Finally for this week, WildStorm moves away from its programme of revamping old properties with a curious new ongoing title, Welcome to Tranquility.

It's a classic one-line pitch: a retirement village entirely full of old superheroes (and the occasional old supervillain), some in questionable states of mental competence.  The beleaguered sheriff has to try to keep some sort of order in the place.

It's a comedy, obviously, but this sort of subject is actually very tricky to pull off.  For one thing, it's full of old people, who are rarely a draw.  For another, we're doing jokes about senility, and there's a fine line there.  I shudder to remember the awful BBC sitcom Keeping Mum, a hugely ill-advised attempt to entertain the nation with allegedly hilarious tales of the lighter side of Alzheimers.

Gail Simone is writing this book, and she has the tact to pull it off.  It helps, of course, that she's writing more outrageously absurd characters - poor Minxy Millions still thinks she's the loveable child star of a Golden Age comic, complete with War Bonds advert.  But it's allowed to be a slightly sad moment as well, and if you can get two completely opposite reactions out of the same scene, you've got to be doing something right.

The artist is Neil Googe, who used to be one of the people behind Com.X.  He's best known for his book Bazooka Jules, which set new standards in the field of absurdly large breasts, bore a disconcerting resemblance to Tank Girl, and somehow still managed to be rather charming.  He's toned down some of his excesses since then, and he's a great match for this material - bright, crisp and clear.  Thanks in large part to colourist Carrie Strachan, this is an all too rare example of a book where the sun is shining and everything looks just great in small town America.  It's got all the darkness it needs in the concept; the art needs to be bright and sweet, and so it is.

It's a curious thing that the superhero genre has become so well established that it now spawns mutant books like this.  And interestingly, books like Tranquility never play on what modern superhero comics actually do; instead, they play on the well known, established principles of the superhero genre that are known to the general public who watch cartoons and go to see films.  Very few people seem interested in doing the superhero genre straight any more; but for the most part, everyone is still working around the same implied theme.

I have no idea where a book like this might actually go, but Tranquility makes a strong enough impression with the debut issue that I'm prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt there.  (Besides which, it's Gail Simone, and she certainly knows what she's doing.)  Enjoyable stuff.

Rating: A-

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