Nocturnals (comics)
Nocturnals is a comic book title created by artist Dan Brereton which debuted as a six-part limited series in 1994–1995 under Malibu Comics collectively subtitled as Black Planet.
It follows the supernatural exploits of Doc Horror and his daughter Eve in Pacific City, a fictional California town which seems to have more than its fair share of paranormal activity. The series is noted for its eclectic combination of pulp storytelling, fantastic creatures, moody atmosphere, Halloween style and colorful characters, as well as Brereton's signature painted art style.
Publication history
The eponymous original limited series ran in 1995 and was published under Malibu Comics' Bravura imprint. This was followed by a story that ran in Dark Horse Presents #125–127 that was collected by Dark Horse Comics into a 48-page comic book as The Nocturnals: Witching Hour. Moving to Oni Press the next outing was in a giant-sized one-shot The Nocturnals: Troll Bridge. The Nocturnals: The Dark Forever was a three-issue mini-series that started in 2001. A spin-off mini-series from Oni Press followed, called The Gunwitch: Outskirts of Doom. After leaving Oni Press, Image Comics later published The Nocturnals: Carnival of Beasts, a prestige format 64-page comic book, published by Image Comics, containing three stories."Nocturnals: Legend" was released by BigWowArt, a hardcover coffee-table style art book, described as a 20-year "introspective".
Nocturnals: The Sinister Path is a graphic novel that was released through BigWowArt in June 2017.
Plot
Joining the Horror family is a group of societal outcasts who shun the light of day and avoid mainstream society: spectral apparition, Polychrome; amphibious spitfire, Starfish; pyrokinetic swordsman, Firelion; reptilian, Komodo; streetwise animal-human chimera, Raccoon; and the silent undead gunslinger, Gunwitch. They live in or frequent Doc Horror's underground sanctuary called the Tomb, both home and fortress to the group, as they battle the criminal underworld and various supernatural threats which often rear up in nearby Pacific City.Doc Horror's chief nemeses are the Crim, a parasitic species of extradimensional conquerors who ravaged his home world before he and Eve escaped to Earth. They have aligned themselves with the insidious Narn K Corporation, a powerful bioengineering firm specializing in controversial
experimentation and covert weapons development, and have been busy producing animal-human hybrids and synthetic soldiers for use in warfare and ultimately global invasion. Aside from the Narn K and the Crim, Horror and his crew have encountered everything from wish-granting demon lanterns and vampire street gangs to hillbilly swamp witches and robotic mobster hitmen.
The hallmark of the Eisner-Award nominated, Nocturnals: Black Planet miniseries is Brereton's moody, gothic style realized by hand painted art in every panel. The storytelling and visual imagery draws its influences from an eclectic mix of sources, including gangster films, science fiction, Lovecraftian creatures, and film noir. Brereton's supernatural art made a fan of rocker/filmmaker Rob Zombie, who tapped Brereton to paint an interior illustration for his multi-platinum Hellbilly Deluxe album. Zombie also wrote the introduction to Nocturnals: The Witching Hour one-shot.
The Nocturnals were seen in various appearances from 1994 through 2002. In 2003 "Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion" was published by Green Ronin as a sourcebook and guide, which won three gaming industry awards for that year. Olympian Publishing collected the first of two oversize hardcover volumes, followed by the second collected volume from Image Comics in 2009.
Characters
Doc Horror
The main character of the series, leader of the Nocturnals and father to Eve, Doctor Nicodemus Horror first made himself known as "the Bogeyman", the feared Mafia "fixer" for Don Lupo Zampa in Pacific City.Within a year of his employment Horror managed to destroy the city's drug trade and eliminate all of Zampa's competitors, earning both a reputation as a top-notch enforcer and the ire of the Pacific City Police Department. Although he appears human, Doc Horror is actually a native of a parallel world referred to as the "Black Planet" that was overrun by the nefarious Crim following a great global war. Horror used his scientific genius to develop a technology that could open interdimensional gateways to other worlds in an effort to banish the Crim forever, but was betrayed by his government as part of their surrender and handed over to the traitor and Crim conspirator named Fane. Horror revealed the secrets of his technology under threat of Eve's life, but managed to push Eve into the open gateway and sending her here to Earth. After a struggle with Fane, Horror went through the gateway as well, apparently escaping his hellish world and leaving the Crim behind forever.
Once on Earth, Horror used his knowledge of advanced technology and the occult to gather resources to find Eve, travel the world, earn the loyalty of fellow paranormal outcasts, and eventually falling in with the Zampa crime family. Don Lupo's resources located the young Eve and reunited her with her father. This allowed them to make a home for themselves on Earth.
Horror requires regular treatments with a special medicine he developed to control "a rather nasty virus" he picked up on one of his expeditions. The nature of this disease is uncertain, as Horror will only say that if left untreated he would "hurt a lot of people", but an unused story panel found in the artist's notes in the back of the Black Planet compilation indicates that Horror is in fact a lycanthrope.
Doc Horror's preferred weapons are dual.45 caliber automatic pistols, which can be equipped with different types of ammunition he creates. In the final issue of the Black Planet miniseries, Doc Horror uses magically enhanced bullets that can send pieces of the target into other dimensions for a truly devastating effect. Aside from firearms, Horror carries a vast knowledge of arcane magic and advanced technology that aid him against supernatural enemies. Horror also appears to have a much stronger constitution than normal humans, taking bullets "like they were bee stings" and has no problem going toe-to-toe with vicious monsters and demons.
Halloween Girl
Doc Horror's daughter Evening, who prefers to be called Halloween Girl, is a precocious youth who perpetually seeks excitement. She carries with her a plastic pumpkinhead bucket filled with possessed toys that can grow to monstrous versions of themselves and talk to her from the spirit world. Doc Horror theorizes that Eve's toys became this way when she made the voyage from their native world to Earth; lost souls and wandering spirits looking for a friendly face and a listening ear found her in the transdimensional ether and offer their protection in return for someone to talk to.Eve's propensity for getting into mischief is often the source of the Nocturnals' adventures. She once was captured by the Crim when she wandered into the Narn K subterranean Monster Shop, only to be rescued by Horror. She also once became a menu item for a hungry bat-witch on Halloween as well as a "victim" for a troublesome magic devil lantern, though often these would-be kidnappers find that Halloween Girl is far too much for them to handle. Even the most dire of situations appear to Eve as whimsical distractions, since very little on this world can scare a girl who grew up around real live monsters.