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VAN HELSING'S NIGHT OFF
Recommended (8/10)
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Top Shelf Productions
Writer/Letters: Nicolas Mahler
Price: $12.95 US |
I'll be first to admit that I don't get into a lot of foreign comics work. I can recognize the greatness of, for instance, Lewis Trondheim, but his minimalist, silent style just doesn't engage me in general. On casual flip-through of Van Helsing's Night Off, I worried that the same might be true of Austrian cartoonist Nicolas Mahler. However, while there are some strips in this book that I either didn't get or didn't find all that funny, there's an off-kilter, funny sensibility throughout that is quite endearing, and several of the strips made me chuckle. Mahler's work is entirely silent, which is what makes it work for an English-language audience as well as it did for a German-speaking one, and his style is very minimalist, defining characters through a couple of abstract characteristics like giant shoes or a big hat, and this works in the book's favor, giving it a childlike innocence that gives way to a wickedly clever sense of humor.
Each of the short stories in this book establishes a new character from the familiar realm of horror movies and books. The Wolfman, Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, the Mummy and of course monster hunter Van Helsing, as well as Mahler's own Masked Avenger (who bears a striking similarity to a supernatural-hunting Zorro) are the cast of characters. Each of them gets a solo strip that sort of establishes their baseline personality, which is a mixture of horror tropes and unexpected twists on their personae for comedic effect. The vampire gets so drunk he can't remember which grave is his. The masked avenger uses his vigilante profession as a way to meet women. The mummy is sort of a hard luck case. I'm kind of amazed at how much personality Mahler conveys in these silent panels, none of which have facial expressions or even much in the way of physically demonstrative bodies.
Even more fun is when Mahler, having introduced these characters, starts mixing them together under the classic Universal studios titles like "The Mummy meets the Wolfman" which then gives way to an utterly domestic, mundane story. That juxtaposition alone is funny, but there's also some fun chemistry between these characters. My favorite encounters are between the masked avenger and two of the monsters, both of which give way to running gags that end with a very funny punchline. It's kind of funny how so many of the stories revolve around normal situations, like drinking in a bar or staying at home. The funniest strips for my money, like "The Vampire," "The Invisible Man" and "The Man with Two Heads" revolve around the bar, and both of the "Wolf Ma'am" stories revolving around a man married to a werewolf made me laugh as well.
While I'm generally very impressed with Mahler's ability to effectively characterize and tell stories with a very, very minimal style, there are some stories that could have used some clarity. I never quite got the storytelling devices he was using with the mummy, which meant that most of the mummy strips were more or less a loss for me. In addition, while I got the sense of Frankenstein and his personality from the visuals, I couldn't always tell what I was supposed to be reading from the stories that he was in. So there are some misses in this book as well as some hits.
However, in general, Van Helsing's Night Off is a light, funny read. It's not something that will induce belly laughs, but it's likely to leave the reader with a smile and a pleasant impression, and it's a very different kind of storytelling than I'm used to. Those with a fondness for the work of Lewis Trondheim would be well-advised to see if Mahler's style suits them as well, and Van Helsing's Night Off isn't a bad piece of work to sample in that regard.
This comic book was not among this week's new releases.
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