The Night Eaters Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s new series unites family problems with ghostly demons and monster hunters. And you thought your family was weird.
In the Chinese tradition, demons and ghosts have a great presence, even today fictional stories take advantage of all this mythology. The Night Eaters unites all these stories with something more mundane, the generational fights. Liu and Takeda present a family that comes from a traditional lineage but whose children live in a modern society and disregard the old ways, but not doing so in this case is dangerous. Terror, humor and domestic fights with stunning art.
The history
Ipo’s life has not been easy, she lived through a war, the contempt of her family for being a woman, the pressure of a society that did not take her into account. She was able to get out of that, and she found love, something even more difficult given her surly and aggressive nature. Now she is the mother of two young people with modern lives in another country, where traditions are only rituals and obsolete beliefs. But Ipo is more than just an angry old woman, and her children are going to have to learn that her legacy is not just old rites, or they might die.
Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda have amazed the world with their Monstress, a dark fantasy story full of oriental mystical elements passed through a very western filter. Continuing with their relationship, they have created this story, smaller, without implying great destinies or apocalyptic gods, just a family that unites the old and the new, that fights to get along, like any family.
Liu works the story through Ipo’s flashbacks, making clear his surly character and great sense of responsibility. But she is also a woman that she loves, and she was afraid of the future and now that the fear has come, it has changed, her children need to learn some things that have been hidden from them. Her husband Keto doesn’t seem to take all this very seriously and her children Billy and Milly are too American to understand that horror exists in the shadows.
Scenes that make your hair stand on end
It is a horror story, with scenes that make your hair stand on end. The Asian-American writer takes advantage of the tragicomedy of the present to introduce small elements that hide the evil that she lurks. And she ends it by recounting little by little because her protagonist is how she is and why she demands so many of them all. It is this inscrutable, unpleasant and resentful character who will drive the reader crazy due to his attitude, but he has reasons to do so and although in the end the reason for his behavior cannot be taken away, he can be blamed for a lack of finesse. Although not of love for his own. She is a mother, and everyone has argued a thousand times with hers, not for the same reasons, but it will be reflected in many of her pages.
Sana Takeda’s art is still spectacular. The cartoonist has already been awarded multiple times for her work, but I dislike that she always has to be labeled a digital artist, as if it were easier to work with more modern tools than with traditional ink and paper. . Known for her ornate and baroque compositions, in Night Eaters she focuses on atmosphere and characters, letting them dominate the art. The muted colors in the horror sequences contrast with those of a family full of life. The shadows hide evil and the family lives in the light, and that contrast and their sudden disappearances to reveal the monsters is incredibly elegant.
Conclusion
The Night Eaters It is a trilogy that begins with a great level. Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda set a very high bar for the following parts, but if we have learned anything with Monstress, it is that their thing is to break barriers and break ceilings.
THE NIGHT EATERS 1. THE ONE WHO EATS THE NIGHT
Title: : THE NIGHT EATERS 1. THE ONE WHO EATS THE NIGHT
URL : Milcomics
Author : Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda
Format : Paperback
ISBN : 9788467959567
Description : Milly and Billy, two young American twins with Chinese parents, are having a hard time. As if failure in their personal and professional lives weren’t enough, they have a lot of trouble keeping their restaurant afloat. Luckily, their parents Ipo and Keon have come to visit them like every year. After emigrating from Hong Kong, Ipo and Keon had twins and raised them through better and worse times. Now they are willing to give them a hand, but they wonder if perhaps they were too protective and now they are not able to fend for themselves.
SOMETHING (JC Royo)
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