‘The Night Eaters’ Is A Slow-Burning Graphic Horror Classic

Writer Marjorie Liu and artist Sana Takeda are more than tellers of stories: they are makers of worlds. Their New York TimesNYT
best-selling, multiple award-winning graphic novel series Monstress was one of the most imaginative fantasy universe constructions of this century, grandiose in its ambitions and intricate in its detail. For their new work, The Night Eaters, with book one published today by Abrams Comic Arts, they take a much more intimate and subtle path: one that seduces the book’s protagonists (and the reader) into an altered reality rather than plunging headlong into a fully constructed society. The effects are even more dramatic, and the work even more impressive.

The Night Eaters Book One: She Eats the Night, follows two Chinese-American twins, Milly and Billy: young adults struggling to keep their restaurant afloat while dealing with their parents, Ipo and Keon, who are in town for a visit from Hong Kong. The twins, on the urging of their parents, acquire the property next door, a creepy rundown house with a gruesome history, overgrown with vines and full of scary shadows that might be something far worse.

The relationships between the family members drive the story. Ipo is a sour, never-satisfied, dominating mother constantly sucking on cigarettes and castigating her children for their disappointing lives. Keon is the ultimate laid-back dad, sunny and supportive, happy to pitch in and even willing to counterbalance his wife’s negativity once in a while. The tale of how this unlikely couple came together is the real heart of the narrative, with flashbacks of their courtship and the twins’ harrowing childhood interspersed with the increasingly weird goings-on in the current day.

Eventually, the two strands of narrative blend together with some startling revelations that draw the curtains back on Liu and Takeda’s true worldbuilding ambitions, setting the stage for subsequent books in the trilogy. The explosive climax pays off the deliberate pacing and mounting tension of the story. It stops readers in their tracks, forcing them to reconsider everything they’d read and assumed up to that point.

Elevating Liu’s supreme command of character, tempo and storytelling nuance is Takeda’s sympathetic art. In Monstress, Takeda’s backgrounds and details of the fantasy world were so spectacular as to almost be a leading character in the storyline. This made for gorgeous pages, but also a high cognitive load to process the complexities of both the story and the artwork. I assign Monstress in a graduate class in visual storytelling, and each year, students return with new insights and nuances buried in the complicated folds of the imagery.

The Night Eaters presents a surface every bit as beautiful as Monstress, but much simpler in its approach. Takeda’s line-and-wash style combines the readability of manga with painterly mastery of light and color. Close inspection of each panel reveals a wealth of detail achieved with light overlays of hatching and transparent layers that create subtle variations in dynamics. This exactly complements the narrative tone Liu sets in the story and makes for a smooth reading experience.

The Night Eaters seems targeted at the lucrative young adult market, but extends far enough in either direction to engage both mature readers and precocious teens. Liu brings an authentic voice to the story of first-generation Chinese-American culture, amplified and accented by the symbolism embedded in Takeda’s (who is Japanese) artwork. Moving over from Image Comics, which published Monstress as a serialized comic book before collecting story arcs in trade paperbacks, to Abrams Comic Arts, which is publishing The Night Eaters as three original full-length graphic novels, seems to have given both women the space to unfurl their story at a less frantic, and thus more effective tempo, at least for a horror story.

The Night Eaters’ climb up the best-seller lists is almost over-determined considering the pedigree of the creators, the on-point combination of themes and audience awareness, and the market heft of Abrams. The book is slated for a healthy first print run of 100,000. More importantly, it looks likely to earn its success by delivering a great story and beautiful artwork in an exquisitely designed hardcover. Expect to hear Liu and Takeda’s names ring out prominently in the next award season, and add The Night Eaters to the strong roster of original graphic novels produced so far in the 2020s.