30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow

The vampires return to Barrow, Alaska, to finish off the witnesses to the last attack. The inhabitants of the town are prepared, but not for every trick the vampires have. As it turns out, both sides have a surprise waiting for them.
I am afraid that surprise was for the characters, not someone who read the middle volume of the trilogy. I still loved the book, especially when its setting was in Alaska. Niles provided a script full of colorful characters and grounded and thrilling action. Still, I felt that Templesmith’s art made the book exceptional, especially during the night battle in the Arctic winter, where he made blurs of color and cartoonish portraitures seem atmospheric.

This issue was a bit "been there, done that."

Once more, Barrow is under attack. We meet some new characters, and some old ones return. The artwork continues to be stunning, and the script is quite good. This issue, all the same, still felt a bit like filler compared to the innovations of the last few issues.

Still worth a read, and certainly hasn't put me off the series. Still love this artwork...

In most movie series, there comes that inevitable installment where fringe characters are suddenly pushed forward and an entire plot is inexplicably woven around them usually in the name of setting things right, vengeance or reading the lost letters/journals/papers of someone who came before them. Return to Barrow is the graphic novel equivalent and only the briefest of cameos from previous primary characters is thrown in to hold this story together.

As you may have guessed from the title, we return to Barrow in this tale where we meet brothers of not one but two the former Barrow massacre making preparations for darkness in Barrow. That's right. Barrow is still a functioning town with inhabitants that now want to fight off the annual show more vampire invasion. I know, I know - you read the previous installments. There are all sorts of silly questions to be answered about town-destroying fires, obliterated power plants and certain vows never to return from the undead. Have you forgotten the main rule of this type of sequel? Okay, I realize in film, it's usually if your original sets still exist, think of the savings by setting another sequel there!, but don't be silly, this is all drawn. In this type of sequel, the rule is time moved on and it's not as if we carved those things we said in stone.

So why go back to Barrow? For a final showdown. Only you and I both know this is no final showdown. It's just a blaze of guns, blood and fire that will lead to more final showdowns. After all, at least one or two bigger characters made cameos in this to keep their options open. You know, in case their big screen careers don't pan out and they need to come back to the franchise at least one more time for a decent paycheck. One can hope that they at least come back at the point where they still have the power to ask for a decent script. If it weren't for Templeton's drawings classing up the joint, things could have been a lot worse. show less

A dignifying end for the first trilogy of 30 Days of Night. But as it happens I read some of the followings books of the series (Bloodsucker Tales and Dead Space)and be warned as far the story gets from the first book and its characters it gets really boring... If I Knew that I would've stopped here.

This is the last of this series I'm going to review because it's the last of the series available in my local public library and I'm not into it enough to purchase and collect (which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it).

Horror is very difficult to do well - on film, in comics, in short stories, or book length. There are so many different definitions of what horror really is for one thing, for another there are there are so many tropes out there that it's easy to be lazy about it.

I love horror done well and am frequently disappointed, perhaps because for me it's very much less about the brutally graphic (you can find plenty of that in your average history book) and very much more interested in the building of suspense and the stuff show more that flits by the corner of your eye and then reaches out and grabs you when you turn away. This means that Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House absolutely works for me while Richard Matheson's similar book, Hell House, doesn't work as well. I'm not denying Matheson's place in the pantheon of horror writers, I am Legend is absolutely classic and scary, it's just that in comparison between the two I like Jackson's ghost story better.

These days the best horror is few and far between, although there are many good practitioners of the genre. I loved House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box; The Shining and 'Salem's Lot still scare me. The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell is horror crossed with the post-apocalypse through way of Truman Capote and Eudora Welty - the writing is beautiful - its zombies more a part of the landscape and less the central fact of the book. [Yes, I know I haven't mentioned H.P. Lovecraft, but I just can't read him. Love the mythos, though.]

In comics there's the inimitable Alan Moore (who is one of the only writers who's ever given me real live wake up screaming nightmares), Garth Ennis' run of Hellblazer, and lots of other good series. Some people say Neil Gaiman's Sandman is a horror comic and sometimes it is, but not always as explicitly as some other series.

30 Days of Night is a good horror comic, although less for the story and more for the setting, idea, and Ben Templesmith's art. Return to Barrow is just that - a return to the original scene of the crime - sadly that makes it less interesting. The writing is decent, but because it's back in the same setting it has some limitations both artistically and as a story line. Same location, same atmosphere, hard not to repeat yourself (and hard not to ask why everybody there isn't dead with repeated attacks each winter).

Having fallen in love with Templesmith's art, however, I'm probably the last person in the world to know about Welcome to Hoxford and his Wormwood series - both are on my buy list.

It's hard to do horror well, but when it's done really well and the noises in the house make you jump it's like nothing else. 30 Days of Night does horror well. show less

* Dear God, why are all the humans walking around with big toes where their heads should be? I'm kind of rooting for the vampires, if only to prevent this genetic mutation from spreading beyond Barrow.

* More jokes, please. 30 DAYS works better when it's not taking itself so seriously.

* Kansas City!

* ... oh, Kansas City.

* I don't think this is a fair representation of Swope Park, okay.

* VAMPIRES WITH GUNS! Scarier than you'd think.

* Stelllllaaaaa!

* This art, though. Easily the most horrifying thing about the book, and not in a good way. Half the time I have no idea what's going on.

This is the third book in this truly creative series of graphic novels. In this one the vampires return to try to finish, what they began in book one. There are some new characters along with some continuing characters, There is plenty of action and Ben Templesmith's art is right on target to convey it. The residents of Barrow , Alaska get some unexepcted help. I liked this book, and the previous two installments by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, very much.