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Door to Door Night by Night #1
- Writer:
- Cullen Bunn
- Artist:
- Sally Cantirino
- Letterer:
- Jim Campbell
- Cover Artist:
- Sally Cantirino
- Publisher:
- Vault Comics
- Price:
- $4.99
- Release Date:
- 2022-11-16
- Colorist:
- Dee Cunniffe
People around the world leave their old lives behind and drift from one place to another, taking in the sights and living off the kindness of others. While others migrate with the explicit intent to hunt down monsters that live in the shadows, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. From the Nightfall imprint of Vault Comics comes a tale about a group of drifters and burn-outs who stumble upon a world they never knew existed. Door to Door Night by Night #1, written by Cullen Bunn with art by Sally Cantirino, colors from Dee Cunniffe, and letters from Jim Campbell, reveals damning secrets behind each door.
As they pass over the highway, the Harrison Mills photography group stops to pick up a drifter. Max has been hitchhiking for a while, but she has never seen a sales team on the road. The group raises funds for the Jenner Hills Volunteer Fire Department by going door to door and selling portraits of their families for a fee. Seeing that Max is a kindred spirit, Harrison offers her a place on the team and asks her to accompany her new colleagues to learn the ropes of the job, but things quickly take an eerie turn.
Door to Door Night by Night #1 tries to ease the reader into the passenger seat, although the in medias res opening and the subsequent barrage of exposition might not be the best way to go about it. Luckily, Bunn's dialogue makes the supporting cast feel like well-rounded characters with their own set of prejudices and issues. This lets the story pan away from the protagonist and her secret past and helps the mystery develop. The final act completely changes the rules of the genre and delves head-first into the horror. Even when the story gets scary, Bunn finds a way to include physical humor, making the book surprisingly fun despite its intense plot.
Cantirino's artwork adds to the story in a way words can't. A simple dialogue-less scene of Max standing before the broken house creates a haunting atmosphere. Cantirino's lines are free-flowing, and the hatching lines display a range of situations in different manners. Even deep dark thoughts find a place amongst the pages as colorist Dee Cunniffe addresses every emotion with a poignant color palette, using primaries like red to attract attention to horrific details. The colors are not overtly bright in tone but varied enough to help distinguish each element, even in the most crowded scenes.
Door to Door Night by Night #1 introduces a fascinating, complicated cast of characters, but by the end, Max is clearly the star of the show. Bunn painstakingly crafts each piece of this puzzle, and they all fit flawlessly. He allows the horror to take a step back and lets humanity come to the forefront, providing terrific scenes in the last act.