Customer Reviews

Welcome to Tranquility VOL 01

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Ever wonder where superheroes go when they retire? Yeah, I hadn't either. But I do think it's a great idea for a comic. Luckily, Gail Simone and Neil Googe did think of it. Imagine Watchmen crossed with Twin Peaks with a little dash of Grumpy Old Men for good measure, that's about what Welcome to Tranquility is like.

Tranquility is the small town where old World War II era superheroes went to retire and raise families. Some have forgotten how to use their powers, other's still cling to their past glory. There's some great characters here: Mr. Articulate, the suave, sexually ambiguous spy. The decomposing Crypt Keeper-esque villain who spouts macabre puns. Emoticon, a gangsta whose mask always displays his mood in instant message type characters. The squad of angst-filled goth superteens.

A great start for a series. In this first arc, including issues 1-6, as well as the Wildstorm preview, one of the town's heroes is murdered in broad daylight in a crowded restaurant, with no witnesses. It's up to the town's non-superhero female sheriff to solve it.

If Tranquility falters, it is in its sometimes unevenly shifting tones from parody to low-brow comedy to straight violence. Some of the ideas also owe a lot to previous works, most obviously Watchmen--especially in the use of classic comicbook designs for flashback scenes. But it's a fun book and a promising start for the series.

I'm not a huge fan of superhero comics, but this one is not your normal superhero comic. Tranquility is the town where superheroes and supervillains go to retire and escape from their former lives. Here they live, recount old tales, raise families, and exist as mostly normal people. Not much happens here...and then, one day, a murder occurs. And then others follow. It's up to the sheriff, the daughter of a former hero, to solve the crime and protect the town. Will she be able to solve the murder before the town is torn apart? Or will the world be destroyed first? Turn the page and find out...

It's an interesting story concept--Superhero's and supervillains living together in supposed harmony, even becoming friends, and growing old together. But...there are some plot holes. At times I turn the page and wonder if I've missed something. Such as who the sheriff's father is. Or who some of the characters are that show up, like the young teen heroes (apparently they used to be on TV?) Some of it gets revealed as the issue continues, but it creates for some "wha...the heck just happened here" moments. It's a decent enough of story, but feels like it could have been arranged a bit differently to present a more cohesiveness. The artwork is decent enough, nothing really spectacular or amazing stands out about it, but it does work well for the story.

In short...it's an interesting addition to the superhero genre and does have some creative, entertaining characters...and even with its faults I'd still recommend it. I look forward to reading a future volume and hope that perhaps the story telling is a little bit better in it.

Welcome to Tranquility falls well within the "superhero community" genre also covered by Astro City and Top 10, but also into the "quirky town" genres explored by the television shows Eureka, Twin Peaks, and Northern Exposure. The plot is a fairly standard murder mystery that offers a few twists, but is saved by reasonably strong characterization and Googe's dynamic frames and character art.

After Watchmen shattered all the barriers of how human superheroes could actually be in comics, all bets were off. In the past two decades, we've seen super beings be all things to all people, in a way.
So it's not exactly groundbreaking that Welcome to Tranquility envisions retired superheroes living in a California town. That's not what makes it so intriguing; what so fun about it is writer Gail Simone's effortless way of making superheroics seem so normal and so interesting at the same time. She's a veteran of the genre--check out her great work in Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey, and The Atom for wonderful proof--and here she creates a world within a comic book world.

In Welcome to Tranquility, Tranquility, California, is home to a vast collection of empowered beings, known as "Maxis," who relive their glory days. Some old rivalries and bitternesses still survive, though, a fact that rears its ugly head with the murder of a longtime hero, Mr. Articulate. Mr. Articulate is a bit of a dandy, and a fine and proper gentleman. He has a slightly complicated relationship with the local sheriff, Thomasina Lindo. Sheriff Lindo makes it her mission to solve the crime--which occurs during a huge brawl at a lunchtime eatery.

Welcome to Tranquility is set in a comic book universe (that is to say, it isn't as firmly entrenched in the "real" world as, say, Watchmen), but it makes it known that superheroes are not the perfect ideals carved out in traditional comics. As a publication of Wildstorm, an imprint of DC Comics, Welcome to Tranquility is part of a larger universe, and it makes reference to it in the form of mentions of current Wildstorm heroes.

There's no need to be a regular reader of Wildstorm books, or even acquainted with it at all, but those who are will get the references the book makes. Without that knowledge, though, new readers can still enjoy the book. Simone does a nice job of balancing humor and straightforward mystery, and that's all anyone picking up the book really needs to know to get hooked.

Artist Neil Googe is a find as well. He's a relative newcomer, and seeing him paired with Simone here is a treat. He's got a straight, clean style that's light on background details but is so crisp and clear that it enhances the storytelling of the book.

A second volume collecting several issues of Welcome to Tranquility has also been published, so readers who like this book can find more. In addition, Simone has indicated she will continue the series in six-issue increments (each trade paperback collection contains six issues). It will be interesting to see where Simone takes Welcome to Tranquility in the future. With her keen eye for human and superhuman interaction, and the genuine warmth and spirit that shine through in her writing, Welcome to Tranquility could be a series that grows and grows for a long time to come.

-- John Hogan

Really damn good. This book parodies, and deconstructs golden age hero comics, while spinning a yarn that surpasses any other Gail Simone that I've read (and I am a fan). I really can't help but compare it to Watchmen in it's basic design. It's a mystery, and a character study in the way Moore's work is. If you've read the comic classics (the ones that everybody tells you to read) and want more of the really thoughtful, insightful, and clever comic stories, then I'd recommend this wholeheartedly. I can't really say enough good about it.

Welcome to Tranquility is an interesting concept. Superheros of the past who've fallen out of their glory (or Minxy who insists on reliving it in her senile mind) and live "normal" lives in a town practically secluded from the public eye.
It mixes in themes of humor, political un-correctness, greed, death, love, and highlights a struggle between youth and old age (literally and figuratively).
I am not familiar with any of the Wildstorm universe, but I think this is a great story by itself for someone who isn't familiar with it, or a gem for someone who is.

Ever since Kurt Busiek invented Astro City, comic writers have been setting their stories in that narrow space where the world of superheroes and supervillains intersects with the ordinary human world. Simone's contribution is the small town of Tranquility, where costumed heroes and a few reformed Bad Guys go to retire and raise families. The local diner, where Judge Fury (now the mayor), Bad Dog, and the others chow down on the fried chicken platter, is run by the Pink Bunny. If you do the math, the fact that these people -- most of whom aren't "super" at all -- fought the Axis in the 1930s and `40s makes them much older than they look. But that's not bad art, as it turns out, it's part of the larger plot. There are some nice bits, like the little accountant-looking guy who can't remember the magic word that turns him into Maxi Man, and the billionaire ex-child hero of the air who keeps inventing new aircraft -- and crashing them. And the tongue-in-cheekiness is fun (especially in the reprints of "original" comics featuring Tranquility's denizens), intimating that the reader shouldn't take all this too seriously. The best part probably is the gang of new-style teenage "heroes" on the goth pattern, offspring of the more traditional heroes, who call themselves the Liberty Snots. But the narrative has way too many gaps. I kept turning back, thinking I had skipped a page. And the character who ties most of the brief one-issue plots together (and is therefore the most developed) is Thomasina, the sheriff, and the granddaughter of a costumed hero but apparently quite human herself. The art, mostly by Neil Googe, is okay but unremarkable. I kept thinking that this new series would have come out much better in Buziek's hands.