This week’s Comic Review Friday focuses on Nick Spencer’s Morning Glories – Issue 30!

Morning Glories #30 takes a step back from its mythology and delivers some great character development.

Nick Spencer’s Morning Glories is one the greatest (and most frustrating) books on the market today, primarily due to its complex mythology, but the last dozen or so issues have been too mythology heavy. Issue 30 has us step away from the mythology for a moment, and focuses us back on character development. In its early issues Morning Glories had multiple LOST-ish issues that helped build our understanding of the Glories and their motivations, and this issue returns to that giving us a glimpse into Irina’s past and motivations.

Spencer never ceases to amaze me with his ability to create complex characters. Within this one issue he took one of the most hated characters in the book and made her one of the most tragic. I found myself actually sympathizing with Irina. Just like most other characters in Morning Glories she is struggling with who she wants to be, and who she is being forced to be. By allowing us to see into Irina’s past Spencer has made sense of her actions in the last few issues, which provides both the story and the character with so much needed depth.

Joe Eisma’s art stands out more than usual this issue. Unlike the majority of Morning Glories issues this one was very heavy on action, and Eisma hit it out of the part. Spencer went dialogue light during the action scenes, and this allows Eisma’s art to shine. Allowing Eisma’s art to take the focus also helps drive the story here. By showing us that this is not a superhero comic with heroes and villains trading witty one liners, Spencer and Eisma are showing how serious the fights are.

Morning Glories is a unique book. It is easily the most mythological comic I have ever read, but every once in a while it is nice to step back and let a book just be fun. Issue 30 is about as close as Morning Glories gets to doing that. Yes, there was still some mythology development. No, there were not any jokes to laugh at. At the same time there were not any spinning metal things of time travel, or ghosts that kill people by touching their foreheads, or future and past versions of the same person. There was just good old character development and action. I give it a four out of five stars.