NIGHT TRIPPERS by Mark Ricketts and Micah Farritor (Image 2006)

I'm afraid I spoke out of turn and made some complaints about Shawn Levy's book, Ready, Steady, Go!, without knowing what I was talking about. The more I read about "swinging London," the more I realize it was a far more specific phenomenon than I'd imagined. It's common, for example, to think of Dracula A.D. 1972 as bringing the Count into "swinging London," and that's exactly how I've been thinking about it up to now--but I'm reading a novel, published in 1968, that narrates, "Swinging London had been over and done with years ago." Yow!!--so much for that.

Speaking of vampires in swinging London, that's what this graphic novel is all about, and it doesn't just plop a bunch of bloodsuckers down in a vaguely sixties version of the metropolis, but scrupulously nestles into the precise window of time and cast of characters and set of circumstances that "officially" comprise Swinging London. In fact, reading Night Trippers, I felt like I was reading Levy's book all over again, only through a glass darkly.

Dottie begins the story as a plain, square nurse, until a murder at the hospital and a terrifying encounter outside a swinging nightspot plunge her into the world of vampires. She's taken in by Darien Pendragon, who has big plans to "manipulate the course of cultural evolution" in a grand scheme to destroy "Camelot" once and for all. He turns Dottie over to Barlowe, "that photographer with just the one name" (yet another incarnation of David Bailey, the "one name" bit referring to his famous introduction to Jean Shrimpton: "I'm Bailey." "Just Bailey?" "Just Bailey."). She's transformed--not into a vampire, but into a Twiggy-ish mod pop star.

In stories like this, it's not uncommon for the vampires to be presented as atavistic forces in a modern world which stymies and ultimately defeats them. That's a pattern that harkens back to Stoker's original Dracula. Here, though, the vampires are as mod and bleeding-edge as can be, and the forces that oppose them are regressive elements like a pair of pensioners in Dottie's hospital and an Elvis-esque "teddy boy" rocker whose time has passed.

As the name of Pendragon and the reference to Camelot suggest, there's yet a deeper layer of history to this tale, and it's nothing less than Arthurian legend. Pendragon is actually Mordred, raised by the Lady of the Lake as one of the undead to carry on his mother's evil schemes.

Now, the art. It's gorgeous! It's not quite what I expected, however. It's not the riot of psychedelic color I imagined it would be. For a story set in swinging London, in fact, it's extraordinarily muted. As my synopsis indicates, this is swinging London heavily overshadowed by the past--both the immediate post-war/pre-mod past, and the deep past of British legend. That comes through visually, to an extent I found a bit off-putting, in a look dominated by murky sepias. There are occasional moments of truly eye-popping color, but on second glance, they're also subtly tinged in a way that doesn't set them too far apart from the rest. I'll say again, though, the art is wonderfully gorgeous, and perfectly suited to the story. The epitaphs that accompany each death (and there are a lot of them!) are a nice touch. I especially like the way conventional thought balloons are replaced by inset panels that show a different expression on the character's face, and show internal monologue as spoken, which somehow seems to ring truer.

As with Dracutwig (and lord knows how many comedy sketches from the period), the vampires imbibe LSD-tainted blood--only they don't do it inadvertently in the usual low-comic fashion, but make a deliberate experiment of it, to very nice effect. In fact, I've never seen this sort of thing done better. Be that as it may, I think an opportunity may have been missed to do something yet more interesting. In Ready, Steady, Go!, Levy notes "the conflation of English psychedelia and the Arthurian legend" (along with "the works of William Blake, Lewis Carroll and J.R.R. Tolkien"--just think of those old, strangely drug-suggestive wizard iron-on decals that used to be advertised in comic books, along with a plethora of other groovy, turned-on images). Since the Arthurian legend figures so prominently in this story, that conflation would have made some very fertile ground for exploration, yet nothing is done with it. Oh well!

Never mind my quibbles, though. If you like this blog, then Night Trippers is absolutely must-get, must-read stuff. Check out the site, listen to the audio treats, then order this book or run to get it from your friendly neighborhood comics shop.

Yes it is.

(Here are second, third, and fourth opinions, and one by Bob Tinnell, who knows a thing or two about sixties horror graphic novels.)