30 Days of Night

If you like this graphic novel, you probably won’t like anything I have to say. I have a love/hate relationship with graphic novels because I grew up reading them, but I have little patience for them now. Often, to me, they seem to be a cop out of writing with talking heads and a couple overhead shots detailing the scene so it doesn’t have to be shown in each picture. Other times they are loads of aerial shots with a few spurts of dialogue. A 150-page graphic novel takes me thirty minutes to get through because the art is rushed, copy pasted for effect, too plain, or like I said earlier…it’s just talking heads.

In reference to “30 Days of Night,” I think the artist and the writer surely had a plan or pretended to have had one. The cover up for it would be the excerpt at the beginning stating the art is rushed for a reason and backgrounds lack any significant detail or structure. I see this as an excuse for sloppiness.

A graphic novel should be visually stunning as well as well written. The writing didn’t grab my interest, so the art needed to compensate but the sloppy style he used for the comic doesn’t work for me long term. In comparison to the illustrated Clive Barker stories, these felt like storyboard art, or the rough draft of a project never completed. They look nice sometimes as individual pictures, but beyond one artsy picture here or there it is just—bleh. They’re repetitious, flat, inconsistent, and conceptually plain. The disclosure statement had me ready for detailed eyes in each shot, and instead it was a messy scribble with a dot to show how wide-eyed and scared characters were. It didn’t do what it was trying to. I don’t think I can say it any clearer.

Obviously, I’m the odd one out because I’ve heard of this graphic novel over and over, and it’s probably made them tons of money and such. That’s fine. But story-wise I find it predictable and unoriginal. Maybe this is because I’m reading it after I’ve seen or read things inspired by it. Never saw the movie. Maybe I’d like it better. I just didn’t buy into the ending and how the cop was able to change all the vampire’s minds about the main guy in an instant. I also thought him burning up in the sun at the end showed selfishness rather than something sadly romantic.

I'm going to cut it short since I don't have anything good to say about the story. I don't really want to ramble on too long about it. I'm sure a lot more people enjoy it rather than dislike it. 

I dunno, maybe I was tired so it clouded my judgement. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯