There’s probably a very dense and boring book published by Fantagraphics tracing the development of Cinematographic Technique in comics– beginning surely with E.C. and the endlessly flogged “Master Race” of Krigstein– but I think it’s fair to say that the major recent milestones were the massive success of the first X-Men and Matrix films.

Together, these films represent the moment when the Great Beast of Hollywood realized that CGI had made flying dudes credible & when the Great Beast and the world’s various mainstream comics artists, writers, and publishers glommed on to a new truth: that action oriented comics could be used as idea incubators for massive media rollouts. Storyboarding itself is nothing new, but with the technology to render on film anything that can be drawn, comics present the novelty of having a completed product which has been, in theory, market tested.

This gets us to 30 Days of Night, the comic most recently adapted for the big screen. I haven’t seen the film, but a few guinea pigs have assured me that it’s terrible. One might note that the original comic series is also trash & is a work that embarrasses its readers by forcing them to think that somewhere, somehow Grown Adults put endless hours into its production– yes, one could, but one will not. For if nothing else, a work should be embraced on its own terms, and judged as to whether or not succeeds in its own purpose.

Therefore, discussing 30 Days of Night as though it were a comic is unfair. Better to recognize the thing for what it is: a visual outline, a treatment conceived for an eventual screenplay, developed entirely around a relatively high-level concept (Vampires in Alaska with No Sun and All Fun) and employing a condensed visual staccato in support of the concept. To expect character development, plot intrigue, coherent storytelling or even an ounce of depth is a great folly– the thing is what it is and nothing more.

Read as a pitch intended for the nancy boy personal assistants of Studio Executives here in the fiery city of Los Angeles, 30 Days of Night makes a perfect semiotic sense. Each panel reinforces either certain prevailing cultural stereotypes– the basic building blocks of genre filmmaking– or reminds the reader of nighttime or vampires, its two major motifs.

In terms of greater trends, 30 Days of Night is fascinating– as it was published in 2002, relatively early in the comic adaptation boom, I wonder if this is not the first book published entirely with the eventual film adaptation in mind. It’s a fascinating harbinger of the dark years ahead. 30 Days also speaks to an often abused aspect of comics– the incredible elasticity of the medium. Like cinema, comics can be anything and incorporate everything.

I’m reminded of late 60s Godard where 1/3 to 1/2 of any given film was guaranteed to be youthful Parisians reading Mao. Boring as it was, and perhaps not the intent of their creator, these films demonstrated that you can shove anything in a film and it’ll at least function. 30 Days of Night reminds us of the same thing in comics. You could shuffle the pages across its three individual issues and still have a functioning work. As much a quality of the artwork as of the writing, the books must be read as little more than extended riffs on the same three ideas: VAMPIRES. NIGHT. DEATH.

Given its intended function, 30 Days works perfectly. Yet if we went back and judged the series on its merits as a comic– keeping in mind our previously Idiosyncratic Ideal– we find that 30 Days of Night is entirely a failure, an unnecessary story ineptly told, existing without any purpose or reason. Is there a single person alive who needs 3 issues of one-dimensional vampires terrorizing one-dimensional humans? Did anyone enjoy the, ahem, Spartan attempts at a human interest love story? Was the art so compelling in its astounding approach to its rarefied topic that it changed forever how we, as readers, would think about vampires with no sun and all fun?

If there’s any love for comics in your heart, you could almost develop a Townie attitude and want to defend your home from the fancy fellas who’ve come in and mucked up your village green with their rotten litter.