The night never ends
cartoonist: Steve Toussaint
Publisher: silver sprocket
Publication date: August 2024
Steve Toussaint new graphic novel, The night never endsAs you can see above, it’s a horror comic set in and around a creepy old house in the suburbs. Plot-wise, this is a story about a group of old friends reuniting to celebrate their 30th birthday. The guest of honor wants to do this by holding a séance in a haunted house in the suburban hometown they’ve all left behind. However, on that particular night, that house is also hosting violent occult events… and so bloody horror ensues. slogan: Will they make it out of the suburbs alive?
This is all good. It’s a familiar enough scene—are suburbs the de facto location of horror novels? I think there’s a case for that… and it’s conceptually familiar as well. But what’s unique about this book is that it’s executed (hehe) with so much wit and charm that it elevates The night never ends Become its own thing.
Thune’s comics are clean and energetic. It moves deftly from visual gags to ominous background characters that heighten the horror just enough. It lives in a kind of in-between space in this way, disarming you with a goofy aesthetic before blood splatters all over the page. For me, I never know when I’m going to relax and this is perfect.
There’s also a terrifying normalcy here that goes beyond the genre. Of course, the scary thing is that masked cultists want to dismember our heroes and drink their blood in some kind of summoning ritual. But it’s just as scary—if not more Horrifyingly, once the violence begins, the only person who interacts with our hero is a gun-toting homeowner who attempts to keep anyone and everyone off his lawn, even if it means killing him. Basically, these are terror victims who can easily escape from the house, but it doesn’t matter because there is no safe place to escape.
This is the real horror The night never ends. I think other suburban slashers primarily use this setting because it cultivates a sense of familiarity for the audience and creates a juxtaposition between quiet normalcy and horrific violence. However, the book goes beyond this and makes this suburb an inherently creepy environment, a cold place where help is impossible to find because everyone is locked inside their own house. In the book, even one of the town’s all-night restaurants closes, reflecting real-world shifts: suburbs are becoming increasingly rundown, without any public gathering spaces (dead malls, anyone?).
Of course, this is also a joke book with jokes. Overall, this almost feels like a kind of Trojan Horse horror, a book with an innocent yet familiar feel that creeps up on you days later and makes you rethink what it is that really scares you. And why. If this sounds like your type The night never ends Might be the perfect way to start reading Halloween comics.
The Night Never Ends is available through Silver Sprocket, and don’t forget to check out The Beat’s reviews section for more graphic novel reviews!
