It has been a long ass time since I read or reviewed Morning Glories, at some point I just fell behind and never caught up again. With season two kicking off I decided to bite the bullet and get back in line with the series, though I may have missed the jumping on point by an issue… I’m not really sure. Twenty-six was only a dollar, but twenty-seven has a gang of covers so I’m not really sure. Regardless, I read it. Bear with me; I might not have a grasp on everything that’s happening. Unfortunately the thing that makes Morning Glories good is the same thing that makes it difficult for new readers to jump on board with the series. It relies heavily on details from past storylines and it’s clear from what I can remember of what I previously read that several of those storylines are coming together in this issue and others may have already concluded.

Lara and Georgina are walking in the woods for a surprise that Lara has kind of sort of planned. Out walks Casey and while this was probably some huge payoff for long time readers… it meant nothing to me. Casey slugs Lara in the face and says, “Let’s get this over with.” The story flashes back to a year before in which we see Casey before joining the academy. She’s meeting with a teacher and while she’s waiting she picks up a paper weight that has “the hour of our release draws near” written inside. After a quick explanation of the story that the quote is from is given, they move on to the real reason that they’re there… the MGA admission application. Ms. Clarkson wants Casey to apply, but Casey knows her parents would never go for it and asks Ms. Clarkson to talk to them on her behalf at parent teacher conferences. After Casey leaves we meet her boyfriend Mr. Reed and frankly he creeped me out.

Other stuff happened with characters I’m not familiar with and some that I am familiar with. Hunter is hanging out with the older version of Zoe and she speaks in riddles. Eventually the story swings back around to Casey and Ms. Clarkson’s story at parent teacher night. Ms. Clarkson receives a pep talk from Mr. Reed and decides to talk to Casey’s mom. She pulls her outside and talks to her one-on-one for some reason and bluntly tells her to let Casey reach her full potential. Casey’s mom shoots back all the reasons that she doesn’t listen to other people’s advice about her daughter and the main reason is that they’re only concerned about her brain and not her happiness. At this point it became clear to me that Ms. Clarkson was the older version of Casey and that she’s hearing all these great things her mother thinks about her. It was pretty moving even for someone that hasn’t kept up with the series.

It’s hard for me to say that this was a great jumping on point. There is still a ton I don’t understand about the plot, but at least a lot of what happened in this particular issue was somewhat clarified either with the dialog or with some resolution. Honestly if there wasn’t this bigger mystery going on that required you to have some knowledge of a little bit of everything happening in the story, it would be like riding a bike with this series. Sure there were faces that I didn’t recognize and some characters were either completely gone or not present in the issue, but for the most part it was like I never left. In some ways, this series reminds me of Planetary in that the smaller story is feeding into the larger story. The difference is that Planetary was for the most part told in single issues and those single issue feed into the larger story. You could basically pick up any issue and continue on with the series because it was practically a one-shot issue, but that’s not the case here. Its strength is also its weakness.

As with the story, the art was exactly how I remembered it. Sure there have been some improvements to the art and coloring, but for the most part it’s exactly as I remember it. My only issues is that older Casey looked way too similar to Georgina; granted that may have been intentional as I can see Casey doing that in jest or something, but as a lapsed reader it was kind of a question mark. Also I think that the coloring could help differentiate between the characters better as the glossy shine fooled my eye more than once about which character I was looking at. In particular I would have liked to have seen different coloring or lighting techniques used for the flashback to make it stand out more.

Is it a book about time traveling or just the supernatural or likely both. I’ve missed a lot and if this issue accomplished one thing, it was to convince me to go back and get caught up. I’m glad to see that Spencer has a long term goal for the series, but with this issue marking the “second season” I’m curious as to just how big this story is going to get. If I get caught up in time for the next issue I may check it out, otherwise I might end up a trader waiter until that day comes. If you’ve never tried Morning Glories before, then I guess this as good of a place to begin as any to start. If you don’t want to track down trades or back issues then a least hit up a wiki as it’s sure to answer a few of your questions.

Score: 3/5

Writer: Nick Spencer Artist: Joe Eisma Publisher: Image Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: 5/29/13