#CBR5 Book 103. "Morning Glories, vol 1: For a Better Future" by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma

Page count: 144 pages
Rating: 3 stars

Six teenagers, all born on the same day, all just turned sixteen, arrive at the prestigious Morning Glory Academy. The school really isn't what it seems on the surface, though, and the kids soon discover that the academy is a bit like the Hotel California - you can't really leave once you've checked in. When they try to call their parents, said parents act as if they don't remember them. Detention is potentially lethal, and you pretty much want to do your best not to be sent to the nurse's office.

This first trade contains the first six issues in the series, and introduces us to six different teenagers - Casey, Hunter, Ike, Jun, Zoe and Jade. Casey quickly realises that the staff at the academy are not messing around, and tries her very best to withstand their various attempts to control and dominate her and her fellow newbies. Very little becomes clear in these issues, apart from the fact that Morning Glory Academy is not a place you want your kids, and that there's some seriously nefarious shit going on behind the scenes there. There's a murderous ghost, and creepy cult stuff in the basements, the school seems to have its own psych ward, and of course the faculty from hell. Because all of this is basically set-up, it's not really clear what the purpose of the school is, and what they're actually training the students they're keeping trapped there to become.

In the comic book store where I got this, it was basically described as Lost meets a posh boarding school. The description isn't a bad one. Of course, I didn't make it past the first season of the TV show, and while I really like some of the characters in this comic, I'm also not entirely sure I'm convinced by the tone and the many questions being set up. I wish there could have been at least one member of the faculty who wasn't a complete psycho, and that the only sympathetic adults we are shown in the entire series were the kids' parents (who are all out of the picture after issue 1). This may be too twisty and convoluted for me. I shall investigate online reviews of later issues and see if I want to continue with the series.