30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow

I happened to like this addition to the series the most. It had an excitement level that towered over the two previous books. I would argue that the return to Barrow was unique this time around. It may feel similar to the first book, but now we have a new cast of characters and a Barrow that can actually fight back. The best thing that could've happened to the series was the wisening up of Barrow's citizens that the reinforcing of the fort. It was much more thrilling this time around to see the citizens pose a decent fight. I only wanted more length, but due to the style of the series, these books are crammed into small stories. I believe that this would be a better sequel than Dark Days if they attempted to go that route. Only time will tell if the Direct-to-DVD sequel will measure up to the value of the series. To sum up my enjoyment of the series thus far, they keep getting better. However, that's not saying too much since I didn't enjoy the first volume much at all. The series does, fortunately, keep building on itself to compensate. The artwork becomes less confusing and I'm starting to love to soak it all in. The storywriting is beginning to be more admirable, due to its clever twist-turning. All in all, Return to Barrow is the best yet, giving me hope for the rest of the series.

I'm not going to go into a long-winded review. I just want to say that I really enjoyed this graphic novel. Great story and great graphics. I also enjoyed Dark Days and 30 Days of Night. I am a 36 year old female, so that will give you an idea of the difference types of people that can enjoy this series.

The brother of one of the men that died at Barrow moves there to take up the sheriff position, and find out what really goes on. The vampires are real, and one of them that comes this time is an FBI agent with a much better grasp of the tactics of conflict. Luckily for the remaining people, they have some mystery assistance.

Steve Niles' 30 Days of Nights and its follow-up Dark Days were two vampire stories that really hooked me in and wouldn't let go. Niles' finally created a vampire tale that eschewed the Anita Blake and Anne Rice oversexually-obsessed, brooding, and nonscary vampires that became so popular for some reason. Sure Niles' vampires were still well, and sharply dressed but that's were the similarities end. His vampires in both stories were vicious, bloodthirsty, sadistic and most of evil. There wasn't anything to like about these vampires and Niles' made sure that our sympathies were with the living. In 30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow, Steve Niles brings back the series to the site of the first story and that's the Alaskan town of Barrow. A place still recovering from the events that transpired with the first story-arc. Those survivors who stayed and those who were away during the slaughter return to pick up the pieces of the town's shattered lives. But a group of vampires looking to avenge the deaths of the first group and continue their idea of using Barrow as ahunting ground have other ideas. T There's really not much new that Niles' adds to what he's already told in the first story. The human inhabitants of Barrow must once again try to survive a vampiric onslaught by themselves with no governmental help. But this time around they know whats coming and have devised countermeasures that they hope would be enough to help them last the month-long night. This wouldn't be a horror comic if everything went as planned. They don't and things get bloody and horrific. The story continues on bloody page to bloody page until the conclusion where a twist on the forest guardian plot technique comes out of the shadows. This ending and those who make their surprising apperance gives Return to Barrow abit more of an optimistic resolution than the previous two books. Usually I would've complained that it was just so Deus Ex Machina, but it made sense and showed that not all vampires must succumbed to their killing nature. 30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow continues the fine story Niles' first started many years ago with 30 Days of Night and Dark Days. Though there wasn't much new things added in terms of ideas, the twist in the end made everything come together to give Return to Barrow its own identity from the other two. Fans of the first two books will not be disappointed.

Some series are identified from the first as "a trilogy in the making". Others start as nominal 1-offs, then spawn a sequel, and then become series only through aggregation. The second model is arguably harder to pull off, because either (1) the author hasn't planned ahead to inject future plot threads into early stories, or (2) the author does undertake such planning, but has to disguise those incomplete arcs so that early volumes can stand on their own. I don't know whether Niles envisioned Barrow as a trilogy from the first issue of 30 Days, but my temptation is to doubt it. Rather, I think he was as surprised by the success of 30 Days as everyone else, and had to invent the second and third volumes within the boundaries of the story already established. That's what makes 30 Days and its sequels so enjoyable. When the first volume came out, it functioned perfectly well as a self-contained story. Then when Dark Days followed after, the series became a neatly balanced two-fer, with the plot and dialog complexities of the latter balancing nicely against the voiceless horror of the original. And now Return to Barrow re-defines both previous volumes, by making each seem to flow with perfect precision into this final showdown. Threads we had thought fully closed were in fact only temporarily tied; the elaborate final knot had not yet been revealed. Characters we assumed complete still had one last transformation in store. Like the undead so beautifully rendered, Niles reminds us that no story ever fully dies while it still has its head.