Nights #17 // Review
A doorbell rings. There are a couple people on one side of the door who are waiting for those on the other side of the door. It's a joyous occasion. Casual get together. But something perhaps a little bit more formal than that. Something perhaps a little bit more deeper than that some were beyond the warmth of the affection of the companionship of a kind of family. There's something else. A man tied to a chair. He’s being punished in Nights #17. Writer Wyatt Kennedy and artist Luigi Formisano rech the penultimate chapter of their current plot arc in an issue that slowly unravels into something epic.
“If you’re here to kill me,” Mari says, “do it now, so we can be done with this.” The one who has entered the chamber tells him that he doesn’t want to kill Tsukumari. He wants his mother back. Mari killed his mother. Now he feels he’s getting the punishment he deserves. It’s not going to be that simple, though. The last of the magic users on the planet are opening the door. Isaac is heading-off to enter it. It’s going to change him in a big way. The world might not be ready for what’s coming...
Kennedy constructs an intriguing mood that combines various types of love with various types of destruction. Sometimes the difference between the two is not all that clear. Kennedy his extreme of emotion with kind of darkness that seems to be resting just on the other side of light itself. Illumination mixes with ignorance. Love with hate. Pain with pleasure. Everything is unraveling on the way to the big climax of the current story arc. What starts out in simple human emotion quickly becomes something much bigger and more powerful...that is, nonetheless, still very much tied to human emotion.
Formisano has a great talent for modulating between nuanced, interpersonal emotion, and overwhelmingly, explosive magical power on a grand scale. It's really impressive to see it play out. Some of the imagery is quite idiosyncratic as well. The artist isn't afraid to play with images, articulate with strange as aesthetics that rest somewhere between well established human emotions. All of it is presented in a way that feels very well modulated in and within the narrative confines of a very well thought-out script. It's quite a visual journey from one cover to the other in this particular issue.
Given exactly where it is that the plot goes, it's really important that a series like this find it's emotional grounding and hold onto it as tightly as possible. Kennedy and Company are doing an excellent job of delivering just precisely that as the series progresses. Everything seems remarkably balanced. This is quite an accomplishment given, just how far things drift from the worm and emotionally, engaging atmosphere of a family get together to the grim and twisted nature of torture and retribution, which lurk just below the surface of everything. It's quite a contrast.
