Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived at the Geek Compound.

Morning Glories Volume 1: For A Better Future
Written by Nick Spencer
Art by Joe Eisma
Covers by Rodin Esquejo

Promo copy:

Morning Glory Academy is one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country… but something sinister and deadly lurks behind its walls. When six gifted, but troubled, students arrive, they find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives as the secrets of the academy reveal themselves! Collects Morning Glories #1-6.

I reviewed this for the March 1 Nexus Graphica.

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A synthesis of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer and an Orwellian nightmare, Spencer and Eisma reveal the diabolical realities behind the Morning Glory Academy, a prestigious prep school. Six brilliant students from different backgrounds join the school, encountering all sorts of weirdness: ghosts, torture, mind control experiments, and murder. Spencer deftly relates the teenage pathos and chaos as events unfold. Eisma’s clean draftsmanship and realistic rendering ideally bring life to this intriguing story. Much like the above-mentioned Buffy, the creators manage to make the truly terrible palatable and even enjoyable. Morning Glories Volume 1: For A Better Future offers an interesting take on the oft-told tale of teen angst and anguish.

Freeway
by Mark Kalesniko

Promo copy:

A down-on-his luck animator looks back in anger.

In his first new graphic novel since 2001’s acclaimed Mail Order Bride, Mark Kalesniko delivers a 416-page tour de force chronicling a single day—a few hours, even—in the life of his recurring dog-headed alter ego, Alex Kalienka.

Stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on his way to his increasingly miserable job as an animator at Babbitt Jones Studios, a burnt-out and depressed Alex alternately rages, reminisces, fantasizes and hallucinates. Thus flashbacks to his earliest days as a starry-eyed young animator snagging his dream job, through the increasingly depressing political battles and creative compromises, with a love affair gone badly wrong along the way, alternate with scenes of an increasingly agitated present-day Alex, who imagines a series of increasingly violent deaths for himself.

Then again, are they in fact fantasies, or prescient flashes? Is a threatening car tailing Alex just a paranoid fantasy or a genuine threat? Readers will have to wait until the very end of this hugely ambitious graphic novel to find out.

Moreover, woven into this narrative fabric is a series of imagined moments from two generations ago, a Golden Age of animation, when an earlier Alex made his entry into a much different Babbitt Jones Studio—as imagined by the increasingly despondent present-day Alex.

Loaded with fascinating insider information on two different generations of animators, skipping seamlessly among present and several different pasts, reality and fantasy, Freeway is another step forward for a major cartooning talent.

Abattoir Issue #3
Created by: Darren Lynn Bousman
Concept by: Michael Peterson
Written by: Rob Levin & Troy Peteri
Illustrated by: Bing Cansino, Rodell Noora and Dennis Calero
Cover Art by: Tae Young Choi

Promo copy:

After a local man brutally massacres his family, realtor Richard Ashwalt receives the unenviable task of putting the house back on the market. With his career and marriage on the rocks, this couldn’t come at a worse time for Rich. Before the house is even cleaned, a mysterious man named Jebediah Crone offers to purchase it. Everything about the situation seems wrong and Rich refuses despite his desire to unload the house quickly.

After his boss decides to sell the house to Crone anyway, Richard finds himself a person of interest in a second murder investigation. When the murder weapon with his prints on it is discovered, Richard goes on the run. Tired and haunted by horrifying visions, Richard returns to the house in search of answers. He finds all traces of the massacre gone, including the crawl space where the youngest boy was murdered. Richard tears into the wall and finds a mirror covered in runes, but what he sees in its reflection haunts him to his very core.

Earp: Saints for Sinners Issue 2
Created by: Matt Cirulnick & David Manpearl
Written by: M. Zachary Sherman
Illustrated by: Mack Chater & Martin Montiel
Cover art by: Alex Maleev

Promo copy:

Wyatt Earp, famous lawman, has decided to retire in the wake of losing his brother Virgil in a train robbery. Doc Holliday, Wyatt’s former partner and best friend, convinces him to start his own small casino, the AOK, in the last boomtown in America – Las Vegas. Bringing with them Wyatt’s brother, Morgan, and Doc’s girlfriend, Kate, everything looks to be coming up roses…until Flynn, the biggest billionaire in Vegas, arrives with a private security group, the Pinkertons, headed by one Alan Pinkerton, to back him in "suggesting" that Wyatt should pay them for protection.

Morgan, outraged by this, decides to go on a heist with famed criminal Jesse James, a modern day Robin Hood who steals from the rich to give to the poor after taking his cut, of course. He is captured by the Pinkertons and interrogated, but escapes back to the AOK where Flynn and the Pinkertons pursue him.

In a final battle in which Morgan is killed and the AOK is set ablaze around them, Wyatt rips the shirt from Alan Pinkerton only to recognize the tattoo on his chest…Pinkerton was the mysterious train robber who killed his brother, Virgil.

Dungeon Quest: Book Two
by Joe Daly

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What if Cheech & Chong lived in a RPG?

In 2010’s Dungeon Quest Book One, Millennium Boy decided to grab his hobo stick, his bandana, and his Swiss Army knife, bid his mom goodbye, and head off on a quest for adventure. Joined by his best friend Steve (weapon: baseball bat; clothing: wife beater, cargo pants and sandals), the muscle-bound Lash Penis, and the silent but deadly Nerdgirl, he began a mystical quest to find the missing parts of the Atlantean Resonator Guitar.

In this second book, our heroes continue their quest by wandering through the primeval gloom of Fireburg Forest in search of the prophet and poet Bromedes, who can unlock the mysteries of Atlantis for them. Along the way, they encounter giant spiders, river trolls, and copious amounts of killer weed. Joe Daly’s delightfully unique stoner/philosopher dialogue and distinctive character designs, coupled with hilarious over- the-top Role Playing Game action (complete with periodic updates for each character’s status in ten criteria, including “dexterity,” “intelligence,” and “money”), propel Daly’s story into heretofore unachieved action-comedy heights.

I reviewed Books One & Two for the March 1 Nexus Graphica.

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Millennium Boy, Steve, Lash Penis, and Nerdgirl grab their weapons and journey on a mystical quest to recover the missing parts of the Altlantean Resonator Guitar and to return the borrowed penis sheath to prophet and poet Bromedes. Using role playing game tropes as a template, Daly, creator of the acclaimed Red Monkey Double Happiness Book, illustrates the often twisted reality of the contemporary slacker with little subtlety but from a fresh perspective. Littered with violence, inappropriate sexual innuendos, misguided bravado and infused with hilarity, Dungeon Quest (of which two 136 page volumes are available) promises a uniquely entertaining graphic novel experience.