The book that put Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith on the comics book map. If I remember correctly, the story goes that Steve and Ben decided to work on something inbetween another project. They had a couple of months to kill inbetween stuff and so Steve had this idea. Strange how the simplest ideas sometimes take off in ways you honestly didn’t think or dream could.
So what’s this idea you ask? Well lets set a vampire story (usually this makes me fall asleep straight away as I’m not a vampire fan in general) in a town called Barrow Alaska, where the sun is down for 30 days. I can honestly hear the penny dropping from where I am right now.
The story is set in a town called Barrow, Alaska, where we follow the coming of night with Eben and Stella Olemaun, the law enforcement faction of the town. Meanwhile a nuch of shady characters (read: the vampires) are discussing what an absolute treasure this little town is, because for 30 whole days they can feed without any interruption whatsoever.
This was originally a throwaway idea. Steve couldn’t have imagined how it took off with people, but I guess it was so simple and yet so genius. Having a good idea on it’s own isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on if the characters that convey the story don’t have heart to them. Steve shows and develops the two title characters and a few of the vampire characters extremely well, in the short span of a 75 odd pages. The dialogue is actually very sharp, and the narrative doesn’t take me out of the story as most books would. It’s also nice to see that Steve isn’t employing the whole movies on paper analogy that seems to be the norm with comic at the initial time this was released.
75 pages, that it you ask? Well no, to beef the book up the guys have also included the first script from the series as well at the end. Makes for an interesting read, and as always it nice for everyone to appreciated the level of skill it takes a person to convert those words into pictures that work well. Speaking of which.
From my part I think that the book wouldn’t have been as insanely successful for the team (going from an original 3 part mini-series to spawn several follow-up books and an ongoing series) if it wasn’t for Templesmith’s haunting artwork. And I guess that part of the whole equation that makes this book work so well, the haunting artwork.
I’ve got to admit that this was the first time I’d actually seen Templesmith’s work (although coming to think about it at the time, 2002, the guy hadn’t done all that much stuff anyway). Ben’s got a very similar style to the work of Ashley Woods, except Ben gets his work out there a lot more and a lot faster. Many would argue that is because he relies on colour and photoshop and not enough on his pencils and backgrounds. I can see that argument, however Ben uses those other elements in new and exciting ways, because he handles the whole lot. This is a very important point to make. While other artists might rely on an inker, a colourist, Ben handles everything, since essentially colour is part of his style. He uses thing to create atmosphere. Knowing the importance of colour and how we all perceive it that’s a very powerful weapon in an artist’s arsenal.
It would be a disservice to the fine boys at IDW if I didn’t mention the book production. This graphic novel is something that is honestly worth owning if only because of those production values (honestly how often will I be making this claim?). The reason is simple, they’ve gone beyond the call of duty or at least what we’re used to being called the call of duty. It’s a trade paperback where they’ve included those really cool flaps on either end of the book. Not necessary but definitely elevates them in the first instance above the rest. The paper stock is unbelievably thick and glossy, which again is a very good thing. Makes each page worthy of tearing out and framing it. Finally the cover spot colours is also a fantastic way of presenting elements of the book. This is how all trade paperbacks should be formatted, or at least books that have something extra. This is effectively the royal treatment of a trade paperback.
So to recap, I hate vampire stories in general because they simply don’t work for me, however this book breaks all those barriers that even a person like me could honestly enjoy greatly. The artwork is raw at times but that’s exactly the correct kind of artwork to associated with this type of story. It doesn’t happen very often that the complete package is worth every penny you’re spending on it.
Writer: Steve Niles
Artist: Ben Templesmith
Letter/Design: Robbie
Publisher: IDW Publishing
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