I'm not what you call a huge horror fan, in comics or other media. For every Near Dark or Sixth Sense that I love, there are a hundred Halloween sequels or Silent Night, Deadly Night where the only thing I find scary is how much money and time someone managed to waste. Good horror comics are even harder to find, as I think the medium doesn't lend itself well to scaring people unless you can absolutely captivate them. And that's what Niles and Templesmith have done here. They start with a strong yet simple premise, a town without sunlight and a band of hungry vampires, and slowly build up the tension, until the big reveal at the end of the issue. Niles gives us likable and believable protagonists that we feel for and a situation we can sympathize with, and Templesmith provides moody (if sometimes not easy to follow) artwork that helps creep the reader out.
Niles first really gained my attention with Fused, and I was impressed at how he managed to make the players in a relatively outlandish plot feel so down to earth and real. He does the same here, because while I can't easily imagine living in a town where the sun sets and doesn't come back up for 30 days, it's pretty simple to relate to a couple sharing some time together and teasing one another. In addition, the small town setting, an ideal setting for horror, comes through very well in Niles's script, and it's easy to see how a group of vampires could so easily complete the isolation that is at the heart of small town life.
On the artwork front, the book works largely because moody and creepy is called for, and Templesmith delivers that in spades. The final page is chilling, and the kind of visual that can potentially give a reader nightmares, which for me is the mark of a good horror story. I also loved his use of color, particularly the spots of red against a black and white backdrop that stood out as blood and danger and all that good sort of symbolism.
Templesmith's artwork is of the less storytelling, more mood school, however, which isn't generally my cup of tea. I'm not a fan of Ashley Wood's interior work for the most part, and it took me a long time to even build up an appreciation for Mike Mignola, so this is more a failing of mine than of the story, but those who enjoy more realistic art may have a hard time enjoying the book. I thought that there were moments when the visuals weren't clear enough to really carry an important moment, honestly, but Niles does a pretty good job of clarifying any story points in his dialogue, which helps considerably. Robbie Robbins should also get credit for a clever use of fonts to distinguish the vampire's unearthly voices, which builds up their creep factor even more when they begin to appear, one by one, in the town.
The bottom line is that good horror comics aren't hard to find, and 30 Days of Night is shaping up to be a great one. While there are a ton of good vampire stories in film and books, the number of great vampire tales in comics can be counted on one hand. If 30 Days keeps up at this rate, it will definitely add one onto that small number.
