Existing in shadow thriving in night, a terrifying serial killer stalks the streets of Savannah, Georgia --- one whose brutal
signature draws the attention of other denizens of darkness, for better or worse. The truth behind these killings is about to be revealed --- a truth that has dire implications for the very future of the mortal world. Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s 30 Days of Night has too much to savor than most to be treated as the equivalent of a dessert. Quite simply, it’s a tour de force in that it opens with premise that co-opts nature in the service of the horror. The small Alaskan tow Barrow has alternately a 30-day period of continuous day and night. The story takes place during the latter. Vampires flock to the town for their own perverted version of Ramadan involving non-stop feasting. The cold effects their senses and offers the protagonists --- sheriff Eben Olemaun and his wife Stella – a standing chance to withstand the onslaught. With an introduction by Clive Barker, the graphic imagery and pace of the piece is relentless as the fate of our hero becomes inevitable. The sheer force of its attack of course does not cancel out the subtler virtues of the comic that draws much from
writer Niles’s obvious affection for the form but without abandoning any critical faculty to its practice. To paraphrase the opinions of Sandman creator ad writer Neil Gaiman, the writing of a comic demands a poet’s brevity as it does a prose writer’s natural aptitude for plot. Niles is adept at providing enough but not too much. But , then again who would need to say much when an artist of Templesmith’s caliber is your collaborator. A visual artist as well, Barker commends Templesmith but quips that the art of the comic ain’t pretty. Although one may agree that the visual style of the graphic novel isn’t what you might think of immediately as “pretty” there’s a terrible beauty on full display here and ably evokes the Siberian gradeur of the setting. Anyone who belies the notion that the horrific isn’t and couldn’t ever be
beautiful would d o well to take even a cursory look at many masterpieces or world art. From Hieronymous Bosch to Sir Francis Bacon, it seems that what scares us is more of a constant that what we find beautiful. Not surprisingly, the comic is now a Hollywood film that horrified the theatres.