Best friends are like pickles. They live in a jar, you eat them when salty, and they complement the hell out of a sandwich. Alright, that was a terrible comparison, but you get the idea. Best friends are fun. So what happens when best friends drift apart? When there are words unspoken and the gap of time only makes things worse? Well, you get By Night. A story about two friends reluctantly reconnecting, this sci-fi tale of interdimensional proportions is as much as a story about exploring the unknown as it is about healing old wounds and chasing forgotten dreams. With a stellar introductory issue, By Night #1 spends the majority of its pages building up (or breaking down) the relationship between the two main characters before dropping the reader into the deep end. This is one urban explorer book that explores more than just vandalized subway tunnels.
The comic follows our main protagonist Jane who works full-time in a bio lab after giving up her dream of being a documentarian. Though not satisfied with her life, she has come to accept that she did the best she could and has become a proper adult. That is until her old friend Heather shows up on the doorstep of her work. Blue-haired and wild, Heather floats back into Jane’s life and immediately asks her out for a drink. Despite her acceptance, there’s a thick thread of tension between the two friends and it seems that neither are particularly eager to see each other. At the bar, Heather once again ropes Jane into an adventure, this one set against the backdrop of urban exploring and Jane’s old film-making passion. But things are never quite as they seem and as schemes and plans boil to the surface, other worlds begin to peak their ugly heads in.
By Night #1 is your standard first issue. It has character introduction and small bits of action topped off with a cliffhanger. There’s nothing particularly sci-fi until the end and would make a better first chapter to a graphic novel than a stand-alone first issue. That being said, as far as introductory first issues go, this one is pretty great. It’s not just about two friends who reconnect after several years, but two friends who have a long and sordid history that neither of them want to deal with. The writer John Allison does a great job of creating tension and antagonism without going the obvious route of having the characters immediately start yelling at each other or being dicks. It’s a lot closer to real life, where a person smiles and nods and swallows their hatred deep down into their gut. It’s interesting to watch them navigate the old friendship, including all the memories that come with it, and how, despite Jane’s reluctance, she still can’t say no to Heather, even against her better instincts. At this stage of the comic, the sci-fi is merely a background to the fragility of human relationships.
Though we don’t get to see the artist’s rendition of space or monsters yet, we do get to see her skill on the everyday nuances of slice-of-life comics. Christine Larsen, who has done work on the Adventure Time comic, takes her experience in young adult illustration and applies it to By Night. The main characters are visually unique from each other (though not so much for the extras) and the simple color work is easy on the eyes. It’s not particularly outstanding but it fits the bill. Together, Allison and Larsen make a fun, interesting read that keeps the reader intrigued until the last page and really, isn’t that all we want out of our comics anyway? It’s at least worth the look.
By Night #1 is out now!