"NIGHTS" #1 to 3, Comic Review – Vampire Tale Not Living Up To Its Potential
Image Comics’ new series Nights is pitched as “Fright Night meets Scott Pilgrim”, a phrase which is just as hopeful as it is loaded. Set in a urban-fantasy world where supernatural entities (vampires, ghosts, even talking animals) are recognised as real, albeit rare, Vince Okonma is moves to Florida after losing both his parents. There he lives with his cousin Ivory, who is secretly a mercenary; Matt, Ivory’s gamer friend; and Gray, the local vampire.
Initially sounding like an interesting setup, with a fascinating alternate history to learn about, it never seems to take off and meanders in no particular direction. The first issue introduces Vince on his way to Florida, with vagueness over when and how his parents died, and he’s about to live with a cousin he barely knows and two complete strangers. Through all this Vince seems uncharacteristically fine with his situation. He’s being depicted as shy and awkward, with an artistic mind, a walking cliché of innocent and naïve, but he’s completely bereft of grief, loneliness and fear that he should naturally feel just from the recent tragedy and uprooting he is experiencing at a young age.
On top of this he mentions he has ‘brothers’ in an offhand comment when he meets two of Matt’s friends. There is no further mention of his brothers, and these two friends are never seen again. Meanwhile almost none of the supernatural elements are explained, or are done so in the vaguest possible way. Then halfway through the first issue it skips forward five years. Suddenly Matt is now a ghost, though you never learn how, and everyone acts like it doesn’t even matter. The whole narrative seems avoidant of any world building or character development. Anything introduced is never re-used and everything else is treated like the reader should either already know, or not really care.
Nights has next to no investment in its characters, it barely musters an investment in the two leads, Vince and Gray. Their initial dalliances have the air of toxic manipulation (as Gray basically forces him to commit petty theft, taking advantage of his infatuation), but then the skip forward of five years means we don’t get to see how their relationship develops, as they are suddenly mutually romantically invested. The writer, Wyatt Kennedy, doesn’t seem to want to do the work of developing any of their characters, for all that it looks like a character driven plot. There is also not enough plot development to make the story about the grander events that are foreshadowed, and they haven’t done enough world-building to make the story about the weird alternate world the characters live in.
If they really fleshed it out, they could have brought character, plot and world-building together and this could have been something really special. But so many scenes are filled with nothing of substance and with a persistent air of bland irreverence. This comic is just a shallow, hollow and ultimately underwhelming and confusing journey, with a bunch of characters I couldn’t care less about.
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