Review: Welcome to Tranquility

Welcome to Tranquility issue 1, “Fade to Grey” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, February 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 2, “Snake in the Grass” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, March 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 3, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, April 2007, 23 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 4, (untitled) by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, May 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 5, “Too Much for the Man” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe (artist), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, June 2007, 22 pages of strip, US$2.99

Welcome to Tranquility issue 6, “Fade to Grey, Finale” by Gail Simone (writer), Neil Googe and Billy Dallas Patton (pencils), Neil Googe (inks), Carrie Strachan (colours), Travis Lanham (letters) and Ben Abernathy (editor), Wildstorm Productions/DC Comics, July 2007, 21 pages of strip, US$2.99


Welcome to Tranquility provides a new wrinkle on the superhero genre. Or rather, lots of wrinkles, because the town of Tranquility contains a large retirement community of superheroes (or “maxis” as they are called here), among whom the story is set.

That presents writer Gail Simone with a challenge, because these old characters are also new ones, with no actual backstory to draw upon. She largely avoids the lazy route of making her characters avatars of well-known originals (apart from the Captain-Marvellous Maximum Man and the one-eyed war hero Colonel Cragg). Instead, their past is established right here in the series, with pages of pastiche golden-age comics, along with other ephemera – “trading stamps”, TV listings magazine articles and the like – interleaved into the present-day narrative.

Simone and Googe also use similarly digressive panels to establish elements of their scene. The first issue builds towards the murder of Mr Articulate, who always wears a blue rose in his lapel, at the “Chick ‘n’ Go” restaurant. Before we get there, panels have incongruously featured the Chick ‘n’ Go logo and even one of its menus, while blue roses have spread through the panel gutters, prefiguring the end of the chapter. There is rather less of this in later issues, either because the creators felt that familiarity with the locale had already been established, or because they were unhappy with the effect.

Simone uses her reliance on supposed third-hand accounts for another purpose too. Because, initial appearances to the contrary, this is no fairplay whodunnit. Mr Articulate, himself a hero of fairplay mysteries, leaves behind a traditional cryptic clue. But the only person who understands it is the murderer. And Mr Articulate’s own cases were less clearcut than we might suppose, as the out-of-town thug the Emoticon points out.

The Emoticon’s mask reveals his true feelings at all times, making it almost impossible for him to lie. In Tranquility, only the baddies tell the whole truth. “Comics lie,” says one of the villains, admitting it only after being unmasked. And that includes the very comics we are reading. The heroes are living a lie, or at least hiding a truth. Even the sheriff, not a maxi herself, and for the most part a straightforward and honest type, ends the story by concealing another character’s part in it.

This theme of untrustworthiness permeates the comic. When maxi-heroine Pink Bunny suddenly takes sides against her husband, Mayor Fury, it seems inadequately explained by the events and words we have seen. The insinuation is that the apparently happy marriage presented earlier is another of Tranquility’s deceptions – but that insinuation emerges only from the atmosphere and context of the story.

There are some mis-steps. Five panels showing ants fighting while characters discuss the idyllic nature of Tranquility is four panels more than needed to establish that there are conflicts beneath the surface. Simone and Googe sometimes take their misleads a little too far. In this panel, for example, we see aviatrix Minxy Millions wreathed in Mr Articulate’s blue roses (a symbolic appearance – they are not literally there at the scene). But there is no relationship between the two characters at all in the rest of the series.

Neil Googe’s art is not really to my tastes, but is well-suited to the story. His combination of big-foot character design with comics-realist detail and shading works to animate the most physically aged of the elderly maxi population. It may also be useful if later story arcs bring in characters from other types of comic, as it could accommodate anything up to and including funny animals. In that respect it has much in common with Shane Oakley’s style on Albion. The pastiche pages are not greatly different in basic drawing, but are differentiated by simpler layouts and the use of flat, faded colour with benday dots.

Ordinarily, I would have picked up an issue of this series, seen that I liked it and then waited for the trade paperback collection. But as yet, no such collection has been solicited, and with sales figures very low, I was worried that it might never appear. That would be a shame. The first six issues of Welcome to Tranquility form an interesting and entertaining story that reads best as a single piece. Read this series while you can.

Update, 1 June 2007 DC has now announced a trade paperback collection, due in December.