John Carpenter’s Night Terrors: Graveyard Moon
Paperback Graphic Novel
Written by Steve Niles
Pencils by Stephen B. Scott
Inks by Rodney Ramos
Colors by Lovern Kindzierski
Lettering by Janice Chiang
Edited by Sandy King
Publisher: Storm King Comics
Release date: September 22, 2020

Storm King Comics is the brainchild of producer extraordinaire Sandy King and horror master John Carpenter. Carpenter co-wrote the flagship first comic Asylum, and the duo have contributed to the annual Tales For a HalloweeNight anthologies. In recent years, Storm King has branched out of this world with John Carpenter’s Tales of Science Fiction, a multi-issue anthology series. Always innovating, John Carpenter’s Night Terrors is a new line of graphic novels and the first in the line is Graveyard Moon, written by 30 Days of Night co-creator Steve Niles and featuring a dream team of artists and Storm King alum.

Graveyard Moon combines all the genre elements one would expect from a project with this type of pedigree. In the not-so-distant future, cemeteries are things of the past… at least on Earth. The wealthy send their dearly beloved to their eternal slumber in the massive and expensive graveyards of Callisto, a moon of Jupiter. They are hauled there by Cooper, who operates a small crew, co-pilot Henderson, and the “gravediggers” Cole & Knox. Niles does a great job giving this small character list development. Cooper, who has a Cable feel to his look, is narrating and we get some details about Callisto. Somewhere I had visions of Danny Glover’s “I’m too old for this shit” line reading Cooper.

Turns out Cooper’s space run isn’t as easy as it should be as he’s a victim of a sabotage. The other three crew members see the 55 wealthy dead as an easy score to set them for life. Open the caskets, relieve the dead of their valuables, dump Cooper on Callisto and disappear into the galaxy. Except Henderson pulls the ol’ double cross and it revealed her and Cooper were in on it the whole time, and plan to dump the grunts and make off with the treasure of the dead. And that’s when Graveyard Moon morphs from space heist story to pure Alien-esque horror. Turns out you shouldn’t steal from the dead…

Niles showed his effectives writing about vampires, and now we get the zombie 1% coming for the possessions. The artwork goes into high gear as we get some awesomely graphic gore, eyeballs hanging from ceilings, and intestines protruding from bodies like Lovecraftian tentacles. The work of artists Stephen B. Scott and Rodney Ramos are on full display here punctuated by the colors of Lovern Kindzierski and letter skills of Janice Chiang.

Graveyard Moon works as both a twist filled heist story and an interstellar zombie horror. Niles was so successful with vampires in small town Alaska in 30 Days of Night and now he transplants walking corpses into space to equal effectiveness. The sudden genre twist reminded me of From Dusk Till Dawn, while the dread on board the ship and isolation the crew faced evokes memories of classic genre films Alien and Carpenter’s own The Thing.

John Carpenter’s Night Terrors: Graveyard Moon is available in stores now as well on Amazon.com and continues Storm King’s impeccable run of quality titles.

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