Book / Week 36 - Night Club Vol 1
17 and bitten by a vampire. 2024/12/03
NIGHT CLUB
I’ve been reading Mark Millar for a long while. Wanted was the first way back in 2006 or 2007, before I was a dedicated collector and after his work with DC and Marvel. And I’ve been reading his books ever since. When it was announced that he was doing a large crossover of all of his MillarWorld properties, called The Big Game, I decided to see what I was missing from the list. Of the 23 properties, I’ve read half, and own 18 of the 23. I’d kept up with his most recent releases, reading The King of Spies, The Ambassadors, and the Nemesis reboot as they released, and went right on into The Big Game. But after concluding that, I re-read all 5 volumes of Jupiter’s Legacy, and also picked up Night Club, and The Magic Order, volumes 1-4. I also still want to read Empress and Space Bandits.
Picking Night Club this week was, admittedly, a little selfish and not entirely random. Night Club 2 has started releasing monthly and is in my active subscription pull list. So I’ve been buying the new books without having read the first volume, and needed to fix that. And now I can continue the series.
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Juanan Ramirez
Colourist: Fabiana Mascolo
Letterer: Clem Robins
Synopsis
You're 17 years old and you've been bitten by a vampire. Do you live in the shadows and drink human blood, or do you use your newfound gifts for the dream costumed superhero life you've always wanted? You're bulletproof, you can crawl up walls, and you can turn to mist, bats, or even a wolf. Why not have a little fun?
So the story starts with three teenagers: Danny, Amy, and DJ Sam. And as teenagers do, they want to get famous and make it rich. And how do they intend to do that? Why, getting famous on YouTube doing parkour. Danny takes his bike to the rooftops to do some tricks, catches on a pipe and flies off the roof, breaking his neck and back.
While in the hospital, his life basically over, he receives a visitor. Detective Nick Laskaras. The Detective bites Danny, turning him into a vampire and then removes him from the hospital to a hideout to recover. We learn that this vampire detective is building an army, but is doing it in the humane way, by only recruiting people who basically have nothing else to live for, and he’s giving them a second chance. Using his mind control powers, he convinces the hospital staff, and Danny’s family, that Danny never really got severely hurt, only a few bumps and scrapes.
After learning about his new powers, Danny reveals to his two friends that he is a vampire and offers them the opportunity to be vampires too. The three decide to be a superhero vampire group called the Night Club, and record their escapades to get famous on YouTube. See…it all circles back around to fame and fortune.
They can turn into mist and bats to teleport around, and use vampire hypnosis to gather information, but they also have to follow some of the other vampire rules, like not being able to enter a home without first being invited in, or not being able to cross running water, like a river, and of course, catching on fire if caught out in the sunlight.
The big event of the story involves a group of terrorists who have explosives. The kids want to take down these bad guys, but in the process of trying to intercept the terrorist group, they end up making a big miss of things. Explosives go off, taking down a full apartment building.
Detective Laskaras shows up again at this point after catching news of the teenage vampires. We learn that the Detective was at one point an undercover cop, investigating disappearing homeless, and a bad group of vampires causing the disappearances find and turn the Detective, forcing him to join their group.
The climax of the book has the evil vampires find and kill the Detective after learning that recruiting and army, and they give the teenagers an ultimatum: join our group and kill your families. Or we kill you and your families. Neither being an ideal choice, the teenagers blow up the vampire hideout and kill the bad guys. Happy ending.
Thought bubbles
I really liked this first volume, and I’m excited to get into Night Club 2 now - curious where it leads after the events of The Big Game (if there’s even any mention of it). The art and colours are really good and add a lot of expressiveness to the characters. A lot of dramatic large panel drawings too.
I think one of my only complaints, and this is larger than just Night Club, but comes down to Mark Millar’s storytelling. His books are very much a power fantasy trope - more so than regular superhero comics. Regular civilians receive powers, or they’re born into it through their family. And then they don’t seem to have any faults or failings as a character. There’s no real struggle, or any struggle is self-imposed. It’s like the opposite of DC and Marvel heroes, where they are constantly struggling. But he did introduce Valeria Richards - super genius daughter of Reed Richards, to the Fantastic Four…so that tracks. At some point I’d like to go back and read some of his Marvel work on the X-Men or Spider-Man.
The three teenagers are given these vampire healing and eternal life abilities. Plus the telepathic mind control over weaker minds, and the ability to fly / teleport. Their only weakness is sunlight and decapitation. The only trouble they got in was the trouble they went looking for.
His other books are like this too. They just fulfill the ultimate power fantasy with none of the potential side-effects or drawbacks. King of Spies is about the ultimate spy, better than all the rest, always ten steps ahead, except he’s dying so he has to pull off his master plan before that. Prodigy is about the smartest man in the world. Can solve all of humanities problems with unlimited resources to do so. Even the villains - like Nemesis - have unlimited resources and are always ten steps ahead of anyone trying to stop them. Finally, in The Big Game, they literally had to go back in time to stop the invading alien race, as that was the only probability that was not accounted for. Plus this allowed his Millar Universe to continue after the initial sales pitch that he would kill off all of his properties in the crossover. Which, I guess, he technically did, but it didn’t stick.
All I’m saying is that the books are a lot of fun to read, but without some struggle, some real stake, they feel a little light on substance and don’t hold my interest for that long after reading. Like a quick fix, and then the high is gone.
Next read:
Book 37: 20th Century Men (Deniz Camp, Stipan Morian, Aditya Bidikar)
Previous read:
Book 35: Birthright Vol 1
Book 34: Snowfall
Book 33: Fables Vol 1
Book 32: Watchmen
Book 31: Bear Pirate Viking Queen