Here's another book that will prompt me to check out its adaptation into feature film, but this is a graphic novel and a surprisingly short one at that. I knew about the core idea of '30 Days of Night', that there are places that contain human beings that are so far north that there's a time of year when the sun sets and doesn't rise again for another month. Given that vampires are often killed by sunlight (an idea sparked by the original 'Nosferatu' in 1922), what better place for them? They can stay out of their coffins for thirty full days of feasting. Beyond that, all I knew is that it became a movie.

Well, this is that, the location being Barrow (apparently renamed back to Ukpiagvik in 2016 after a referendum), a town which sits north of the Arctic Circle at the very top of Alaska. However, there was much I didn't know about it, most of which I won't spoil. What I'll say off the bat is that it was apparently a feature pitch from the very beginning, but it didn't bite so Steve Niles, an American writer, turned the idea into a comic book instead. It ran for three issues in 2002, published by IDW, in collaboration with Australian artist Ben Templesmith.

It's that art that grabbed me immediately, because it's fascinatingly off. There are panels of sheer beauty, so Templesmith could clearly paint in a traditional fashion. However, most of his panels do not care for traditional in the slightest. This art is impressionistic, as if we're looking at everything through fog, snow and slightly warped glass. Some panels are deliberately blurred. Others scream emotion, not through nuance but almost in caricature. When the blood starts to flow, as indeed it will, it's like a firework display of blood packs. This isn't spatter or spray, it's explosion on the level of cosmic horror. And, of course, it's all dark, because the sun's gone.

I can believe that potential readers will love or hate this primarily because of the art. I have to say that it initially took me aback but I'm firmly in the former category. It reminded me of a couple of highly original artists, both of whom have worked heavily in comic books. One is Bill Sienkiewicz, a noted abstract artist whose work can often be challenging but is never mundane. I'll tackle one of his comic books soon in 'Stray Toasters', of which I've only read individual parts thus far. The other is Dave McKean, who I know as much from album covers as comic books, but he's done major work in the latter like 'The Sandman' and 'Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth'.

The story is as thoroughly original as the art, but much of its success is in its core idea, which is one of those things that seems so frickin' obvious that I wonder why nobody came up with it before. Of course, nobody did, which means it's not at all frickin' obvious, except in hindsight. Otherwise, this is such a short book that there's precious little opportunity for Niles to build characters or mythos. He does a good job at conjuring up vampires who aren't like other vampires, even if they share the 'Nosferatu'-inspired aversion to sunlight. However, it's Templesmith who gifts them form.

With so little in the way of plot, I can't really talk much about what happens. Barrow is populated and that means a lot of people for the vampires to feed on, once they arrive. We meet the police first, Sheriff Eben Olemaun and his wife, who isn't initially named, for some reason, given that it seems that she becomes the lead in the sequel series, 'Dark Day's. She's also one of his deputies and she discovers the remnants of all the town's cellphones at the beginning of the book, the first sign that everything's about to go pearshaped. The electricity supply is soon cut and then it's just people and whatever walks in over the tundra.

Whatever turns out to be vampires, invited by Roderick Marlow, as we learn when his e-mails are intercepted in New Orleans, showing that one of those invited goes only by V. He turns out to be a major player in what goes down, but not in any way I expected. Sheriff Olemaun also gets to play a massive part and also not in any way I expected. Credit to Niles for slipping in two clever surprises in a story that's not remotely long enough to warrant that. It leads to a joyously memorable final panel too.

That skimpy length is easily the worst aspect to the book. I'd have happily read the same story at double or even triple the length, to include all the nuance and detail that Niles simply wasn't able to cram into so few pages. I'm especially eager to see the movie now, because ninety minutes has to offer more opportunity than seventy-nine pages. The volume I'm reading feels slim and that's bulked up by eighteen pages of script. In other words, this is a highly worthy book on every front but it would have been even more highly worthy at twice or three times the length.

So to the movie. It turns out that the movie absolutely deepens the story and the characters, with the beginning and ending roughly intact but a few key changes in between. It's a rare example of an excellent book being turned into an excellent movie. How often does that not happen? ~~ Hal C F Astell