Written by: Adam McGovern
Art by: Paolo Leandri
Publisher: Image
I gave Issue 2 of Nightworld the benefit of the doubt and assumed that it, while not a good comic, was up to something with its use of the dichotomy, a fairly standard literary tool. Now that I’ve finished Issue 3, I can honestly say that I was wrong. Nightworld is just a chaotic mess in the worst way possible.
I don’t even know where to start anymore, so I guess I’ll just quote Nightworld’s own description of Hot Spot: “[A] divinely tragic hipster.” There’s a line between wonderful PR and outright lying, and this one seems to follow the later. For one thing, given his back story in Issue 2, he can’t even be described as a hipster since he’s an anachronistic kid stuck in a demon’s body, and second…how is “divinely tragic hipster” even a set of words?
This month’s issue starts off with Plenluin…Plelunion…Plenleleluno…Plelunlino…Plenilunio! dreaming about his wife, and it’s fairly standard as far as hopeful and cryptic dreams go. This takes up a few pages before our gothic-night-demon thing goes off to fight other demons with Hot Spot.
The worst thing about Nightworld is its dialogue. Every time Plenilunio talks, I cringe because his head is so far up his own nightworld that he’d probably die if he didn’t breathe in his own methane. Hot Spot is insufferable in the exact opposite way. If you’ve read my review of Issue 2, you’d know that none of this is new.
What is new is Plenilunio’s extreme personality change during the long fight scene in Issue 3. He starts cracking jokes that even make Hot Spot frown, and the two pretend they have a witty back-and-forth banter that falls absolutely flat. At one point he accuses Hot Spot of posting something on Facebook because that’s what’s hip these days, and then Hot Spot randomly says, “Grand Theft Auto VI” for no reason whatsoever.
The only highlight of the issue is Hellena (I see what you did there Nightworld), who decides to exposition-vomit her life story for a distraction. Her motives are actually pretty cool, though I’m not sure if that’s an accident at this point. Nothing else about this comic is cool…or good.
This entire comic series has been hard to read, but Issue 3 of Nightworld takes things to a new low level. This was a painful 30-something pages to get through.
