Ms. Johnni: His Good Wife #1by Patti MartinsonReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Publisher
Credits Grade: 7 As the comic begins, an instructor is teaching a classroom of girls at an abandoned military base. Suddenly a car crashes through as a Punisher-like character shoots the guards up and pronounces to the girls that he fights bad guys.We immediately switch to a birthday party. Johnni is hosting a birthday party for her daughter Taylor. Johnni is in the bathroom contemplating shooting herself with a gun. She chooses not to, but we see why she is considering it. She is overweight, unhappy, unable to relate to her older son Justin and as we see later, she has a controlling husband, Bill. One day, Taylor goes missing. Johnnie is distraught, as the school claims that Johnni had signed Taylor out earlier in the day. Four weeks later with still no sign of Taylor, Johnni gets a lead from Justin, a computer geek, who has discovered a site for missing children. Extra-motivated, Johnni loses weight, learns to shoot and do martial arts. She leaves her husband, telling only Justin and her sister that she is going to look for her daughter. I was surprised that initially Johnni is a pretty unlikeable character. She doesn't like her own son at the beginning and wishes he was never born. However, as Johnnie changes, so does my opinion of her. Johnni's transformation seems natural. The other characters don't get quite that much development, but they are good characters. I also liked the script, and I particularly appreciated some of Johnni's more poetical internal dialogue. One thing that really jarred with this first issue is the cover. The full-color cover itself is very good, showing Johnni obviously as a superheroine in a typical pose. I actually expected the full-color aspect to the pages inside, so it was a bit of a surprise to turn the cover and find the pages in all black and white. I think the cover should match more closely to what the comic contains, as it seems to give the impression that all of the the money went to printing the front and back covers and nothing was left for the other pages. Nevertheless, I was very impressed with what was between the covers. I loved how the people were drawn, the realistic and detailed characters went well with the good script and I was drawn into this world. A good comic, despite the disparity in the presentation of the cover and the inside pages. Written: March 27, 2010
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