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Wilson, Sean Michael & Stromberg, Hanna – Once Upon a Time in Morningside
Once Upon a Time in Morningside
How much would you get out of returning to your childhood home 25 years after you left? Or did you ever leave? Let’s assume for the sake of this theoretical conversation that you did. What would pop back into your mind when you returned? This comic deals with Sean going back to his childhood home (I assume it’s Sean, as it’s described as being “his most intimate book so far,” but I don’t know whether or not every single thing in here really happened to him) and immediately getting looked at suspiciously because he lingered too long outside of his childhood home (the new owner seems like the suspicious sort). From there Sean goes to a quiet place and lets his mind wander, where he remembers about a half dozen things that happened to/around him as a kid. Nothing terribly traumatic, just little snippets of his life that stuck with him over the years. There’s his chance encounter with a kid from the local boy’s home, coming across a pretty great hut in the woods and smashing it to bits (and what came from that), being so proud of building a small brick wall and the reaction of his grandfather, scaring himself with a friend in the woods after watching a movie about Bigfoot (I think?) and the consequences of running face first into barbed wire, getting an unfortunate present at their fort and how little it did to ruin their day, and trying to hang with the big kids on a rope swing. Each of these tales is punctuated by his current thoughts about it, what he learned from it and questions about whatever happened to the other kids in the story, whether or not any of them still thought about that day. There’s also a pretty great outro that ties the whole story together, but I’ll leave that one a complete mystery. Hanna does a fantastic job conveying subtle emotions, meaning that Sean doesn’t have to write a point into the ground when Hanna can show the same point without a word. I’m curious to see more from both of them now, and this is yet another amazing comic from the Big Ugly Robot people. $6.50
