Night and the Enemy

Night and the Enemy

by Harlan Ellison and Ken Steacy

'Night and the Enemy' was a collection of comics, graphics, and illustrated text bundled into an 81-page graphic novel from independent comics publisher Comico, and released in November 1987. 

The stories in 'Night' were adapted from the so-called 'Earth-Kyba' stories Ellison published from 1956 to 1987.

The Comico edition of 'Night and the Enemy' is long out of print, so Ellison enthusiasts were pleased when, in 2015, a trade paperback reprint edition (85 pp.) was issued from Dover. The 2015 edition reprints the entirety of the 1987 volume, and includes some ancillary material in the form of an 'Afterward and Pictures' section.

Canadian artist Ken Steacy (b. 1955) teamed up with Dean Motter to produce the comic, and later graphic novel, of 'The Sacred and the Profane' in the mid-1980s, so he was familiar with the process of composing and rendering science fiction content.

The stories in 'Night and the Enemy' all display Steacy's distinctive art style, both in color, and in black-and-white. Rather than speech balloons, dialogue is presented in a minimalist manner, as typeface with tails to indicate who is speaking.

As I noted in my review of 'The Sacred and the Profane', Steacy is not a traditional comic book artist in the sense of using art that lends itself to dynamic action. The artwork in 'Night and the Enemy' has a static quality, even in scenes of action, and while this works well for some of the stories, it is less effective in others. But the reader is invited to view the book and make their own judgments.

As for Ellison's writing, the Earth-Kyba stories were intended, in that inimitable Harlan Ellison style, to be vigorous repudiations of the sci-fi ideology of the postwar era, where virtuous Terrans battled malevolent alien invaders and won a noble victory. The tales in 'Night and the Enemy' avoid jingoism and remind us all, in a blunt way, that War is Hell.

There are a couple short stories included in 'Night and the Enemy'. 'Trojan Hearse' is a two-pager that gets the job done, while 'The Few, the Proud' takes the theme of the war hero and subverts it with a particularly caustic, 'surprise' ending.

Summing up, 'Night and the Enemy' is one of the better efforts to mingle Ellison's text with graphic art. It's on par with 'The Illustrated Harlan Ellison' from 1978, and superior to the comic book series 'Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor' from 1996. So, if you're an Ellison fan, you'll want to have a copy of 'Night and the Enemy' in your library.