Night Animals

by Brecht Evens

Lush colors, wild imagination, and rich human themes collide in the Top Shelf debut of Belgian cartoonist Brecht Evens (The Wrong Place). Night Animals is a deluxe full-color comic book containing two wordless stories, each a feast for the mind as well as the eyes. Join an innocent young girl as she becomes a woman and learns where the wild things are, then follow a rabbit-suited man as his blind date becomes the epic journey of a lifetime. These gorgeous, bewitching tales are not to be missed!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Art, Bande Dessinée, Short Stories, Fantasy

48 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2011

About the author

Belgian cartoonist Brecht Evens was born in 1986 and studied illustration in Ghent, Belgium. Important mentors were his illustration teacher Goele Dewanckel and cartoonist/comedy coach/zen master Randall Casaer.

His debut comic book, A Delivery from Outer Space, was released in 2005. The slightly melodramatic Vincent was released in 2006, followed in 2007 by a little nocturnal fantasy called Night Animals. The Wrong Place (2009), started out as a graduation project and was a departure from the more typical comic art of his earlier books. It won the Haarlem Comic Festival's Willy Vandersteen Award for best Dutch-language graphic novel, and an award at the Angouleme International Comics Festival. He followed The Wrong Place up with The Making Of (2012) and the many-year-end-best-of-list appearing Panther (2016).

Brecht lives in Paris in a charming and oh so Parisian garret apartment.

Reviews

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really wonderful small volume by master cartoonist Brecht Evens from 2011. I was really excited to read this.

At just 36 pages, you know its going to be a minor work going into it. There are two stories here.

Blind Date
The biggest story is a mysterious adventure which kind of reminds me of Winchluss's Pinocchio comic. A man dresses up in a bunny suit and sits on a park bench, night fall reveals a set of arrows which he follows across town, into a bar, down a toilet, through the sewers to the ocean, up a cliff side, etc... until finally finding a cute girl also dressed in a bunny suit. Super weird but so many beautiful pages rendered with lovely colors. Each new area has a different color code (blue ocean, green forest etc.)

Bad Friends
A coming of age story. Starts off as a B+W penned comic without panel borders about a girl getting her first period during school. Later she goes on a journey into the woods filled with odd beasts, the comic painted with just red tones.

[Romane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb, primitive, straight-forward, and dark. A book with two wordless stories. I appreciate the artwork so much, from the cover up to the contents. The first story (Blind Date) was very nice and disturbing, almost like in a dream with strange creatures lurking about. A tinge funny too, with that part about the rabbit's "hole." The second story (Bad Friends) is even lovelier. The message that it conveys is like the girl's coming of age, physically (the development of her body & having her period) and mentally (the whole illustrations about finding new friends and a new world). This book is haunting and very beautiful.

[Emma Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastically detailed artwork. The narrative of the story is communicated impeccably without words, however, the greatest strength for me is the endless nature of the fore and background artwork. I have read and reread it several times over and I am still finding new things I didn't notice before. Always something to see.

[Alex Sarll]

Where The Wild Things Are, but make it sexy. Except draw it in a style that suggests the deep thickets of the subconscious, rather than being ostensibly sexy, so that it can be published by Top Shelf instead of ending up on the actual top shelf. In short, niche. Though undoubtedly a damn sight better than Dave Eggers' dreary slog of a Wild Things novel, and that one was official.

[Moonglum · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two wordless stories in this graphic collection. Each creates a dream world of animal spirit monsters and tells the story of a human's journey in that world. The art is just amazing.

[Eric Orchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous and inspiring.

[Jagruti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely not used to reading a wordless book, so this was a novel and interesting experience. The art was gorgeous, and was able to get across the message wonderfully well. The second story about the girl who got her period is one of my favorites of all time.

[Inès · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn I wish I was visited by a demon wearing striped stockings who took me into the woods to party when I first got my period. Instead I only got cramps.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slim little collection of two Brecht Evens comics, both wordless but featuring the delightfully painted and experimental artwork of one of the best cartoonists in the business. Collected in Night Animals is "Blind Date" and "Bad Friends", both solid short little comics.

"Blind Date" features a man wearing a bunny suit going on an absurd journey that begins on a park bench and leads through the sewers into the ocean. Featuring an almost dreamlike tone, this one is a strong display of Evens' visual prowess and playfulness with respect to formalism.

"Bad Friends" is another surreal dreamlike story about a girl experiencing her first menstruation that involves some truly spectacular visuals. Black & white artwork is used for the more grounded sequences, but as the story gets weirder, it also boasts some vibrant shades of red.

Simple but effecting, and only something that the masterful hand of Brecht Evens can achieve. Worth checking out if you can find this in the wild.

[NewNobodyAccount · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book has two stories. The first is easy to understand. The second? You are getting it and then the end is a head scratcher. Like literally the very last panel explained nothing to me. Maybe it’s cos the second story is written by a dude, but the story is about a girl becoming a woman. Like I THINK I get it… I think it’s about her just being lost in her new world, but it’s hard to tell cos I don’t think most women react or feel this way about being a woman. Anyway, I’m over-explaining why I’m giving this a 4 instead of a 5 at this point but that’s why… cos the second one didn’t end in a way that made a lick of sense.

Incredibleeeeee artwork, of course… goes without say.

[Alexander Lisovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Брехт Эвенс, автор моей любимой крышесносящей "Пантеры", выпустил в 2011-м году ещё один, на этот раз совсем небольшой комикс, практически без слов рассказывающий две мини-истории о сексуальных началах. Они изобретательны, прекрасно нарисованы и покрашены, и в целом довольно классные. Мало кто из комиксистов умеет и хочет затрагивать подобные темы, да ещё с нужным тактом и мастерством. Рекомендую, и вот небольшое превью.

[RoRo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a grotesque, creative, visually satisfying book. It is short but accomplishes many stories and messages. The creatures, the settings, and the narratives have that "weird but I can't look away" feeling. While reading it, my overwhelming feeling was that I wanted to see the incredible art on each page expanded to the size of a whole museum wall. Hopefully that happens someday.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s like a dark and slightly disturbing acid trip you can’t look away from.

[টক দইয়ের চা · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mesmerizing! When art is more than enough, needs no caption. Though this is tiny, one can read it hundred times and finds something new each time.

[Elede · Rating 1 out of 5]

Leído en 5 min, 14/02.
Muy poca cosa, arte feo (no es de mi estilo), y poco que contar.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two pleasing, lush blends of Big Mouth and Where the Wild Things Are, for adults.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this mostly as a dark book of clever line art (well, there are no words, so that's the only way to enjoy it) but also for the coloration because it's so dense and eerie, but has a lot of depth. Took me all of 5-10 minutes to go through, and I feel it might be strangely haunting for awhile. Probably a good book to flip through each autumn, if only for the visual Bradbury-esque feel of it.

[melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has no words; however, the second story, about the girl getting her period, was lovely. I savored the drawings and fantastic creatures. The use of color was beautiful. It felt like a celebration of womanhood.

[Michelle Hoogterp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the rabbit portion. Very straight forward and interesting. The second one made me think a bit more and I really appreciated it.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just not for me. I didn't particularly care for the art and the story wasn't appealing.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely art, cute and dark story. As Gene said: I want more!

[Mollie Fabric · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my very favorite comics! Colorful and wild and free!

[Kamakana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Naive. Primitive. Simple ideas in simple graphic form

[Ed Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

both stories are beautiful, but the second one is amazing and astounding and audicious and a whole bunch of other big important sounding good words.