30 Days of Night Volume 3: Return
to Barrow
written by Steve
Niles
illustrated by
Ben Templesmith
IDW Publishing
(2004)
ISBN
9781932382365
It's
been over a year since I read DarkDays,
the second volume in the 30Days of Night series,
so I figured it was about time I hopped back on the bandwagon. After
the first two graphic novels impressed me, I had some really high
hopes for this third book.
Barrow is rebuilding, though it's a shadow of its former self, still
heavily scarred from the murderous rampage of a vampire clan that
descended on the remote Alaskan town. The new sheriff is the brother
of a murdered resident who is skeptical about the stories of vampires
and wants to find out what really happened to the town and his
brother. Well, it takes no time at for him to figure out that
vampires are real, because the vampires are back in Barrow.
Apparently, vampires hate loose strings. Stands to reason,
considering they've been able to exist for centuries without
detection. Barrow is as much a symbol of their potential ruin as it
is an easy meal. Still, the vampires throw themselves at Barrow
haphazardly, without organization or focus, until an FBI agent
recently turned arrives with a desire for self-preservation--and
revenge against the humans that would see him destroyed.
The initial setup for this book was great, and I was really looking
forward to how Barrow would be depicted in the aftermath of what it
went through, but this was a bit of a disappointment for me. The
artwork is, again, top-notch. Templesmith does such a superb job of
capturing the ferocity of the vampires and the desolation of an
arctic landscape, every page was a treat to pore over. But there
really didn't seem to be a lot of meat on the bone when it came to
the story and these characters. The plot felt very rushed and often
times like an abbreviated version of the first graphic novel. A
couple of secondary characters, namely the deputy and the surly
hunter, got a bit of the spotlight, but they didn't seem to have a
really important place in the story, like they were there more for
atmosphere than anything else. And with a lot of the mystique removed
from the vampires in the first two volumes, the threat they presented
in this book didn't feel nearly as imposing.
The book was a fun diversion over a weekend, but I found myself
wishing I had the fourth volume to read immediately afterward just to
see if the pace and depth of the story might increase. I dunno, but
it seems like this third volume is one that readers could afford to
skip and not risk missing out on anything hinged too tightly to the
main story.
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