iainpj | comickal: welcome to tranquility

This sounds so very very cool!

NEWSARAMA - GAIL SIMONE TALKS TRANQUILITY:

....Welcome to Tranquility, a planned community where super-heroes can retire in peace, without being hounded by enemies and fans. But don’t let Tranquility’s sedate surface fool you. Because when a series of murders is committed, a conspiracy is exposed that may endanger the lives of everyone who lives there. Kicking off in December, Tranquility is a new, monthly series written by Gail Simone and illustrated by Neil Googe.

GAIL SIMONE: ... for the most part, superheroes either die, or get frozen in ice, or are artificially young. They don’t really get old, in the creaky, sometimes uncomfortable, often diminished way that regular people do. So the idea of a town where we’d get to show that phase of their life just seemed really appealing. [...] The story has a huge mystery, and Tranquility itself is very much a small town. It’s deliberately been built and designed to reflect a happier time for these superbeings, and both heroes and reformed villains are welcome. Most of the story is told through the eyes of the female sheriff, Thomasina Lindo, who’s sort of a no-nonsense woman who has grown up with these people and goes out of her way to protect them.

Beyond that, a lot of the retired heroes and villains have children and grandchildren, so the town has a few superpowered vandals and shredders, as well. [...] But of course, it’s a town with a secret. So there’s a bit of Twin Peaks in there, along with the Opie and Aunt Bea.

NRAMA: And then…a murder?

GS: There’s a murder, and there are some secrets. This is absolutely the most intricate mystery story I’ve ever written. If you dug Villains United, there’s a lot of twists and turns like that book had, and lots of saucy violent wrongness, thank goodness.

As I said, the main character is a smart, tough, pretty African-American Sheriff, whose grandfather was the first public black superhero. She adores these people and recognizes them for the heroes they (mostly) are. In return, they adore her, as well.

The normally publicity shy town allows a network reporter to do a story on Tranquility, to show it in the best possible light, and things go wrong from the minute the cameras start to roll, starting with a plane crash and leading up to an unexpected death.

The sheriff’s in over her head, and there are forces who don’t want her to find the truth. It’s fun stuff....

And

thete1, I think, liked Simone's work on Birds of Prey, so hopefully she's good with the twisty storytelling. (You'd kind of have to be to be at all reasonably successful in the Bat stories, wouldn't you?)

I want this. NOW.

(..."first public black superhero." Huh.)