Gail Simone and Neil Googe, Welcome to Tranquility (Wildstorm, 2007-). $2.99, monthly.

by Jared Gardner

Let us state the obvious first and then move on. Welcome to Tranquility reveals more than a passing indebtedness to Fables and Watchmen; indeed, despite the aging superhero theme, the debs run deeper to the former than the latter. From the Buckinghamesque illuminated manuscript layouts to the Willinghamesque pleasure in the politics of the imagined community, the book begs the comparison. Fortunately, in the world of comics criticism we can acknowledge such debts and move on quickly, as we have been doing ever since the Golden Age embarrassment of D.C.’s lawsuit against Fawcett’s Captain Marvel. Because the day we start making borrowing, riffing and covering a sin in comics is the day we have nothing to read but Superman. Repetition is not the problem with comics, any more than it is with the Blues. It is the stuff and substance of the form itself—the repetition-with-a-difference that makes the magic, particularly in superhero comics. And Welcome to Tranquility has magic—and surprises—to spare.

The opening story arc is an easy but well-turned setup for introducing a complex community of characters, politics, and geography of the unique storyspace of Tranquility. A member of the retired superhero community, Mr. Articulate, is murdered, in broad daylight, in front of the town’s sheriff and several of his closest friends. What follows is an old fashioned whodunit of the kind in which Mr. Articulate himself used to specialize (as we know from the splendid flashback pages to the earlier comic adventures of our main heroes). As the arc unfolds, we learn about complex motivations, debts, and secrets, and Tranquility is revealed to be a superpowered Wisteria Lane. And when the storyline is finished, it is handled with all the satisfying cleverness one would expect from a fine writer like Simone.

What was most surprising, however, and what I did not expect from the series, was that it would get considerably more frenetic after this strong opening. In fact, I picked up the last issue (#6) of the story arc with the mistaken impression that it was a miniseries. But things were just getting started (and of course there had to be an army of zombies, all-but de rigueur in the world of comics these days). The “origin” issue (#8) was a blast, and I can only hope for more along these lines. With a cast this size, there are many stories to tell. But before we learn about how they all came to be who and where they are, it would be nice to have a better sense of who these people are on their days off. In fact, if I have one major complaint with the book thus far, it is that Tranquility could take the time to live up to its title: to give us a sense of what the day-to-day of the community was like before everything went (quite literally as it turns out) to Hell. As Simone has scripted the series, everything falls apart from day one and then things only gets worst. Fables always gives us a resting point between the stories, where we get to see our denizens of Fabletown in their everyday lives, figuring out how to raise flying wolf babies, how to make the transition from one administration to another, how to relax and enjoy themselves after a brutal war. Eleven issues in, and we have never seen the folks at Tranquility at rest for even a moment.

Which actually brings me to a minor complaint, arguably a subset of the first. I don’t mean to sound like the genre police here, but do we really need all this satan and zombie stuff in a cape story? I’m all for the generic hodgepodge, but it would be nice to get the genre straight first, to see the powers at play. I don’t want to press this complaint too hard, because I get what Simone is after here, weaving the classic superhero stories with the E.C. horror comics of the 50s, and I think it works. But it will work better if everything slows down a bit and has time to unpack itself into this charming little town.

So once Satan is banished, the zombies returned to their final resting places, let’s spend some time playing with the idea of growing old with powers and dignity. This is a book that has the legs for a long run. It doesn’t need to try so hard to prove that a comic about greyhaired superheroes can be exciting, funny and (yes) sexy. So as soon as this war is over, it is time for some well-earned tranquility.