REVIEW: The Night Eaters Book One Needs Another Helping

A person with shoulder length hair stands in the center of the frame with a yellow top and a cigarette in their mouth. The light makes the left side brighter than the right

A new horror collaboration between Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, The Night Eaters: She Eats the Night is a family horror story even before they introduce the demons. Set during the 2020 pandemic, the story explores the complexities of family dynamics with a nice helping of demonic energy.

The Night Eaters: She Eats the Night Book 1

Marjorie Liu (Text), Sana Takeda (illustrations), Charlotte Greenbaum (Editor), Andrea Miller (Designer), Marie Oishi (Managing Editor), Erin Vandeveer (Production Manager), Chris Dickey (Lettering)
Abrams ComicArts
11 October 2022

 

Across the top in white letters it reads Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. Below that it reads The Night Eaters. This is above an image of a woman with blood dripping from her mouth while she smokes a cigarette. Above her to the left is a skull. Everything around her is plant life that transitions into hands and a creepy doll near the bottom. In the bottom right it reads
Cover for The Night Eaters: She Eats the Night Book 1

CW for the book: Sexual harassment, dead bodies, blood, gore

She Eats the Night is the first in a series, and while I’m intrigued to see where the story goes, this first volume leaves me whelmed. The book focuses on family: Ipo, the mom, Keon, the dad, and then Milly and Billy, their small business-owning twins. The family lives in Queens, across the street from a house that won’t sell. More than that, it can’t get buyers through the door.

Don’t get me wrong, She Eats the Night is good. Liu and Takeda, of the Eisner Award-winning Monstress, create luscious worlds together. But the book feels like something is missing. Something was off. And, occasionally, that’s the point.

The book alternates between two settings, 1950s Hong Kong and 2020s New York, during the pandemic. But it quickly becomes apparent that the timeline doesn’t quite track. I realized partway through the book that Ipo was an adult in the 1950s, which does not make sense if her kids look like they’re in their late twenties or younger in 2020. Either she or her kids should be much older. Something was amiss, and little hints at the family’s supernatural secrets kept me interested.

Six creepy dolls with black hair and no clothes sit on a creepy couch. The dolls are in two sets of three with the two closest to the center looking at each other with an empty space between them.
These are the neighbors across the street, who are creepy and intriguing

This purposeful “offness” was essential for maintaining the suspense for the horror of She Eats the Night, like that house that won’t sell. As buyers walk in the door, entrants are met with a couch full of dolls. They’re of course creepy as hell. Details like subtle facial expressions or the change of arrangement of these dolls’ heads between panels help keep the reader in an uneasy mood. This is something further highlighted by Sana Takeda’s use of black gutters. These black borders remind the reader that this is a horror story, even if parts of it are funny and absurd, like the banter between the twins.

Other off elements though, such as mismatches between what was depicted in the art and what the characters say, are probably not intentional. For example, Milly talks about having powers, but that’s not well communicated in Takeda’s art. Billy and Milly, as revealed in the beginning of the story, can harm the monsters in the house. This gives the feeling that, if they just believe in their strength, they’ll succeed. So, when they destroy some of the bigger ones later, its almost mundane in contrast to panels with Ipo, who reveals her shape-changing ability in a way that clearly demonstrates her otherness.

Roots are coming out of a stone well. Over that well a woman bends in an inhuman way into the well. She has long black hair, a yellow sheep and black pants.
Ipo is more than she seems.

Furthermore, beyond Ipo, the other family members feel empty. Milly comes off as angry and shouty (with some unprocessed trauma), but ultimately hollow. Billy is given very little space to exist. While the two have amusing character moments, such as a great sibling exchange while masked, they don’t feel fully developed. Meanwhile, their dad is literally a demon—he’s sweet, but with minimal personality on his own. With cardboard nicety, he offers to grill up some of the demon that Ipo snacks on.

Three sequential panels read from top to bottom. Each one has the two siblings talking to each other. The one on the right has their hand on the one on the left. The one on the left is wearing a Hawaiian style shirt with flower petals, a black mask, dark black shorter hair and a wrist band on their arm. Behind them is something that looks like fronds. The twin on the left has a blue mask, a blue hoodie with a white shirt underneath, they have large hoop earrings, long black hair in a high pony-tail. Behind the person on the right is a smaller leafed branch. They talk with each other. The one on the right has says "Sis. If you keep waiting for people to act the way you want them to, you'll never be Happy. Life doesn't play by our rules. Accept Reality Keep it moving". The Sibling on the right is encouraging the sibling on the left. The middle panel has no words and looks like they share an emotional change with their eyes. in the bottom panel the words read "This is also the reason you're still Jaime's side piece." The one on the left says "oh, fuck you." and from off the page some one else says "er..."
Milly and Billy share a special sibling moment.

I hope this is a function of the first volume, because overall, Ipo drives the story and captures any scene that she’s in. Her posture, portrayal, and vibe are complete Auntie Aspirations for me. She eats what goes bump in the night as a snack and would eat the night itself if it stood in her way. Everyone else though? I don’t really care.

While a solid horror comic, with excellent visual suspense, She Eats The Night feels like it lacks depth. Some parts speak to me, but the hollowness of the characters made it hard to connect with the book. The meta-detachment between the audience and the characters may be the point. As a child of immigrants, the older I get, the more I realize how much I can’t understand about my parents’ lives. Like Milly and Billy, who fundamentally misunderstand their parents, I feel separated from the work.

Regardless, if what you’re looking for is a visually dynamic and lush horror comic, She Eats the Night has you covered. However, if you want a horror story that explores a humanized journey toward living through the intergenerational trauma of the immigrant experience, this first volume may not satisfy you. Is that what I wanted when I started it? No. But it’s something I’d love to see developed by the series. And I hope to see more of that in the next volume.

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Paulina Przystupa

Paulina Przystupa

Paulina (aka @punuckish) is a Filipine-Polish archaeologist and anthropology graduate student who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and loves comics and pop culture. Her academic work focuses on how buildings and landscapes aid or impede the learning of culture by children. In general, she is an over-educated fan of things; primarily comics, comics-related properties, cartoons, science-fiction, and fantasy. This means she takes what she knows and uses it to critique what she loves. Recently, she has brought such discussions to the public by organizing and moderating panels at comic cons centered on anthropology/culture related topics.

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