30 Days of Night by Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of 30 Days of Night
Book Review: Mixed Bag
Summary: 4 Stars
Story: A.
The concept is awesome and a lot of fun. The story is interesting in and of itself.
Writing: B-.
However, the actual writing is kind of average, if not below average. The writer came up with a great idea, but dialogue and characterization, that he didn't do as well.
Art: A+
If you love dark, moody art, this is the story for you. It's absolutely gorgeous and very expressive. Individual pages and panels can be blown up and displayed on your walls. It's beautiful.
Storytelling: B-.
On the other hand, the downside of this really expressive and moody art is that it can be really confusing. A lot of the characters end up eitherr looking the same, or in certain panels, look completely different from how he or she looked before. I guess that's the trade off. Great looking pages and panels, but as sequential art, it can really throw off the story telling.
I'd buy it if you have money to spare, and if you want to look at great art without the burden of a heavy story.
Book Review: Best vampire idea ever.
Summary: 2 Stars
Steve Niles, 30 Days of Night (IDW, 2003)
30 Days of Night was already a cult hit when it got optioned for film (and got David Slade, of the recent and deeply disturbing Hard Candy, attached as a director). Now, expect it to explode. But does it deserve to?
I'll say this: it has the potential to be a great, great movie. Niles has come up with an interesting story, though one that needs a good deal of fleshing out (which would explain the existence of a number of sequels); we meet certain interesting characters for a very short amount of time, and then never see them again, and there are all kinds of fun things that could be done with the plot. And the desolate, windswept plains of Northern Alaska as a setting... okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.
The setting is the desolate, windswept plains of Northern Alaska. (Bet you couldn't guess that, huh?) The town suffers a month-long darkness every once in a while thanks to the rotation of the Earth (think of this as the flipside of Erik Skjoldbaerg's fantastic film Insomnia). Just after the sun sets and ushers in one of those month-long nights, the town is attacked by a band of vampires. The local sherriff and a band of survivors have to fend them off until the sun rises again.
This is a very good premise. A bit more fleshing out, and you could have a great story. However, the artwork is mediocre in its finest moments, and it doesn't have many finest moments. And with the art making up so much of the experience of a graphic novel, it's tough to recommend this one.
As I write this, release on the film is set for October 19, 2007. (Keep checking IMDB, and watch the way release dates get played with over the course of a year.) Perhaps we'll see that potential realized. **
Book Review: A Movie Pitch of a Comic
Summary: 2 Stars
As many have commented, this graphic novel owes absolutely everything to its concept. Basically it can be boiled down to your classic one-sentence movie pitch: "Vampires invade Barrow, Alaska in the winter when the sun won't come up again for a month." And really, given the extremely poor effort put into following through with, you know, an actual plot, I sometimes wonder if Steve Niles was really ever that interested in the comic or if he was making a play for Hollywood all along. (He's worked in the industry before, as a sound mixer for 2002's "Picture Perfect".) So it's utterly unsurprising that the movie IS, in fact, already being filmed for a 2007 release, and will feature Josh Hartnett and Melissa George.
I'd heard so much critical buzz about this book for months that I finally had to pick it up, and sadly, my respect for critics has now been seriously diminished. The art is murky, self-indulgent, and confusing, reminding me of some of the worse excesses of Bill Sienkiewicz from back in the day. The character designs are sloppy and often you have no way to distinguish one vampire from another, which is a serious drawback in some of the scenes where key bad guys are fighting each other.
And there's utterly no investment made in any but two of the human survivors, not even to the cliched level of the WWII combat movie, where at least we had the stereotypes of the country rube, the Italian guy from the streets, the bookworm, the college boy, and so forth. Here we just basically have Victim 1, Victim 2, et cetera.
This is just a colossal disappointment all the way around with nothing to recommend it but the brilliance of its concept. Of course, it's spawned several sequels already, so what do I know?
Book Review: It was a dark, dark night...
Summary: 4 Stars
It's a perfectly horrible story. And it's a perfectly wonderful tale.
"30 Days of Night" is the brainchild of Steve Niles, who pondered the notion of a town in northern Alaska, where the sun sets for a full month in wintertime. What place would be better for a gathering of vampires, after all? It seems like an obvious idea, but I've never run across it before -- and Niles has certainly given the story its due.
The novel begins on the last day of sunlight, when two police officers in the small town of Barrow find the remains of everyone's cellular phones. Shortly after the last sunset, the communications junction, where all phone calls and computer signals are routed, is destroyed. The people of Barrow have no way to contact the outside world. And then the vampires stride into town. They are horrible, and hungry.
Niles has crafted a brilliant story from a concept I'm surprised no one has thought of before. It boils with potential, and if anything, Niles' treatment of the story is too short. It seems the idea could have been fleshed out to fill a much longer novel. But maybe not; "30 Days of Night" pops with energy as it moves quickly through Barrow's month of darkness. Perhaps a longer tale would have dragged.
Ben Templesmith provides the art that accompanies Niles' vision. It's dark and gloomy, appropriately so. It's ugly, which is also apt for the horror involved. It is, perhaps, too rough-hewn at times -- in some scenes, it's hard to discern what exactly is happening -- but for the most part it suits the tone.
"30 Days of Night" is a brilliant piece of storytelling, and fans of the vampire genre should certainly add this to their collection. I'll be curious to see how Niles or others run with this idea, now that it's seen the light of day.
By Tom Knapp, Rambles.NET editor
Book Review: Good story, good art to match
Summary: 4 Stars
Not great, maybe, but good.
The theme is vampire - the creatures that feed by night on their human cattle. But what if the night goes on and on?
Good suspense, good characters and development, and an artistic style that carries the mood. It's a nightmarish visual style and a limited palette (black, white, and blood red), but it works. Recommended.
//wiredweird