Night People by Barry Gifford, Chris Condon, Brian Level, and Alexandre Tefenkgi
Oni Press (February 11, 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Barry Gifford’s novel Night People was awarded the Premio Brancati, established by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alberto Moravia, in Italy. He has won awards for fiction from the writers guilds in America and the United Kingdom, a BAFTA, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, among others. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. His film credits include Wild at Heart (winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival), Lost Highway, City of Ghosts, and The Phantom Father.
Chris Condon is the low-down dirty scoundrel behind the ongoing Image Comic series That Texas Blood and its acclaimed Wild West spinoff, The Enfield Gang Massacre, both with artist Jacob Phillips. He waded deep into bayou waters to adapt Barry Gifford’s Night People for Oni Press and has not been the same since.
This collaboration is a really interesting collection of four stories. The graphic novel begins with a pair of murderous lesbian lovers in Florida carrying out a religious agenda of revenge. In the next story, we experience a perverse relationship between an incestuous brother and a sister that has culminated into a power struggle of epic proportions. Later, an easygoing drifter who suddenly finds himself guilty of murder and a fugitive on the run. Finally, a bright-eyed young girl survives a tragic accident and discovers her place in the world. These are four interwoven tales of nightmare and ennui, a world of myth and magic as much as it is a world of murder and manipulation.
This collection is graphic and pulpy in all the right ways. The characters all represent the seedy underbelly of society; the drifters, the lost, the wayward, and the criminal. Gifford’s tale is tightly woven and expertly brought to a graphic format by Chris Condon. The art by Brian Level, Alexandre Tefenkgi, Artyom Topilin, and Marco Finnegan really brings the narrative to life. It’s a thriller, but darkly surreal and mythic. The lines between the real and the surreal are blurred, and the narrative’s circular elements create a bizarre commentary of lives on the edge of dystopian chaos. For readers interested in graphic novels, especially the bloody and the violent, this is the book for you.
