Review: Welcome to Tranquility Part Three of Four

Sorry for the short delay. I meant to get this review up yesterday but I ran out of time. In this entry I'll be reviewing Welcome to Tranquility issues 7-12. I'll remind you once again, there will be spoilers. So if you don't want anything spoiled please don't read this entry. These issues were written once again by Gail Simone and Neil Googe did pencils (with the exception of the backup stories).

Gail Simone opened up this story arc by quickly showing the aftermath of what happened in the previous six issues of Tranquility. We see the tombstone for Mr. Articulate and we see our surviving characters from the previous story arc getting on with their lives and it appears the town is mostly back to normal. It also appears we've only gone forward in time only a few days since the sixth issue. After seeing Zeke and Bad Dog in the cemetry talking about the dead Colonel and his graveyard arrangements we see Sheriff Lindo getting ready to leave the town lockup where we see Emoticon behind bars. Emoticon is obviously serving time for his role in the death of Mr. Articulate but he appears to have changed a little bit while serving behind bars. He even shows the Sheriff a little bit of respect.

After leaving lockup, Sheriff Lindo goes to the movies by herself and while at the movies we see the Gen13 team has shown up in Tranquility and Emoticon has been broken out of jail. Shortly after the breakout we find out the town might be developing a bit of a zombie problem.

After meeting our zombie friend we get a few backup stories to help share the history of some of our main characters. We get a backup with Emoticon and Pink Bunny at the diner before he got his emote mask and a second Pink Bunny backup of her fighting and killing Hellkitten after a pretty intense fight. The third one is of little Sheriff Lindo back when she was just a little girl beating the snot out of a boy who started talking trash about Lindo's family. Facing family problems at home and being convinced that the Sheriff at the time is racist, we see Lindo and her sister hotwire Sheriff Presley's (Deputy Presley in present time) personal car. Lindo drives the car off the road and the Sheriff catches up with the two girls and shows compassion and even says he won't tell their mother if they do chores at the police station. At this point it appears little Lindo starts to calm down about her situation and begins to build a positive relationship with the Sheriff.

We also get a story about how Zeke became a zombie. Apparently he was a talented young singer with a guitar that got turned into what he is by a guy named The Host. After Zeke's story we get guess what? That's right, another blast from the past when we find out how Emoticon got his mask. Emoticon tried to rob an old man that has a farm but got caught by the farmer. After being captured by the old man, we see Emoticon reveal that the old man is his grandfather and Emoticon was trying to steal money from him. The old man quickly accepts that he could be Emoticon's grandfather and caused a horrible tragedy that gave Emoticon his mask.

After getting all this wonderful backstory we go back to the present at the hospital where we see our crazy-eyed doctor checking out the zombie body for the Police Department. While examining the body the zombie heals itself and wakes back up attacking Sheriff Lindo, the doctor and the Deputy Presley. Presley basically blew the zombie away and we see The Host visit Zeke at the graveyard after Lindo and Presley debate what Zeke will do with the potential zombie uprising in town.

We quickly see what side Zeke takes as the Host really upsets Zeke by killing his pet snake. One thing leads to the next and after some more backup stories we see The Host visiting Emoticon and his grandfather who broke him out of jail. The Host proposes the three of them form a trinity after Zeke turned The Host down.

While the potential bad guy trinity is talking the hospital, diner and graveyard all become overrun with zombies. The fighting really picks up and we have Maximum Man, Pink Bunny, the police, Gen13 and more all wrapped up in combat with the zombies on multiple fronts. At the diner, Pink Bunny sends her workers to hide and barricade themselves in the walk-in refrigerator while she fights alongside a zombie Mr. Articulate against the other zombies. Unfortunately in the fight, Mr. Articulate literally loses his head and Pink Bunny is quickly defeated.

In the heat of battle, Emoticon decides he needs to change sides and no longer backs The Host or his grandfather. Let's just say the kid finally grew a spine and allied with the Tranquility heroes. The heroes battle the zombies, Emticon's grandfather and The Host and eventually win.

Now for my opinions, first I want to say this was another brilliant installment to the Tranquility series and I will definitely buy future Gail Simone Tranquility stories. She once again left no real holes in the story which is really saying something considering how complex she makes everything with tons of different characters and stories going at once. At the same time, one could argue that she might have tried to do too much (which is also how I felt with her first story arc in issues 1 thru 6) with too many characters. Tranquility is such a great and interesting town with a lot going on but I feel like she uses too many characters that aren't really needed to advance the story.

Zombies are almost always great in comics and this story was no exception. It was especially fun seeing Mr. Articulate and Astral Man back in zombie form. Other things I really enjoyed was learning more about Emoticon, Sheriff Lindo, Deputy Presley and Zeke especially. As much as I enjoyed the various backup stories though, I feel like we got too many of them. It goes back to my thoughts of trying to do too much with too many characters.

Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest) I give this story arc a 9. There were parts I enjoyed more than in issues 1 thru 6 but I thought 1 thru 6 had a more tightly knit story overall. For me this arc beat out the first arc in action and the art was as good as ever (which is expected since Googe did the pencils for all these issues with the exception of backup stories) I just think that where I deduct a point is having all the backup stories and frankly, I felt like the same story could have been told (maybe even better told) with 2 or 3 less backups. Sometimes less is more. I would have been happier if we got more of what was happening in the present and less of what was happening in the past.

I have one review left for the Tranquility series. I plan on doing my review for the Tranquility: Armageddon issue next week. In the meantime, I'll be reading some old mid 90's Wildstorm books including the Gen13 mini series, WildC.A.T.S issues 20-25 and the first Grifter ongoing series (10 issues). Maybe once Tranquility is wrapped up I'll blog about some of Alan Moore's WildC.A.T.S run or the Gen13 mini series. I also plan to talk about Wildstorm's recent announcement about what is being planned for Grant Morrison's Authority and Wildcats runs in the very near future. I'll try and work that into my next entry later this week.