By Night, Volume 1 Review (John Allison, Christine Larsen)

I’m a huge fan of John Allison’s Giant Days - I read a lot of comics and this one is, in my mind, the best comic in the world - but strangely everything else of his I’ve read outside of that title, like Bad Machinery and his Shelley Winters one-shots, is mediocre at best. Unfortunately, Allison’s latest series, By Night, is firmly among his lesser efforts.

I don’t have any truck with the story: a couple of twentysomething friends find a portal to another dimension and venture through to make a documentary about it - very Stargate-derivative. It doesn’t help that the other world is unimaginative and generic - basically fantasy-lite with orcs, vampires, werewolves and talking animals - or that that’s all that happens in this book. They find the portal, they kinda putz about with cameras and lighting in this other world, then leave. There’s one other storyline that’s barely touched upon - the missing industrial magnate - but I couldn’t have cared less about that. I was so bored reading this.

A big part of Giant Days’ success is the wonderful core trio of characters. By Night hasn’t got anything like that. I didn’t find Jane and Heather’s friendship to be convincing - if anything, Jane seemed pissed off at Heather almost the entire time - while Barney, Jane’s co-worker, is a needless and contrived add-on and Heather’s dad, Chip, is a dull flatline. There’s no chemistry in the group. Chip also has a cliched backstory: high school football star, injured in his final year, married his highschool sweetheart, settled down, etc. Really, John Allison? I thought you were better than that, dude.

Allison’s sparkling dialogue was the only highlight though none of the jokes landed and the girls at times sounded distinctly British and not American at all (“You’ve really got my Irish up!”). Did not enjoy Christine Larsen’s blocky art one bit.

If you’ve never read John Allison before, I highly recommend starting with Giant Days instead of this or anything else he’s written, and I think any Allison fans thinking of checking this series out should lower them expectations drastically! By gum, By Night is disappointingly dull!