REVIEW: ‘The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night,’ Book 1

Milly and Billy are twins. The children of Chinese immigrants Ipo and Keon, this duo run a restaurant as they struggle to make ends meet. Every year, their parents visit to check up on their kids and lend a hand. But this year’s visit looks to be a bit more eventful than previous years. Milly and Billy are about to learn some startling things about the house across the street, their parents, and ultimately their world. The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night Book 1 is published ABRAMS under the Abrams ComicArts imprint and written by Marjorie Liu, with art by Sana Takeda and letters by Chris Dickey.

This story splits its time between exploring family and exploring the supernatural while managing to tie them both together in a way that left me surprised. The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night Book 1 turned out to be far more than I expected as it dives into the past and present of its extremely human cast.

While Milly and Billy serve as the lens through which most of the story is told, this book is as much about their parents as it is about them. Scattered throughout the book, we get flashback chapters that deliver glimpses of the duo’s parents as they meet, fall in love, and come to have their children. While I initially found these peeks into the past to be interesting moments that flesh out the personalities of both Ipo and Keon, as The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night Book 1 progresses, they become far more crucial than I expected them to be.

While the past is filled with the highlights of a lifetime, the present is filled with much of the day-to-day life we all live—paying bills, dealing with parents that never seem pleased with you, no matter how hard you try, and managing all the complicated relationships one accrues over a lifetime. It is here that the story focuses on Milly and Billy. As we see the siblings work with each other and their parents, Liu does a great job of crafting a pair of believable characters for the audience to follow.

But the mundane takes a turn when some people come through the neighborhood to look at purchasing the house across the street. One glance and the prospective buyers are instantly gone. And understandably so. If I were ever going to guess a house is haunted, that house would be it. Seeing something that needs fixing, Ipo resolves to do something about the place. This decision will bring to light a great many things. Some of which will be terrifying.

Liu’s writing pulls together all the various themes and concepts presented in The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night Book 1 into one harmonious whole in a way that I never would’ve thought possible. The experiences that Milly and Billy go through as they help their parents clean up the house across the street deliver some great horror moments while laying the groundwork for the future entries in this series through the deep look into the family as a whole. I cannot even begin to guess where the next book will go from here.

Accompanying Liu’s excellently crafted story is the familiar presence of Takeda’s artwork. If you are a fan of the duo’s long-running comic series Monstress, you know exactly what to expect. The cloudy, ethereal nature of Takeda’s style lends itself perfectly to a horror story. She delivers creepiness when needed but never fails to let the characters’ charm, particularly Keon’s gentle, good-natured fathering, from shining through the gloom.

The last element of The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night Book 1 we need to discuss is the lettering. The placement of the various word bubbles is chosen well, allowing the story’s dialogue to coexist with the art rather than conflict with it. Also, I appreciate letterist Dickey’s choice of using unlined, uneven edges for the dialogue balloons. This look works wonderfully with the rest of the book’s presentation.

When all is said and done, The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night Book 1 delivers a strong story that lays some great foundations for what comes next. The blending of family and classic haunted house horror comes together to create something truly unique.

The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night Book 1 is available now wherever comics are sold.