Evens, Brecht – Night Animals

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Night Animals

I don’t think it’s ever taken me longer to read a silent comic. In case that’s not clear enough, that is high praise. It also made it difficult to pick a sample image, as a good chunk of the pages in this fantastic book are two page spreads, chock full of weird and alarming characters. There are two stories in here and each has more creatures than I could describe if I used a million words. The first is “Blind Date,” in which a man solemnly dresses in his finest bunny costume before a date. He follows a series of painted arrows to his date, traveling through a sewer, forest, underwater nightmare land, and a series of tunnels before finally making it to his goal. I particularly enjoyed that last arrow, but if I tell you what that’s all about then I’d be ruining a perfectly good punchline. The second story deals with a young girl getting her first traumatic period at school. She goes home and is lured from her bed by a creature that seems to promise only fun and good times to go with her new adulthood. Again, one of the final images is of the creatures juxtaposed with that of a perfectly ordinary search party, and once again Brecht hits exactly the right tone with their ethereal but obvious presence. Yes, it does too make sense, and if you read the book you’ll be able to see what I mean. Overall I’m left without a single complaint, which is always a welcome occurrence. The art was pitch perfect in every single panel, the sheer range of the creatures presented shows the work of a vibrantly imaginative mind, and any one of those two page spreads could be happily examined for minutes at a time and you’d still be running across little surprises that were thrown in. It’s still fairly early in the year, granted, but this is the best book I’ve seen in 2011. Granted, that’s partially because the huge Alec collection was technically released last year, but it’s still high praise that I don’t go casually tossing around. $7.95