Author: Steve Niles
Artist: Piotr Kowalski
First published: 2018 (TPB)
Contains spoilers
The blurb: Bitter cold, endless night, and hungry shadows: the horror franchise that upended the classic vampire story is reimagined for the modern era!
As the sun sets over an isolated Alaskan township not to rise again for a month a new evil emerges from the shadows to terrorize the town... But after a series of strange events and horrific killings, the question becomes what lurks in the shadows? 30 Days of Night is reborn in an all new reimagining of the series designed to titillate the mind and horrify the senses!
In 2018, we've grown used to a world were (sic) every day brings more bad news, but in Steve Niles' new take on his own modern masterpiece, every day brings only more darkness...and more unseen monsters in the night.
The review: To note, whilst the Trade Paperback was 2018, the comics this was based on were published in 2017.
The original 30 Days of Night had a brilliant premise but was flawed in that, having originally been over 3 comics it was too short and jumped the survival aspect of the survival horror. With a story that started as 30 days’ worth of night fell on the town of Barrow, we saw the invasion of vampires but then jumped to the end of the time period and never saw what the survivors had to go through properly.
For some reason Steve Niles decided to revisit the original story and this time it was over 6 issues. The distinctive art of the original graphic was eschewed for a much cleaner, more traditional style – I suppose to distance itself from the original, but I believe the original artwork suited it better. However the issue with this is not in the artwork but with the story.
Again, we follow Sheriff Eben and his wife (and deputy) Stella. This time, however, it changes the story and Eben is killed before the vampire invasion starts properly. This was problematic for two reasons. Firstly, for the immediate storytelling – Eben and Stella are on the radio to each other, he is looking for domestic abuser Rich Conner and she is out with hunter Walt (who has found a camp in the snowy wastes). This means the timelines are concurrent. Walt shows her the camp and then goes to show her something else and they find Eben’s body – there is no sense of why this should occur in the concurrent timelines. Then Eben’s body vanishes from the morgue – so we as reader know he is a vampire now but… whilst he saves the town in the finale as in the original, he does not turn himself in an act of self-sacrifice that enables him to fight the vampires, rather he simply emerges and we have no sense of what he has been up to. Indeed we don't really know whether he has killed to feed over the 29 days as it is not properly addressed (saying it is getting harder to fight the urges doesn’t cut it, especially when Walt succumbed to them in a matter of hours).
From a storytelling perspective, removing Eben could have allowed a rich exploration of Stella as she leads the survivors and created perhaps a feminist reading of the story. But no… despite having three more issues than the original (and twice the pages in the TPB), this jumps from initial attack (and Marlowe being killed by person unknown – possibly Eben) straight to day 29. It doesn’t even do a lazy montage to cover the days. This was the opportunity to turn the original brilliant but flawed story into a classic but they botch it. 4 out of 10 reflects that what we have is mostly competent but there is an issue with the storytelling round Eben’s death, it compounds the flaw of the original release and misses a massive opportunity around Stella’s story.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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