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!

– Publisher’s Blurb

Right from the off. It’s clear, that despite appearances as a top-flight preparatory school, the Morning Glories Academy, has much more sinister side, when an escape attempt by a current student has a deadly outcome.

Why would you need to escape in the first place? Well, that’s a question the six new students, plucked (well… essentially kidnapped, to be honest!) from around the world, soon learn. The professors at the academy, it seems, will stop at nothing to control these new students. Wiping their families’ memories, so when they contact home, they know nothing about them, to the abduction, torture and murder of at least one set of parents.

When that doesn’t work, they try to break them by sealing them in a classroom and starting to flood it with water…

What links them all, other that their date of birth (which is the same)? Why are they there? Just what the heck is going on?

Well, being the first volume in the series, you won’t be surprised to learn there are more questions asked than answers given. But what you end up with is a thoroughly enjoyable start to the series, where you can have fun trying to pick out the clues and piece them together.

To do that, there are times when we the reader, appear to know more than the characters, but this ‘knowledge’ isn’t always necessarily given in context and there’s always the risk Spencer is pulling a double bluff, deliberately steering you in the wrong direction.

The six main teenagers that make up the cast, fall into the typical slots you’d imagine, however Nick Spencer’s writing and Joe Eisma’s art, manages to steer clear of bland stereotypes, and quickly flesh out a bunch of likeable, individual characters. (Well maybe Ike, isn’t so much ‘likeable’ as enjoyable…

The artwork, itself is vibrant, and crisp, which perfectly suits the youthful feel to the comic.

All-in-all, an engaging and enjoyable start to the series and I’m really looking forward to the second volume later in the year.

Buy: Morning Glories by Nick Spencer, Joe Eisma & Alex Sollazzo from The Book Depository