) by showing Nick resigned to the fact that they’re going to kill him eventually, so he buys a huge life insurance policy with his estranged 13 year old daughter as the beneficiary.  The only trick is that it’ll take 21 days for the paperwork to be processed, so he has to stay one step ahead of the bad guys for 21 days and his daughter will be provided for.

But, the real highlight is the father – daughter story between Nick and a daughter that he barely knows.  This isn’t even really part of the “crime story” as the set-up is typical: divorced parents, teenage girl, mother hates father, father has barely seen daughter.  But the execution is quite good as the kid realizes that her dad isn’t quite the villain that mom made him out to be.  Even if you are a good parent, there is a lot to identify with in terms of staying close to your kids and not wanting a gulf like this to ever develop.

In terms of narrative structure, the action is mostly linear, but there are places where it bounces around in time a little bit, especially in the early phases of the story.  The end is much more linear.  And the scenes are very quick and choppy with most being only a page or two.   This gives the story a faster feel than it would ordinarily have.

Morning Glories #7 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Joe Eisma (art), Alex Sollazzo (colors), Johnny Lowe (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: An issue that focuses on Zoe’s past and present introduces even more mysteries.

What’s Good: This was a very entertaining issue.  I had some problems with it in the opening pages that really bugged me (that I’ll get into below), but by the time the issue was finished, I was very satisfied with the story.

Spencer focuses the story in this issue on Zoe.  Perhaps it was “revealed” before that she is Indian, but it hadn’t really clicked with me that she was anything more than vaguely Asian.  We also learn that she has some superpowers, or at least had them as a little girl because she seems to have forgotten about them now.  What we’re seeing with all of these kids’ stories is that there are these huge missing gaps of time, but they all have weird beginnings.  If Zoe could read minds as a young child, what happened to those powers?  We suspect that her powers are the reason that the Morning Glories Academy is interested in her, but is it to utilize her powers or to suppress them?  Mysteries abound!  And unlike other series that haven’t revealed much of the true story by issue #7, Morning Glories is still very fresh feeling.  All of these series eventually hit a point where the reader starts to ask, “What is the point of this whole story and how long will this go on?”  To Spencer’s credit, that thought hasn’t entered my brain yet.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be an issue of Morning Glories without a “WTF?!?!?” ending.  How/Why did Zoe do that at the end?  Seriously weird (in a good way).

Eisma’s art continues to be very strong.  The characters in Morning Glories have to “act” to sell all these teenage emotions that they’re feeling and that seems to be a real strong suit for Eisma.  He is also showing a great example of photo-reference being used the RIGHT way.  I’m pretty sure for some panels he probably has a picture he is referencing of what a cute teenage girl looks like when she is indignant, but he is merely using it as a reference and then drawing 100% with his own hand and exaggerating the parts of the face that sell the emotion: a crinkled nose, squinty eyes, etc.  This is a great comic from a character-acting standpoint.

27 #3 – Review

By: Charles Soule (writer), Renzo Podesta (art), Shawn DePasquale (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)

The Story: William Garland has made an unwitting deal with some supernatural forces to regain his ability to play the guitar.  In this issue, he starts to get to the bottom of WTF has happened to him.

What’s Good: This comic continues to meet my criteria for a great creator-owned title.  Namely, it is still going to odd and unusual places and is never telegraphing what will happen next.

We’ve already covered how William Garland was a famous guitarist who had hurt his hand and couldn’t play anymore.  In his desperation to get his “powers” back, he undergoes some whack-job procedure in a basement involving a naked mad scientist and 27 dead cats (still can’t believe how trippy that was).  It works, but leaves William with an odd control box on his chest giving him the ability to turn on a power, but with the knowledge that doing so will shorten his life.

One of the great things about this series is that it isn’t falling apart as it fills in the blanks.  I’m still a little curious how the creators are going to wrap all of this up in one more issue, but so far the surprises and explanations are all very solid.  That is really a big deal because everyone who reads a lot of creator-owned comics knows that for every solid ending to a story, you have to read about 10 stories that have a wonderful premise but stumble badly during the middle and end portions of the story.  27 is maintaining its whacky freshness and that isn’t always easy to do.

I don’t want to spoil the surprises of 27 too much, but I love that it gets into the concept that a person only has a finite number of actions within them and that you can space them over a long (and boring) life OR you can burn like a star, but perhaps die young or spend the rest of your life trying to recapture the good old days.

Podesta’s art is again very up to the task.  The sort of stylized art he is using here is so effective at capturing basic emotions because it simplifies the human form.  That’s kinda why I tend to prefer this style over guys who draw perfect anatomy and characters with rippling musculature, but whose characters have no sense of life to them.

Infinite Vacation #1 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (script/story), Christian Ward (art/story), Kendall Bruns (photography), Jeff Powell (letters), Tim Daniel (design) & Jade Dodge (edits)

The Story: What if you could always buy your way out of your current reality by swapping with another you from an alternate universe?

What’s Good: What a cool concept!  From the solicits for this issue, I had in my mind some kind of Total Recall story where you could have your memories imprinted with any sort of artificial experience and it would feel as if you actually had done/accomplished the event.  I should have known that Nick Spencer was a little too imaginative and hip to just retread an old Governator movie.  I don’t think it’s too big of a spoiler to reveal the central theme for you here because it’s kinda central to the whole story.

If you’re at all familiar with the concept of parallel or alternate universes, one of the theories is that everything that can happen, has happened.  There is an alternate universe where you are the President of the USA, where you hooked up with Ms. Universe or where you have Russian oil baron wealth.  Of course, there is also a reality where you are raped in prison, homeless or dead (many realities where you are dead, actually).  Spencer and Ward’s concept is: what if you had an iPhone app that communicated with these other yous and allowed you to swap realities for a fee?  It is kind of a hybrid between eBay and the old types of commodity trading that Enron used to do.  Did you forget your wife’s birthday?  For $5000 you can swap realities with another you where you didn’t forget.  That kinda thing…

This tosses out all sorts of really cool possibilities.  Such as how does one feel self-esteem when a better life is merely a question of money?  When do you have “enough” happiness and stop trying to trade up?  What is the price tag on your own happiness?  Would you sell it to another you?  What are you willing to do to avoid death?  How can the other “yous” be you if they’re wiling to sell some happiness to you for a fee?  Shouldn’t they want to keep it if they’re really “you”?  This series promises to explore those types of questions, especially when our protagonist, Mark, meets someone who isn’t fully down with reality swapping.  If you’re into high-concept sci-fi this is a must read.