Review: 30 Days of Night #6

Darryll Robson Darryll Robson
Contributor
June 15th, 2018

Lifetime reader of comics and fan of Planet of the Apes. When the two combine I can barely contain myself. Image, Boom and Titan comics fight for shelf space with Doctor Who DVDs.

Review: 30 Days of Night #6
Comics
0
Price:
Continually Impressive

Reviewed by:
Rating:
4
On June 15, 2018
Last modified:June 15, 2018

Summary:

A superbly written narrative with magnificent art work. The series has continues to impress month after month and the final issue is no exception.

Price:
Continually Impressive

Reviewed by:
Rating:

4
On June 15, 2018
Last modified:June 15, 2018

Summary:

A superbly written narrative with magnificent art work. The series has continues to impress month after month and the final issue is no exception.

Coming to the end of its run, 30 Days Of Night #6 is released this week and it finishes off the re-imaged classic vampire tale. Our contributor, Darryll Robson, takes a look at the final issue to see if the venture has been a success.

This month IDW Publishing invites you to get your teeth stuck into the final issue of the vampire epic, 30 Days of Night. It started the year on a high and each month the creators have pushed the storytelling and the horror, producing an impressive ongoing comic.

So, no real pressure for the final issue.

Synopsis

The town of Barrow has been subjugated to 29 long days of torture and death. The sun is finally on the brink of rising but before it does, a new Vampire has turned up. A leader of strength and standing, and is far from impressed with the gang of ruthless animals who have run riot through the streets of Barrow.

Stella watches helplessly as her fate hangs in the balance.

The nightmare is nearly over but will anyone survive to tell the tale?

Credit: IDW Publishing

Analysis

The final issue of Steve Niles' 30 Days of Night is a roaring, bloodletting, fast paced rollercoaster of a ride. After introducing Vicente at the end of the last issue, the vampire who instantly inspires subservience in the collected pack, the central point of leadership begins to shift. Although Vicente might seem like the new focal point of the vampire massacre, Niles uses his introduction as a catalyst for chaos to reign. A lot happens in this single issue.

And that is the weakest point of the comic; too much happens in a short space of time, so much so that the reader barely has time to adjust to the sudden narrative swings before something else is happening. The twists and turns begin to pile up and the importance, or emotional impact of these events, become lost beneath the raging violence and gore. A story element which has been coming since issue 1 arrives with a small amount of fanfare but it doesn’t have time to flourish and the character moment is lost as the story rushes towards the final page.

This is a shame because the development arcs of the few central characters has been the driving force behind the success of this comic and made the narrative such a good read up to this point. Stella especially has grown organically from the deputy of a lazy town into a survivalist in an unimaginable world. For her story to be wrapped up so quickly, without much explanation or time to dwell on the emotional impact of her month in hell, is a shame. There needs to be an additional issue dedicated to her adjustment, post vampire apocalypse.

Other than this single complaint, 30 Days of Night issue 6 is a rollicking, action packed read which for the most part doesn’t disappoint. The major battle against the vampires in the end is as brutal as the reader expects and is somehow more violent than the vampires rampage through Barrow.

Credit: IDW Publishing

Piotr Kowalski’s artwork is packed with energy. He shifts the view point from panel to panel to capture the full athletic fighting style of the vampires: this isn’t a ground based, punch ‘em up. At no point does Kowalski hold back on the gore, filling each page with blood and dismembered body parts.

Add to this Brad Simpson’s superb colouring and you get an unrelenting series of sequences. Simpson switches the cold moments of tension, as the characters square up to each other, to red hot panels of violence. There is one sequence in particular where the colouring creates the pacing for the scene. A sudden shift from one colour to another is an initial heart stopping beat but this is followed by a slower transition of the colour wash from blue to red via a deep purple. This gives the reader a sense of timing as they slowly watch the character in the panel painfully die. The initial attack was fast but the death itself is slow.

This is the type of brilliant story telling that I have come to expect from this comic over the last 6 months.

This final issue of 30 Days of Night is a wonderful read and a satisfying end to the series. I only wish that there had been more time to devote to Stella in these final moments as her emotional story seems to come to an end too soon.

As a re-imaging of a comic, this has been a creatively outstanding success. Niles and co have taken a familiar story and twisted it just enough to breathe new life into it.

Darryll Robson is a Contributor to ComiConverse. He has a much underused Twitter account: @DarryllRobson, and his own website comiccutdown.com where he writes more about comics.

Credit: IDW Publishing

30 Days of Night #6

  • 4

Continually Impressive

A superbly written narrative with magnificent art work. The series has continues to impress month after month and the final issue is no exception.

(Visited 155 times, 1 visits today)

Comments are closed.

İstanbul escort mersin escort kocaeli escort sakarya escort antalya Escort adana Escort escort bayan escort mersin