• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Apr 30, 2010 By Jeremy Nisen Web Exclusive

I’m not crazy about the cover dress on The Night Owls, the trade compilation derived from a title running on DC’s Zuda online project. After all, one of the coolest things about The Night Owls is the sort of olde timey feel of it, and the garish orange and full color, oversized renditions of the characters are an eyesore that’s not doing the very good content any favors.

Should an audience take my word for it and get passed the poor cover choice, the story and art by the Timony Twins is cute, fun, clever, funny, and, at least to start, very episodic. This story of a team of paranormal investigators in the 1920s builds its continuity slowly. What starts as a great casual read suddenly reveals itself to have been laying certain threads throughout, which pick up as nerdy Professor Ernie Baxter’s origins are discovered. Most of the art is in grey scale, which I far preferred to the colored pages (albeit those are done much better than the unfortunate cover treatment).

Most of the silliness, especially surrounding Roscoe the Gargoyle, is a lot of fun; a little of the silliness is perhaps too silly (I wasn’t much of a fan of Mindy Markus’ secret past, though she’s by far my favorite character).

On balance, The Night Owls is an entertaining comic that probably only found its legs through DC’s Zuda initiative. So hats off to DC. (www.zudacomics.com)

Author rating: 7/10