Morning Glories #20

Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Joe Eisma

Twenty issues in, and the mysteries still keep piling up, but now Nick Spencer has decided to share a little about two members of the faculty at Morning Glory Academy.  During the Woodrun, a school-wide game of Capture the Flag (more or less), all of the students vanished.  We have been following some of them, and it looks to them like all the adults in the Academy have disappeared, but the opposite seems true to the faculty.

This has led to some problems for Georgina, the head teacher.  Her father, the Headmaster (who we have never laid eyes on yet) takes his anger out on her physically, and her sister Lara, the kindly guidance counsellor comes to comfort her.  Lara is a relatively new member of the cast, and we know her as the woman who helped Casey escape MGA.  This issue paints her in a very different light.

We learn that Lara and Georgina have different mothers (not surprising, seeing as they look so different), and that both of them never met their mothers.  The two girls competed for their father's attentions throughout their childhoods, and Lara's extra-sensory abilities made her seem the favourite, although it is eventually Georgina who gains control of the school.  We learn a few odd things over the course of the book - there are people kept prisoner under the ground, for one.  We also learn the story behind the cave that Lara used to help Casey escape, but we end up seeing this kind and caring woman as someone very different from what we'd thought.

This book is never dull, even though each new issue makes the series more complicated and obtuse.  I really admire the way that Spencer is spinning out such a strange story, yet still gripping my interest with each new instalment.  From almost the beginning, I'd been comparing this comic to Lost, but this has exceeded that flawed TV show in almost every way.