30 Days of Night, Volume 1 by Sam Kieth

Published April 17, 2012.

Author website.

Fright-master Steve Niles returns to the creation that launched his career for an all-new 30 Days of Night series, with warped genius Sam Kieth handling the art duties. Features an all-new cast of characters being introduced to the world of 30 Days of Night for the first time!  (netgalley.com)

I always love a good comic and it's 30 DAYS OF NIGHT so how could this go wrong?  It didn't but that doesn't mean I'm a super fan now either.

This is actually the first 30 DAYS story that I've read so I know I'm coming into it pretty late.  I've seen the movie but I'm pretty sure it doesn't do the comic justice.  So my ignorance aside I did like the story about the website host trying to find vampires and biting off more than she could chew, pun intended.  And the vampires turning on vampires conspiracy going on.  It was all very intriguing and it definitely got me interested in wanting to read more.

But I was kind of turned off by the art.  I just felt it was substandard and didn't provide the story the additional oomph that I think far better artwork would have garnered.  I didn't think there was much depth to the drawings and they ended up being mediocre compared to others that I've seen.  Frankly I'd expect better in such a popular series.  It could have been my on-screen reader.  I did have some issues setting it to a decent-enough size to read the text well enough but it didn't appear to be affecting the images too much.  I'm pretty sure the images were kind of off all on their own.

As a noob to the whole 30 DAYS OF NIGHT series I liked what I read in this volume.  I was interested in the whole works before but I'm even more so now.  Not thrilled with the art, like I said, but it wasn't enough to turn me off the work entirely.  Just kind of blah in comparison to the rest of it.  It's got it's gore, it's horror and for this uber-vampire fan (of the non-sparkly variety) it had the fangs.  I absolutely appreciated that.  A must-read for any true vampire fan that appreciates that vampires are rather ruthless and should probably be feared more than lusted after.

Ban Factor: High - Gore and vampires.  Lots of gore and lots of vampires.  And backbiting, of the literal and figurative sense.  Not nice at all.