CREDIT: Image Comics
Rating: 4/5 – Horror Mixed With Tragic Romance and a Touch of Humor.
by ComicSpectrum EiC Bob Bretall.
The look of this book is clearly inspired by Jack Kirby, but if you’re going to pay homage to the storytelling style of a comics creator, why not start at the top with the ‘King of Comics’? Adam McGovern & Paolo Leandri weave a high-energy tale of the demon Plenilunio and his quest for the Soul Key, something that provides a hope of salvation for his lover Lidia.
Let’s start with Leandri: Nightworld is his creation, and he dives right into this dark world with the awesome splash on pages 2-3 that shows Plenilunio’s sleep tormented by a host of phantasms. His art is in the style of Jack Kirby in the best way possible, capturing the heart and kinetic action of Kirby’s work, and the story has the creativity that I could see being embodied in one of Kirby’s creations, but this is all new and didn’t feel derivative to me.
Adam McGovern is credited with helping Leandri develop the series and also provides the script. His words are a perfect compliment to the art. Just the right amount of bombast and grandiosity for Plenilunio’s narrative captions to evoke an earlier era of comics, but does not feel dated. The story depicts strange supernatural realms of nightmare and the fiery landscapes of Hell itself with clean, simple lines and fairly traditional page layouts that kept the story flowing for me from the 1st page until the last. Add to this the colors by Dominic Regan that I thought really complemented Leandri’s art and set a great tone for the overall story and we got a total package that was very entertaining.
As I was pulled into the Nightworld and carried along through the issue I felt the enthusiasm Leandri put into his art on every page. The marriage of Leandri’s art with McGovern’s words created a world that came alive for me. It’s stylized instead of hyper-realistic, but that made the depictions of the weird dreamscapes work all the better. Nightworld is a horror comic mixed with a tale of tragic romance and a touch of humor blended in to lighten the mood and crank of the ‘fun factor’ of reading this comic. I’m looking forward to #2!
Reviewed by: Bob Bretall
(bob@comicspectrum.com)
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