Niles' 30 Days of Night

I love vampire stories, as long as they don't involve vampires that sparkle. 30 Days of Night, a graphic novel written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith certainly provides the kind of vampires that aim to tear humans apart and feed on their blood, which is a vampire story I can totally get behind, but I did have some issues with the story.

First, let me say what I did like. The graphics are fantastic. Templesmith illustrates some beautiful bloody scenes, gives us great closeups on the vamp teeth, and captures more emotion than the dialogue did with the facial expressions of the characters. The images are captivating and create a wonderfully dark atmosphere. Along with the images, there were a couple lines I definitely loved. In the beginning we get the introduction that says, "The climate of Barrow is arctic. Temperatures range from cold as shit to fucking freezing." I love that opener. It's humorous and sends the reader straight into the bitter cold of the setting.

There were a lot of great general ideas that I was interested in throughout the book. The whole

Templesmith's fantastic artwork!

concept of this little town where the sun doesn't rise for 30 days is a fantastic premise for a vampire story. The vampires, image wise, were creepy, and I would have liked to have seen that develop more through the dialogue or exposition, but it just didn't seem to get there for me. Everything was a bit rushed throughout the plot. The sheriff injecting the blood of the vampire into himself to save his wife and the people of his town was another awesome concept that I enjoyed, but again it seemed rushed and I just did not feel enough tension or drama to really get into what was happening.

The dialogue was not my favorite. It had such potential, but many times the lines felt hollow and stiff. Where was all the emotion in this super-tense situation? Other times the lines seemed over dramatic, again I think because the emotion and tension were just overall lacking.

However, I see there are others in this series of graphic novels and I certainly wouldn't mind checking them out to see how the story evolves. There's so much potential here, but it seemed like overall there just needed to be more development, especially in the case of the vampires. They were interesting, and I liked how they laughed at crosses and it was tough to kill them, but otherwise their attitudes were a bit stereotypical and I wanted them to be scarier.

As said, there's definitely great potential here, I just had trouble getting into this first book. Here's hoping the others crank the tension up!