REVIEW: NIGHT STALKER Volume 1

TITLE: NIGHT STALKER Volume 1
PUBLISHER: 1First Comics
WRITER: Orlando Harding
ILLUSTRATOR: David R. Miller, Jr.
COLORS: Paul Little and Steve Cobb
LETTERS: Kel Nuttall
EDITOR: Ken F. Levin
COVER: John Gallagher
PRICE: $19.99
RATING:
WEBSITE: 1firstcomics.com
SUMMARY: The very worst that Hell has to offer have escaped the depths and are now in hiding and posing as human beings on Earth. Dyana, the most vicious and insidious bounty hunter known has been charged to served absconder warrants. She must stalk, capture, and drag each creature back to the depths while simultaneously batting the forces of light.
COMMENTS: The first thing you are struck by is that the art is amazing. Miller really knocks it out of the park from page one. Harding’s text is very realistic, or at least as realistic as you can be when your main character is Dyna the Night Stalker, a beautiful woman sent from Hell to kill demons in San Francisco, during the cold war between heaven and hell. Dyana can change her appearance so you have to wonder if the beautiful woman is also an illusion.

The story focus on a lot of small adventures of the Dyana, the Night Stalker, a bounty hunter from hell, who teams up with Azrael a very classical looking demon who doesn’t talk but can clearly get his message across and Michelle, her friend, and drinking buddy, is also her rival who works for the other side. Michelle is Trinity, an angel from heaven who also patrols earth, hunting creatures from hell. The story is a time travel bounty hunting adventure of supernatural suspense. The adventures go the present to 1977 and for a real blast to the past all the way to 1820, after that, we are back to the future in the year 2170. The comic is filled with a lot of wonderful panels where the art is amazing, but there are so many times and places involved from adventure to adventure the story requires a careful reading not to miss any of the nuances. Night Stalker is at its core, a story of one woman’s desperate hope for freedom and her willingness to do whatever it takes to get it.

If you are a fan of the Harding Universe, there is a nice easter egg with RRH.

Night Stalker won the Glyph Comics Award for Best Female Character and it’s easy to see why. If you are looking for a strong black female hero this is the comic for you!

I interviewed Orlando Harding many years ago when he first launched Night Stalker at 1Frist Comics, you can read it here

About Author

Rik Offenberger

Rik Offenberger has worked in the comic field as a retailer, distributor, reporter, public relations coordinator, writer and publisher since 1990. He owns and operates the e-mail bases Super Hero News service, and his published works in print can be seen in The Comics Buyers Guide, Comic Retailer, Borderline Magazine, and Comics International. On the internet he has worked as a writer and/or editor for Silver Bullet Comicbooks, Comic Book Resources, Newsarama and First Comics News. He was the Public Relations Coordinator at Archie Comics for a decade. He is currently the Editor-In-Chief at G-Man Comics. For TwoMorrows Publications, Rik co-wrote The MLJ Companion with Paul Castiglia and Jon B. Cooke, charting the history of Archie’s superheroes, and for Gemstone Publishing wrote chapters of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide to Lost Universes.

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