The first original Night Breed story, after issues 1-4 adapted the movie/novella, #5 goes to some interesting places, and it takes some really leftfield turns. Though Clive Barker’s name is above the title (following the Hellraiser movie and the success of his written work, Barker was a very bankable name in 1990), he’s listed as ‘Creator/Consultant’ in the credits, so who knows how much input he had into the stories.

Nevertheless, those leftfield turns are quite interesting, with the Night Breed, having been massacred and driven out of Midian, scattered and in different groups. We follow one particular group who have decided to ignore Baphomet’s commandment of not partaking in human flesh, and parallel to this we have Boone and his small group looking for help in their search for a New Midian.

The decision to make a group of Night Breed outright horror movie villains is an interesting one, but does seem to go against the central allegorical nature of the original story. Of course, in Barker’s film and novella, the ‘normals’ are always the bad guys, and the ‘monsters’ are misunderstood and persecuted.

Still, one strength the comic has is in being able to have the cast get a lot weirder in their look and abilities than it’s able to in the relatively low budget film. The most is made of this, with some truly outlandish creature designs and off-the-wall visuals.

I’m less enamoured with the unnecessary, and somewhat awkward, fascination with nudity and sex, however, which just seems shoehorned in alongside the gore to make Night Breed earn its ‘mature readers only’ status. The art here deels much less consistent than in the movie adaptation issues too.

That said, I’m continuing to find Night Breed to be a pretty interesting read. I was utterly fascinated by the comic when it first came out, but couldn’t afford its higher cover cost, not that I think my local comic shop owner would have sold it to me back then anyway. I’m glad that, more than three decades later, I’m finally getting a chance to catch up with the continuation of Clive Barker’s lore, and see what I missed all those years ago.

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