NIGHT RAVEN
And Your Bird Can Sting
“Who ARE you? WHAT are you? WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
There were never any easy answers with Night Raven. In fact there were barely any answers at all, something that feels all the more audacious now we’re in a world that routinely stripmines comic book mythology for movies.
Channelling the terse, vengeful spirit of such pulp-era mystery men as the Spider and the Shadow, Night Raven debuted in the pages of Hulk Comic, a late ’70s anthology title that let British creators dabble in the Marvel Universe. Moonlit tales of mobsters, boweries and tenements, these early stories are sharp, compact three-pagers that deliver thrills like weekly adrenaline shots.
David Lloyd’s art is inkdrenched but dynamic. Sometimes he squeezes 12 panels onto a page but the storytelling never feels cluttered, simply primed to burst with all that coiled tension. Writer Steve Parkhouse clearly trusts him implicitly: the second story is entirely wordless. The action flows, clear as storyboards.
After 20 outings in Hulk, Night Raven returned across a host of Marvel UK titles, in text stories – a format truer to his pulp magazine inspirations but which changes the character forever. Gone is the suave blank of the strips. In his place is a creepy, sibilant wraith, starring in hardboiled pastiche (“Hot lead poured into the room...”). It’s Alan Moore who makes this work – his run of stories twists Night Raven into intriguing new shapes; still a cipher, still faceless, but all the more fascinating for a brush with Moore’s imagination. Nick Setchfield
This isn’t the complete Night Raven – not quite: 1991’s one-shot graphic novel House Of Cards is missing.
Pages feel primed to burst with tension