Finding love or something similar to it can often occur in the most unusual of places. You can meet your partner at the grocery store or at a party.You can meet them in the morning, in the afternoon, or late at night. No matter where or how you meet them, there’s always a story involved. In Nightlife, the stories to be told have one thing in common; it all takes place at night. In a person’s nightlife.

Like another book that I’ve reviewed by Dale Lazarov, Manly, this is a book of three stories where the story is told only in the art with no words. I imagine this is the type of book that would appeal more to someone who appreciates the visual over the verbal, but I believe that it’s important for those who are verbal to give a book with only art a chance because it challenges you to look less at the work in a literal sense and more in an interpretive sense. A wordless book challenges the reader to think, “Now, what’s really going on in this scene”, whereas in a book with dialogue, the writer’s intention is more concrete. When it comes to the interpretive style of telling a story, I believe Nightlife is successful in that it opens up the mind of the reader in allowing them to decide for themselves what the story is trying to say.

In the first story, Hard Cases, two men find one another in a café or coffee bar during an open mic night. Aside from their similar interests of nightlife activities, these two men also share another common interest, they are both guitar players and songwriters. Over the course of the evening, attraction turns into desire, which turns into a night that I’m sure neither man will soon forget.

The second story is about turning an inconvenience into something else altogether. Layover, finds one man stuck in an airport on a layover, when he catches the eye of a stranger. The two men decide to get to know each other better, which leads them to a nice quiet dinner that quickly becomes a night of hot sex in a hotel. The next morning, the two men depart for wherever they were originally going, but the last panel shows that the one night might not have been the end of their story.

Finally, Closing Time tells the story of a bouncer at a night club and the patron that he’s attracted to. At first, the patron has no interest in the bouncer, but after the bouncer comes to his rescue, the patron is willing to give the guy another chance. This evolves into the bouncer and the patron spending the evening getting to know each other better before spending a night of intense passion. For the bouncer, it seems that his good deed is going to be well-rewarded when it appears the two men have settled into a life together that goes far beyond their one night of passion.

I believe that what we see with these three stories is three different types of love and sex. The first story seems to represent the one-night stand, while the second story implies a brief fling, followed by the third story’s implication of a long-term relationship. But, then again, this could only be my interpretation, which is the beauty of this type of work because it gives enough room for the reader to come to their own conclusions about the story.

In Nightlife, Dale Lazarov collaborates with a different art team than he had with Manly, but it’s pretty clear that he found an art team that gets his vision. Either that or he is a writer who knows how to write to the strengths of his artists and adjust his ideas to fit their style. In either case, Nightlife shows that the creative team knows how to work together to produce a beautiful book that tells not only one story but three.

The only real negative word I have to say about Nightlife is that there were a few times when I wasn’t sure in which way were the panels to be read. I wasn’t sure if the panels were to be read on one page first before going to the next page, or if the two pages were meant to be read together. It didn’t really matter to the story, but it was a little bit of an issue with me.

Another positive thing about the story, though, is that again, the creative team promoted safe sex by showing the use of condoms at all times during intercourse. As always, it’s important for the reader to remember that the best sex is safe sex.

This book definitely appeals to the LGBTQ audience, though I imagine that it has more appeal to gay men for obvious reasons. All in all, I found it a very well put together and drawn book with a talented trio of creators who work very well together. If you’re interested in picking it up, it is available for order through Amazon.

Kenne Morrison has been a comic fan for most of his life. He made it through high school by occasionally escaping to the world of super heroes. When most kids outgrew comics, Kenne found that he was too hooked into them to escape. Now, he spends one night of his week basking in the glory that is New Comics Day and talking about his favorite book with his comic geek friends at Whatever in the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco, Ca. He aspires to be a comic book writer one day and is currently working on his first comic, Creatures of the Badge. He can be reached by email at kennemorrison@hotmail.com.

NIGHTLIFE © 2009 Dale Lazarov & Bastian Jonsson. Review © 2009 Kenne Morrison.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).