Night Club #5 (of 6)

COMICON

Night Club has been an immensely engaging and entertaining hybrid of a comic with it’s winning mix of joyous teen superheroics that faithfully recaptures the amped up energy of comics like The New Teen Titans and The Young Avengers while also borrowing heavily from gothic horror. Oh, and the spectacular art by Juanan Ramírez really helps sell these aerobatic adventurers immensely. But, that all changes with this penultimate issue. This new issue shifts the spotlight onto the would-be super heroes’ mentor and one-time cop, Detective Nick Laskaras, and an issue that leans more into its horror credentials than any previous issue, with darker hues to match, courtesy of colourist Fabiana Mascolo. It’s the secret origin of the vampire detective and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything in revealing the nomadic gang of vampires we have bumped into in previous issue have a large part to play in his turning. And in turning him we witness the cruel joy this macabre motorbike gang take in doing so. You can’t help but hope these vile vampires will be taken down hard and violently come the end of the series. And, if anyone can do that with with style and panache, it’s writer Mark Millar. Once a cop, always a cop, and so we have the gaps of Laskaras’ backstory filled out, as well as more on the criminal cabal of vampires too, especially the enigmatic Bloody Mary, the mummy-like ancient vampire they’ve been carrying around with them when we first met them a few issues back. By the end of this engrossing issue we are left in no doubt to this vampire gang’s savage nature and don’t-give-a-f**k attitude. And, after a shocking jump-cut of a scene you won’t see coming – and more – the scale of the dangers facing our young vampiric heroes are larger than they probably expected and certainly sets up one Hell of a finale to come. And so that joyous energy I referred to at the start of this review is most definitely wiped out with only the horror of the situation remaining, like a bloody stain on a vampire’s mouth.

Un Cómic Más

Mark Millar delivers a painfully shocking plot twist and reveals everything we need to know to understand what trouble Danny, Sam and Amy are in for, the recklessness of adolescence being destroyed by reality. Art It is full of details and many deaths, where it changes the color tones of the narrative to differentiate the present from the flashbacks.

Lyles Movie Files

Last issue didn’t work out so well for the club. In the aftermath of their confrontation with another pact of vampires, Danny and his friends were humbled and humiliated. That was before they had a building collapse on them. Things go downhill as Det. Laskaras is pissed Danny’s actions have threatened his cover. And somehow things manage to get even worse. Laskaras explains how he got caught up with the main vampire crew led by Gunner John. Writer Mark Millar is always good about establishing menacing villains and Gunner John’s gang might be some of the baddest bad guys he’s created in the Millarverse with creepy and disturbing origins. Laskaras is running out of options and getting desperate enough to consider bringing Danny’s group in his plot to take down Gunner John — unless things go completely sideways. If you’ve read a Millar book before you know how bad that can get for our neophyte heroes and their mentor. Juanan Ramirez’s art is very clean and packed with emotive characters as they make sense of their latest predicament. Ramirez brings a certain horror movie sense of direction to his art keeping characters in shadows for maximum dread effect and otherwise fostering tension in a way that would make for an easy transition to a Netflix series. Colorist Fabiana Mascolo has to use restrain for a gory, blood-filled title so it doesn’t lose its impact. That restraint pays off to make the issue’s big moment highly effective. The rest of the issue finds Millar fully stacking the odds against the Night Club, who are so outmatched and ill-prepared for this showdown it’s almost laughable. Only thing is instead of laughing people are dying. It sets up a heck of a mini-series finale and with Big Game imminent there’s bound to be some ties to the huge Millarverse crossover.