30 Days of Night: A modern classic horror comic book

30 Days of Night by Steve Niles (story) and Ben Templesmith (art)

30 Days of Night is an excellent horror comic by Steve Niles with quite creepy art by Ben Templesmith. After a short introduction by Clive Barker, we are taken to Barrow, Alaska on November 17, 2001, the last day the sun shines before there are thirty days of night, which, if you think about it, would be just about perfect for you if you were a vampire with some serious allergies to the sun!

The story opens with Eben, a sheriff in Barrow, meeting up on the outskirts of town with his cop wife who has discovered all the missing cellphones in town: They’ve been gathered in a pile and burned, the first step, we soon learn, in an invading party of vampires’ advance into town. The husband-and-wife police team is then called to a restaurant to deal with a stranger demanding alcohol and raw beef. When he doesn’t cooperate with Sheriff Eben, they take him to jail, where he will antagonize the sheriff before bending the bars of his cell and stepping right out into the open to threaten them. Though they are able to neutralize this first threat, they will soon be confronted by a sight that will make them aware of the fact that more is going on in town than they had first realized.

Meanwhile, a mysterious group in New Orleans has been alerted to the proposed gathering of vampires in Barrow, and they decide to send a delegate to take pictures with a live-feed camera and come back alive if at all possible. He is not sent on a rescue mission. There are to be no “heroics.” But this secondary group of people interested in the happenings in Barrow add to the plot, which is mostly straight-forward.

Marlow, the leader of the vampires, invites a senior vampire to Barrow to witness his discovery of a place where thirty days of feeding is possible without threat from humans. Since the vampires do not have to sleep for thirty days, they do not have the usual risk of humans finding their sleeping places during the day and executing them while they sleep. This senior vampire has a surprising reaction to Marlow’s plans, and his presence there will escalate the action for the few remaining humans who are somewhat successfully hiding from the vampires since the cold disrupts the vampires’ sense of smell and ability to hunt.

I do not want to spoil the story, but it is filled with plenty of gore and action, and the real stand-out part of this comic is the art by Ben Templesmith. He is known for his horrific art on other titles, including some of his own, and it more than serves the purpose here in 30 Days of Night. It gives the book its disorienting feel, and if the plot can be seen as somewhat simplistic, the art more than makes up for it. 30 Days of Night is now a modern classic horror story.