Creepy "30 Days of Night" is too stylish for its own good, offering us artwork that's very abstract and unclear

Barrow, Alaska, is the northernmost point of North America.  It that little town, temperatures are often well below freezing, and during winter, there are more than 30 days of total darkness, as the sun doesn't show its pretty head at all.  During this cold, gray period of eternal night, vampires decide to invade and feast on Barrow's citizens, feeling secure and safe from the absence of sun's rays, which are fatal to their kind.

At first glance, writer Steve Niles and artist Ben Templesmith's gothic-looking and night-covered world is uniquely drawn and colored, offering us a world where details are hard to see, and light is just a figment of imagination.   But ultimately, this three-part series, published by IDW way back in 2002, is light on story, strong characters, and eventually, clarity in its artwork.  Whereas the vampires Templesmith creates on certain pages are freakishly grotesque and ghoulish, their interactions with each other and the humans they encounter are drawn with so much flair and blending of various rich colors that the result is a confusing mess to an ordinary eye.  More than once I had a difficult time trying to decipher what exactly was going on (on certain pages), a feeling of hopelessness that is a bit more frustrating than what Barrow's residents are having to deal with.  Because, as you might suspect, not being able to make sense of the artwork is surely a burden greater than having to face blood sucking vampires in the ultimate frozen tundra of extended darkness.

30 Days of Night is pulpy, surprisingly short, and consisting of characters who simply don't have the personalities we've come to expect from rich and balanced graphic tales.  When sheriff Eben Olemaun sacrifices himself to the dark side in order to save the town, and when at the end he sits outdoors with his wife, Stella, awaiting the rise of the long-absent morning sun, his fading away is not nearly as dramatic as a major character's demise should feel.  After the last page is turned, the clock had not passed much, and the experience we've engulfed ourselves with for some 60 or so plus pages instantly gets buried amongst our memories of better, preferable reading material.  It is an idea which never quite grew into a worthwhile tale, a nightmare neither frightening nor memorable, only bland.
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