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Courtney Crumrin and The Night Things by Ted Naifeh

Title: Courtney Crumrin and The Night Things (Courtney Crumrin #1)
Author: Ted Naifeh
Genre: Comics/Graphic novel
Publisher: Oni Press
Pages: 128
Copy Origin: Borrowed from the library
New Zealand Readers: Fishpond, MightyApe
International Readers: The Book Depository, IndieBound

Presenting the initial Courtney Crumrin miniseries in a new digest-sized format. Courtney’s parents have dragged her out to a high-to-do suburb to live with her creepy Great Uncle Aloysius in his spooky old house. She’s not only the new kid in school, but she also discovers strange things lurking under her bed.

Set in a place where people are unaware of magical goings on – yet oddly accepting of the consequences of that which they do not see¹ – Courtney Crumrin and The Night Things is a snarky and wonderfully ghoulish introduction to a darkly funny and fascinating world.

Readers might be familiar with Ted Naifeh’s work as the artist of Holly Black’s Good Neighbours series of graphic novels. In Courtney Crumrin and The Night Things, Naifeh uses a black and white style which combines a mix of cartoonish figures and features with narrower, starker characters and highly detailed backgrounds. Courtney, for example, is round-faced, big-eyed and noseless, while her parents (and other adults) are more angular – something which culminates in the wonderful harshness of Great Uncle² Aloysius’s form and face. The expressions are marvelous, the background detail spectacular and overall excellent.

The story is the perfect mix of the mundane and the magical, and all the complications that come from each as well as the mixing of the two. On the one hand you have issues such as a new home, dealing with a new school and babysitting, while on the other there’s magical spells gone awry, doppelgangers run amok and changelings to deal with. The endings might not always have been what I expected but that is what made them so good – Courtney Crumrin and The Night Things doesn’t hesitate to go dark and ghoulish if the story and/or the humour demands it.

Overall Courtney Crumrin and The Night Things is a great introductory graphic novel full of many wonderful things that go moving about in the night. I highly recommend it and look forward to reading the next volume, Courtney Crumrin and the Coven of Mystics.

 
[A note: Courtney Crumrin and The Night Things is on sale at The Book Depository for £6.56 ($10.76US) - a saving of £2.43 ($3.98US). Until the end of May you can take an extra 10% off that total with the coupon code May11. And always remember: they have free shipping. ]

1. A kid disappears into the haunted woods and is never seen again – eaten by something – and this is just accepted by everyone. [↩]
2. Whether he’s Courtney’s, her father’s or her grandfather’s great uncle is anyone’s guess. [↩]