Wyatt Kennedy’s Nights and what a comic is about but also the fact that this is what I think the comic is about and might not be what the comic is actually about.
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In May, 2022 I read the first issue of an Image Comics mini series called Bolero. This comic which was written by Wyatt Kennedy and drawn by Luana Vecchio was about…
It wasn’t about the multiverse as Wyatt Kennedy said in the last issue. It was not about talking cats. Nor was it about a deadly dominatrix who would kill her subs live on the dark web, that is in fact another comic, Lovesick by Bolero’s artist Luana Vecchio. It’s pretty good.
Now why am I talking about Wyatt Kennedy’s Bolero in an essay about Wyatt Kennedy’s Nights? Great question, the answer is simpler than it might seem!
In Bolero’s final issue Wyatt does a small… I’ll call it goodbye letter for Bolero. In there he explains what led to him writing the comic, his struggle with alcoholism and his life in general, how he thinks that Devyn beat her illness like he did even if most don’t think she did, how Brandon Granham of King City/Multiple Warheads/Prophet fame helped him – because it’s fucking tough to try and beat addiction alone. He then says that he will never write something like Bolero ever again. Which is awesome. The final issue of Bolero has two short stories, only a few pages long. One for Luana Vecchio’s own comic Lovesick, and then for Wyatt Kennedy’s next comic Nights. That was very cool to see.
Tangled, where do you want to get with this?
Good question, consider two things.
One – Bolero wasn’t about the multiverse.
Two – Brandon Granham.
Now you get it.
I don’t actually.
Consider this.
Bolero’s universe hopping shenanigans was about a woman trying to deal with her self destructive urges. About how she ruined her own life, her own relationships with her girlfriend and friends. How she was making things worse for herself. All in the guise of a story about the multiverse. This is a small essay on hiding the themes of your story, it’s also about how one person can find them in a story even if that might not be what the author originally planned.
It’s about a teenager moving to Florida. It’s about living with your cool cousin and his friends. It’s about having a crush on a cool girl who’s a bit older than you. It’s about dying your hair. It’s also an urban fantasy where Florida is owned by Spain, the USA only has thirty-one states, the internet is still in its infancy and irrelevancy and supernatural creatures are common and known by people.
Vince just moved to Florida after the death of his mother. His cool cousin Ivory is a hit man and his friends are Matt the ghost of an indie game developer and Gray a German vampire. Vince has a crush on said German Vampire. He dyes his hair eventually. Remember what I said about Brandon Granham and Bolero?
Nights is straightforward. It’s an urban fantasy with a strong horror influence, it has a nostalgia for the early aughts, it likes anime but not in a – we are coping anime without understanding it more like in a we use manga as a visual add to Night’s own art identity. Also Vince does the Akira slide, we cannot escape that.
But Nights is also – in my point of view – about the end of one period in one’s life and the start of another. When we first meet Vince he’s just arriving in Florida, he just lost his mother and he’s now moving in with his cousin and his roommates. He’ll start in a new school, get used to a new city full of odd fantastical things, meet new people. We as the reader will also do that as we follow Vince.
The first issue of Nights has a time skip of five years, it’s later half being dedicated to the day of Vince’s seventeenth birthday. It’s also about the start of the end of this period in his life. You see, Vince wants to move to New York for college, he wants to study film making. This is small but it’s an important moment that to me at least leads to the core of the comic.
Things change and some changes are okay, they are good, others aren’t. In the five years Vince has lived in Florida he came to develop a crush on Gray. This is good, normal everyday stuff. There’s a star-nosed mole that racially stereotypes Vince who tells him that not only is he divorced but he also got a girlfriend recently. He tells him that because you never know what life will bring. His divorce was the end but also the beginning of a new period of his life, him getting a girlfriend is also the start of a new period of his life.
In these same five years Matt has died and turned into a ghost. This isn’t good and it brings him a lot of pain because… None of his friends get it. He’s alone, he’s actually depressed to the point that he broke things off with his girlfriend and boyfriend. And Ivory is avoiding him for some reason. Things can also fall in place and stay like that for a very long time and that’s also can be good, it can also be very bad.
It all depends on how you deal with these changes. The comic communicates this in a very subtle way, it never tells you directly about changes or stagnation, it never talks about this, it’s just there mixed with the urban fantasy and the horror and the anime and game references. It’s simply a theme that the reader can pick and prod and think about. It also might not be what Wyatt Kennedy had intended for the story, it might be something else entirely it is many other things other than this theme I found or think I found, it’s about friendship, it’s about it’s characters, it’s about this little odd world it’s set in. It’s many things.
Yet I still cling to this theme of change and stagnation because I see it there! And I resonate with it! I like it. But the comic is more than that.
Ivory is not in a good place when we meet him in the first issue, many things are happening and that is pushing him away from his friends. Gray is looking for something about her past. About what turned her into a vampire. Matt is dead and he only has so many years for him to make peace with what killed him. Vince is thinking about moving to New York. All of these threads are charming, interesting, odd, and curious. I want to see where the comic goes with them. I want to know more about the world, more about Florida. I want to see these characters well and happy.
Now where do I want to get with all of this? Why am I writing all of this? Because I like comics, games, anime, TV shows, books. Things that tells stories and often times stories have themes, sometimes a story likes to hit you in the head very violently with it’s themes other times a story only reveals it’s themes when you are really deep in it and then some just have them in a very subtle way. Nights is being subtle, Bolero was subtle, but again I might be reading way too much into Nights. It might be that I like this comic and I found in it a theme that might not be intended by the authors of it but it applies to me and I like that.
And that’s okay. Nights doesn’t need to be about change and stagnation. It can be about not hiding things from the people you love, about being honest with them no matter the cost, about how hiding things from the people you love will bite you in the ass and it won’t be pretty. It also can be straight forward, it can be about a group of friends and their adventures and where these take them and that’s okay because I like that!
I like Wyatt Kennedy’s Nights, not in the same euphoric way I liked Wyatt Kennedy’s Bolero because those are two different comics but I took from them things that I like. Bolero is visceral and euphoric to me. Nights is the sort of thing I like to write, it’s the same brand of madness as me but more refined, maybe that’s why I like it so much and why it shines to me. It inspires me not in the same way Bolero did but Bolero isn’t Nights. It’s not supposed to be.
In January 2025 I read the twelfth issue of Image Comics ongoing series called Nights. This comic which is written by Wyatt Kennedy and drawn by Luigi Formisano is the season one finale of Nights and a huge change of the Status Quo. After this issue nothing is the same, things changed, the plan was for them to change in a good manner. With Vince and Gray moving to New York, with Ivory and Molly moving to California, with Matt moving to Japan to work at Nokami(Yup), things were going to be okay. Then a ton of stuff happens! Read it for yourself it’s good stuff! Things aren’t the same as planed but it all changed for the worst. Life is like that sometimes bad things happens and we have to deal with that and try to do that in the best way possible. I’m excited to see what the characters will do, what things will happen, what more of the world we will see.
I’m not sure what Nights is about. I found in it a theme that I like and see it through the comic but I’m not sure if this is me doing a Pepe Silva or me seeing something that was to be seen, either way I don’t think it matters. When you read a comic, play a game, watch a show and you are invested in the story you will notice themes sometimes, maybe these themes are actually there maybe they aren’t but you will notice them. How these affect you is all dependent on who you are as a person, on what you been through and what’s important to you.
Or maybe not. I don’t know you.
But as I read the other volumes I came to realize what the series was about, how you need to accept your past mistakes and learn from them so you don’t hurt the people in your life again – Both Scott and Ramona left a lot of people hurt they are trying to not do that again. That was the case of me not seeing anything to call it a theme and go from it, it was a case of me slowly seeing what the author had intended. Which is pretty damn cool.
Why are you mentioning Scott Pilgrim? Just as an example. I like examples.
What do I want to get with all of this? As I said before. Stories can and most have themes. If we realize what they are or not is up to us. And if we find a new theme that wasn’t there is also up to us, no one really knows how something will resonate with you not even yourself. The same way Vince didn’t expect any of the crazy and wild things that happened to him when he arrived in Florida.
That’s just how things go.
In May, 2022 I read the first issue of an Image Comics mini-series called Bolero. This comic which was written by Wyatt Kennedy and art by Luana Vecchio. In it I found one of my favorite comics of all time, one that resonates with me still.
Thanks for reading.
Recommended reading:
Nights Vol.1(Issues 1 to 6.)
Bolero.
Lovesick.
Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World.