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Morning Glories #1 (2000)

by Nick Spencer(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 5

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review 1: Aw, too bad. I was really looking forward to reading MORNING GLORIES after seeing the gorgeous covers on the comic racks, plus Nick Spencer has a good reputation. Unfortunately the premise just feels tired and overused, and the main characters are your typical high school stereotypes -- the spoiled rich kid, the depressed emo girl, the "good guy" dweeb, and of course the hypersexyhottienymphoslut. I also found the artwork to be rather bland and stiff -- it turns out the cover art that piqued my interest in the first place is done by a different artist. And when the majority of the plot involves teenagers in school uniforms standing around talking, is a comic book really the best medium?Still, this suspense-building in MORNING GLORIES vol.1 is decent enough even if it's not... more exactly a page-turner.
review 2: There's absolutely nothing new about a sinister and/or mysterious boarding schools. YA is busting at the seams with them. Morning Glories isn't particularly innovative or convincing in the field. Yes, the school in question is particularly sinister, but it's in an almost cartoonish way, evil for the sake of being evil. I don't know why, exactly, these particular teachers are so brutal towards the students. I don't know the classrooms are perfectly built deathtraps. I don't know why there's a weird cult in the basement. I wonder if Spencer knows.And there's the other thing. Towards the end of this volume, I started having flashbacks to late sixth season X-Files. Now, I loved X-Files, but this isn't a good thing. Morning Glories doesn't give me the same feeling that some of the more brilliant and spooky episodes gave me. No, I was reminded most strongly of that moment when I realized that there was no real plan behind the mytharc, that it was getting made up as the writers went along. And I got that same feeling with Morning Glories, that the true motivations behind the school haven't been invented yet. Maybe I'm wrong, but I went through this once with X-Files and Morning Glories would have be a damn sight better to make me risk it again. It might help if the characters didn't feel so flat to me. Their emotions and motivations aren't convincing. I don't just mean the villains, who just do things because they're evil. The supposed protagonists weren't any more relatable or believable to me. That's partly because of the lazy use of stereotypes as character shortcuts. The man eater, the rich delinquent, the nerd, the angsty chick, the stoic Asian... I've met all these characters before.The art seemed nice to me, at first. But after a couple dozen pages I realized that the characters were starting to look oddly waxen to me. Like the artist went to Madame Tussaud's to find models. This is even more glaring on the covers, which are, I think, done by a different artist. So I suppose that's just the aesthetic for the book, and I just don't like it.As yet another take on a well-worn archetype, Morning Glories didn't impress me with innovation or execution. Oh well. less

Download links for: Morning Glories #1

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