“The legend says that even the tiniest fragment of a vampire contains the essence of the whole… that no matter what is done to us… we can always come back… with a little blood… the right blood.”
TITLE:
DARK DAYS
SERIES:
CREATORS:
by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith
GENRE:
Horror Fiction, Graphic Novel (Collection), Adventure.
DESCRIPTORS:
Vampires, Monsters, Secret Societies, Small Towns, Isolated Towns, Survival, Sheriff and Deputy, Night, Predator, Prey, Winter, Militant Group, Author Tour, Revenge, Lost Loves.
SUMMARY:
Sixteen months after the vampires destroyed Barrow, Alaska, Stella Olemaun leads a small group of fellow survivors to Los Angeles to promote her book 30 Days of Night. She wrote it to draw the vampires out into the open so she could prove their existence.
In L.A. she meets Miss Judith. Her son Ali died getting photos of the Barrow massacre, which she has on CD-ROM. Stella also encounters a vampire called Dane. Dane had Eben’s remains dug up and brought to L.A. in a bid to avenge his friend Marlow’s death. Unfortunately Dane’s courier is intercepted by the Lilith, the powerful vampire wife of Vincente who begins her own bloody quest to avenge her husband’s death.
When Dane finds out that Vincente, not Eben and Stella, killed Marlowe, he begins to form an alliance with the ex-deputy. He explains how he intended to use Eben’s remains to restore him, still a vampire, back to unlife with blood and then kill him in front of her. Suddenly, Stella has new hope.
However, the agents of Lilith move in on Stella and her band of vampire killers. Dane suudenly finds himself siding with the humans against the vampires. However, with Stella’s crew destroyed or turned, will even Dane’s help be enough?
APPEAL:
The pacing is quick although the story slowed down for me a couple of time when I failed to understand the artwork that I was seeing. The painting, very stylish and evocative, occasionally got in the way.
The characterization was a lean, dealing mostly with Dane and Stella, the protagonists in the story. Stella is far more predatory than before and she revels in it. It was interesting that Dane is a vampire who reigns in his monstrous nature. His reasons for doing so were fascinating. However, while Stella and Dane are interesting contrasts, Stella and Lilith are two sides of the same coin — interesting foils for one another.
There were multiple storylines, but the story always came back to Stella. Dark Days was told in 3rd person past tense, limited view point with only a sprinkling of captions.
Dark Days works better if you’ve read 30 Days of Night because of the many references to it. In fact it opens up with an extended working of the last scene in 30 Days of Night
READALIKES:
Like 30 Days of Night, the sequel Dark Days is a dark, twisted and visually grotesque graphic novel. This kind of over-the-top graphic novel horror is popular these days. However, if you like the 30 Days of Night series you should try Steve Niles’ graphic novel hard boiled detective series about Cal McDonald, a hard drinking, pill popping wreck of a human being who puts his body and sanity on the line to save humanity and a hidden pack of friendly ghouls from the monsters who prey on them.
You can also try Dan Brereton’s The Nocturnals series. Doc Horror and his daughter Evening hopped from their doomed reality to another one where the horrors are hidden and the mundane humans rule the world. Over the years Doc Horror managed to carve out a new life in the criminal underworld and then as an underground hero combating a morally bankrupt company involved in genetic splicing monstrous slaves> Then the doom that destroyed his world suddenly shows up in his new home.
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