It has been 18 months since the whole of Nights changed.
(Oh, and four months since the great prequel arc, FYI.)
With Grad Nite intended to be a celebration for Vince, it ended up with Samhain attacking and throwing Santo Pedro into complete chaos. From there, our young hero was attacked, Ivory/Roggenwolf was infected, and Gray ended up giving over control to her “inner monster/demon” to save the day. Only the day actually ended with the town in absolute ruins, Ivory tragically dead, and Vince in a coma post-vampirification.
So, ya know, another wild and crazy party in these here parts.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
The massive time gap between issues would be an obvious and likely killer deficit for other titles. But Nights’ team (writer Wyatt Kennedy, artist Luigi Formisano, colorists Francesco Segala and Gloria Martinelli, and letterer Maria Letizia Mirabella) are real smart. Heck, they even start the issue with a flashback to the funeral of Vince’s mom in a device that clearly touches on the long wait and even the nature of serialized storytelling. (Plus, even with Ivory gone, his presence remains central to this book, and that bond with Vince is a form of gravity across this entire story.)
From there, the team keep things deliberate as Vince wakes up and meets with Keish (Ivory’s girlfriend) for a much-needed recap. And that’s yet another brainy move from the creators — perhaps it’s a little added exposition than what we’ve been mostly used to from Nights, but their exchanges didn’t just update us, but emphasized the deeply personal nature of this book. If ever you get truly lost, just turn to your friends and neighbors.
Of course, that takes us to where we’re actually at in the story. Following “season one,” Santo Pedro is basically an island, and the travel ban that’s been established (and general sense of haunted abandonment) is a real nice choice. Not only aesthetically — this little Floridian burg works great as a war zone, and the ruined suburban magic really hits close to home — but as a kind of barometer for where the story is at (read: everyone is doing poorly).
Courtesy of Image Comics.
Vince, meanwhile, isn’t just a vampire but he’s got that false leg to still manage, and this is yet another instance where the physical (his longer hair, thematically appropriate skeleton hoodie, etc.) tells us so much of the specific struggles here. The fact that Gray is markedly different looking — and super jacked! — is another great shorthand for the despair and anxiety that she’s clearly dealt with in recent months. Their lives are a wreck, but everyone also got a makeover!
It makes sense they’d all be in varying states of struggle/denial — their life post-Grad Nite has been doubly hellacious. But the creators still take time to bust out adorable Gray-Vince visual gags and even a hefty panel of their enthusiastic hugging. It’s sort of why we started with a funeral: Yes, things are clearly quite bad, but our characters are dealing with it in important, life-affirming ways. Maybe not as best as they could, but they have each other, and that emotionality and connection are what we seek from Nights above so much else.
Yes, even more than all of the monsters and geeky jokes in the world, Nights is really about finding your family through the muck of the universe. And as they struggle in this “new” world, Gray and Vince can come together to find a balance within one another, a moment that cuts through all the noise to remind us what’s really important. In that way, it’s also how Nights can deal with its delays and bring us back into the fold in genuine record time.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
Of course, Gray and Vince don’t get to spend too much time together in glorious reunion. (That’s what Nights is also about: The world can only be so good for so long, so you better learn to live with that.) Without revealing too much, Eda (another supernatural badass whose maintained a subtle enough presence) rears her head. And boy howdy is it a surge of drama and then some. (Maybe I’m still acclimating, but I believe she’s also with Chimera, and it’s clear Gray isn’t done with that part of her life.)
Eda’s grand arrival is a chance for the creative team to really have fun with more big battles. We’ve gotten some truly solid scraps across this entire series, but the clash/clashes in #19 may be my favorite across Nights. There’s such a huge swell of force being facilitated, and that’s another shorthand for how deadly serious it all is (and the blow-off these characters need). Plus, there’s lots of space being played with — like people thrown across barren fields — that feels like a nice balance with how personal this issue feels and how a little intense action can go a long way in balancing a story.
But the Eda clash also gives us a different perspective into the ever-evolving face of the Gray and Vince relationship. That pairing has always been protector and protectee (respectively), but this new clash reveals that the dynamic may have changed. On one level, it’s interesting from a lore sense — like, where is Gray’s inner demon, and what happens if it has actually left? It’s also just what we need to “spice up” the book’s main coupling.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
Not that Gray-Vince don’t have a rich and interesting relationship; rather, it has to reach new challenges and foster other conversations if it’s going to mean a damn in the long-term. It also seems like the kind of editorial decision to honor the destruction and chaos that has come to wrought, and to make it so the changes are so much bigger and significant than we’d ever imagined. It means that everything is really quite different, and we can focus more on that and less on our immersion back into this world.
I will say, despite my sustained fanfare with this book, it took even me a couple minutes to get my bearings as I trekked across Nights #19. That as much as that “bug” can instead be seen as a feature to embolden our return into this world, it’s also a lot to ask of an audience. Still, the thing that makes me really like this issue is that it’s very much putting Nights where it ought to be.
Sure, some of our “family” have left. (Matt is still in Japan — or is he?!) But this latest chapter feels a lot like the book’s early days: we’re in a strange place; there’s two people clearly in love dealing with it all (more or less successfully); we absolutely have a mystery around a monster/demon to contend with; and there’s plenty of growing pains to still be had. Everything looks quite different, but the more things change, the more Nights feels deeply familiar but exciting.
If this is the start of our “second season,” I expect further change that’ll rattle our collective bones.
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