An adaptation of the movie Night Breed, which was itself an adaptation of Clive Barker’s 1988 novella, Cabal, this Marvel comic  was part of the publisher’s creator-owned Epic Comics imprint, which was also freed from the restrictions on content that their main titles were bound by.

The first issue introduces readers to Boone, a troubled young man whose personal issues finally seem to be resolving, thanks to his developing relationship with his girlfriend. Though things are looking up for Boone, there’s a killer on the loose, butchering entire families (including their young children), and his psychiatrist, Doctor Decker, manages to convince him that he’s responsible for the deaths.

Wracked with guilt, Boone ends up in the hospital, where a chance encounter with another disturbed patient reveals that his visions of a sanctuary for ‘monsters’ might just be real after all, leading to him beginning his search to find the fabled Midian.

I was genuinely obsessed with Clive Barker’s stories and movies as an early teenager, and Night Breed was no exception. I’ve lost count of how many times I must have watched it, and even though it’s a very uneven, often tasteless and somewhat clumsily directed  movie (a shame, given that Barker himself directed, though it has the whiff of studio meddling as well as a level of scale and ambition that far outstrips its budget), I always found many of the details in its story incredibly compelling.

This Marvel comic is a fantastic adaptation, and shorn of the film’s budgetary restrictions, it feels like it has a much better chance of getting the story told as it should have been all along. It’s also refreshing that Jim Baikie’s beautiful artwork doesn’t stick to just copying the likenesses of the movie’s actors, making Night Breed the comic feel like a different adaptation of the source material, rather than simply adapting the movie to the page.

As you’d expect of a story which sprang from the mind of Clive Barker, it’s grim, gory and doesn’t hold back; no one is safe and this gives Night Breed a pretty disturbing edge. John Wagner and Alan Grant, on writing duties, do an excellent job of bringing Night Breed’s story to the page too.

Interestingly, Marvel were doing lots of work with Clive Barker in the 90s, and Night Breed, which ran for 25 issues, went far beyond the original story and movie, even crossing over with other, famous Barker-penned creations such as Hellraiser and Rawhead Rex.

I’d always wanted to read Marvel’s Night Breed run, given that I was a bit too young for it when it first came out. This first issue is a really strong start, retelling the film’s story with a bit of expansion and more visual flair, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading more.

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