Fright Night (comics)

Plot

Charley Brewster is an average teenager who finds his world turned upside-down when vampire Jerry Dandrige moves in next door. He enlists the aid of horror movie star/TV host Peter Vincent to kill Dandrige and they're successful—but not before Charley's best friend, Evil Ed, is transformed into a bloodthirsty monster whom delights in tormenting his former buddy. Soon Peter and Charley team up to fend off a variety of monsters, including squid-men, a spider boy, aliens, a minotaur, an evil sorceress and the nefarious Legion of the Endless Night, a vampire coven which later resurrects Jerry Dandrige.

Aiding Peter and Charley on their adventures are Charley's girlfriend, Natalia Hinnault, whose father has ties to the vampire underworld; Natalia's eccentric Aunt Claudia, who is the reincarnation of Greek Princess Ariadne; and hapless bartender Derek Jones, who seems to have a magnetic attraction to unworldly beings—much to his chagrin. Frequently featured are Evil Ed's minions, freelance reporter Dana Roberts and bartenders Donna and Jane, who all work in the nightclubs that he owns and perform in his band, Eddie and the Vamps. Also regularly seen are a group of mindless, nameless hippies who are continuously in search of a savior to follow, be it good or evil.

Production History

The February 1988 issue of Now Comics News announced that the popular film Fright Night was being spun off into a comic book series by Now Comics, a small publishing company that licensed a variety of popular television and movie characters and which had a reputation for being plagued by various financial and creative difficulties. In the original announcement, the adaptation of the first film was going to be released as a high-quality "prestige format" book, issue #1 would be an adaptation of the second film, and that would be followed by new stories. What ultimately happened, however, is the adaptation of the original movie got split across the first two issues and Fright Night II was issued as a stand-alone prestige format book featuring a story which was not canonical with the rest of the series.

The series endured a lot of growing pains both technically and artistically. The second issue abruptly picks up where the first story left off with no indication that a story preceded it except for the page numbering, which begins at 22. Eight of the first nine issues include short stories unrelated to Fright Night, including six chapters of Rust, the post-apocalyptic tale of a disfigured cop which originally ran from 1987-1988, that the publishers were preparing to relaunch for the second of three incarnations.

There was a revolving door of staff members, with only editor-in-chief Tony Caputo and editor Katherine Llewellyn sticking with the book for its entire run from 1988-90. Llewellyn was credited and worked in numerous capacities, editing stories, coloring frames, checking continuity and writing scripts. Lenin Delsol penciled the adaptations of both films as well as some of the early issues, but presumably he got tied up with other works as three issues were credited as "guest-penciled by Doug Murphy." Neil Vokes agreed to come to work for NOW Comics with the proviso he be allowed to work on Fright Night, which he's cited as a favorite film, but he became disenchanted with the work environment and eventually quit. Future regular Guardians of the Galaxy penciler Kevin West got his start picking up where Vokes left off and continued to work on Fright Night until the end - though issue #18 was inexplicably penciled by James Lyle. The writing was slightly more consistent. The adaptations of the films followed the source material fairly closely, and then James Van Hise took over writing duties for the first batch of original stories. Tony Caputo took the reigns for issues #8-12, injecting a slightly more comedic tone, and then Mark Wheatley penned a single issue which was a complete and total departure from the ongoing plot. Beginning with issue #14, Katherine Llewellyn was credited as both writer and editor, and she closely followed the storyline that Caputo had established before handing off the writing to Diane M. Piron-Gelman (aka novelist D.M. Pirrone).

Credits wildly deviated from issue-to-issue and mistakes were frequent, such as issue #22, in which the cover was credited to artist Eric Brant - though Hannibal King's signature clearly adorns the artwork. Similarly, "The Dead Remember" was credited to writer Joe Gentile but it was actually written by James Van Hise, and the letterer made several mistakes, including dropping dialogue and adding their own punctuation to Van Hise's script (these errors also carried over to the subsequent 3-D reprint of the issue).

The series ran for 22 issues until July 1990, when NOW was forced to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy, so production of the series was halted and storylines were never tied up. After corporate restructuring, the comic label briefly returned and, in 1992 and 1993, four special "annual" 3-D issues were released. Three of these were merely 3-D reprints, but the 1993 "Fright Night 3-D Halloween Annual" featured a completed but previously unpublished story entitled "Nightmares."

In 2003, the company relaunched under the moniker Now Comics 3.0, and it was announced that they'd be releasing a Fright Night graphic novel by Caputo and Vokes (presumably this would have been the previously-published 2-parter "The Revenge of Evil Ed!," the only story by Caputo & Vokes that wasn't reprinted in 3-D) but the book never came to fruition before the company folded again in 2005.