30 Days of Night, Vol. 8: Spreading the Disease

30 Days of Night #8

by Dan Wickline, Alex Sanchez (Illustrator), Tony Sandoval (Illustrator)

Crawling from the wreckage of 30 Days of Night: Dead Space is this latest continuation of the 30 Days saga. In "Spreading The Disease," Agent Michael Henson had all the evidence he needed to prove to the world that vampires exist... until the government took it all away.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Horror, Vampires, Fiction, Fantasy, Graphic Novels Comics

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2007

About the author

Dan Wickline is a writer/photographer/bassist living in Los Angeles, CA. In comics he has written for the 30 Days of Night and Grimm Fairy Tales franchises as well as the on-going ShadowHawk and 1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad. He's also written prose for characters such as The Phantom, The Green Hornet and his own creation Lucius Fogg. As a photographer, Dan has been featured in numerous gallery shows as well as a collection of his black & white work published under the title Private Skin. Dan had a brief moment in the Hollywood spotlight playing a corpse on the hit series Dexter, but now spends his spare time as the bassist for the newly formed metal band Murder Most Foul. Dan is happily married to his lovely wife Debbie, who has an amazing capacity to put up with the insanity that is his life.

Reviews

[Tony Vacation · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know a thing about Dan Wickline other than that he wrote a dumb story arc for the 30 Days of Night franchise called Spreading the Disease. In this dumb story arc, an FBI agent is led on an X Files-esque goose chase that connects the earthbound investigation into the vampire carnage in space that served as a tale for 30 Days of Night, Vol. 5: Three Tales to an evangelist bloodsucker's plot to turn an entire stadium of football fans into vampires with tainted micro-beers. For some reason this takes place in the South. For some reason the story arc switches artists half way in and the replacement artist, Tony Sandoval, draws adult women to resemble buxom Diva Starz dolls. For some reason Wickline spends an inordinate amount of panels having women compare their breasts...What else is there to say after that?

[Ken W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artwork 3.5 stars
Story 4 stars
Overall 3.75 stars rounded up to 4
I will continue this series next October! Fun series! 🧛‍♀️

[Paul Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing on from Dead Space, Spreading the Disease follows FBI agent Michael Henson as he endeavours against all sorts of carnage to prove the existence of vampires. Transferred from Washington to Alabama he is contacted by a mysterious benefactor and he goes in search of the female vampire responsible for the space shuttle disaster.
I wasn't a big fan of Dead Space and the series as a whole is on a downward spiral, more so without the artwork of Ben Templesmith and some of the reading was difficult, red script in a black text box. The story is engaging enough as a religious zealot and recently turned vampire attempts to force his will on the masses bringing immortality to the believers, some standard preacher scenes here with a blood thirsty twist but unfortunately its starting to look familiar and tired.
That said I will continue with the series in the hope that the two main characters from the original Eben & Stella, through the art of Justin Randall can recapture that haunting gut wrenching atmosphere in the next volume.

[William Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'll give this one four stars for the concept, and not the actual storytelling. the plot was fantastic, as good as could have been expected as the succession of the series and the progression, but fell flat in the finished version. also, the art by sandoval is completely worthless. who told you to draw all of your female characters with inflated foreheads and distended arms so that they looked like joseph merrick? however, the art by sanchez is first rate.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume is a direct sequel to Dead Space, and both volumes together read more as a spin off to 30 Days of Night rather than a part of the main storyline. This volume is about a religious cult of vampires trying to present vampirism as a way to get closer to God.

It wasn't bad, but I found it very text heavy. I also didn't care at all for the art in this volume (or in Dead Space, really.)

[Alondra Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

This storyline was a little better than previous; not so cheesy. Our most evil of vampires are spreading the disease and are spreading it in very scary ways.

Kegs are dangerous.... just sayin' .... 🤔

[Elh R' · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know what to think of this story, or of this series ... Like in almost all 30DON there are good ideas (in this case, a very good idea) but the storytelling is just bad, add to this that in this book I mostly couldn't stand the art. Is not that the art is bad, but, there are only a few panels that I liked ...

The story talks about religion fanatics, and the turn in this book is pretty interesting, but, like I just wrote, the storytelling is not so good ...

... And the dialogues, wow, there are so cheesy ... Damn ...

... But, all in all, it was funny to read ...

I don't really recommend it, there are other comics about vampires that are better than this, but, if you have some free time and don't know what to read, pick it up, at least it's funny ...

[Koen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Oh god, it hurts!"
... "I told you not to eat the nachos!"

uhm, okay :/

But next to the lame ass jokes all the time it was an interesting development in the story.. Not going into detail (of course, don't want to spoil things) but the vampires getting stronger and plan to turn more and more and even want the world to know they are out there. Agent Henson is hellbent on stopping this inferno and with the help of some muscle he might be able to do it... or is he? ;)

Liked it, but the art didn't give me the thrilling feeling I usually got like with the first issues..

[Micah Siegmund · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is essentially a continuation of the 30 Days of Night universe where "Dead Space" left off, and involves vampires devising a way to "spread the disease" by infecting a large number of humans at once. The story and art are both weaker than in previous volumes, but all in all a decent story.

[Katharine (Ventureadlaxre) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blah, getting boring.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid continuation of the arc begun in volume 7.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far this is the best one I've read in the series. That's not exactly high praise. I'm reading all the books I received in a Humble Bundle collection, so I skipped a few of the predecessors, including the one directly before this. However, I got the gist of those events very quickly and didn't feel like anything critical was missing.

The artwork is more palatable than Ben Templesmith's from the early volumes. It's still not my favorite style, and all the women look like white trash trailer park teenagers, but it's easier to take in. The story had fewer plot holes and nonsensical decisions compared to the other works I read, though both are still present.

The nature of the vampires has also changed. I don't know if I missed something in that regard by skipping a few volumes or if it was intentional at the author's discretion, but there's little to no resemblance when compared to the vampires that first appeared in the series, both physically and behaviorally.

Overall, I found this fairly enjoyable. That's the most praise I've given these graphic novels up to this point.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dan Wickline takes over but this story is tangentially related to the last volume. It's about the vampire who infected the astronaut at the beginning of the story. She's part of a vampire sect who are trying to come out in public. They are also somehow religious saying that are God's true children even when murdering people. It's pretty dumb. I also don't like how they were converting people to vampires from tainted alcohol. Let's stick to the basics here.

Tony Sandoval does some of the art and it's some of the worst art I've seen in a comic in a very long time. Everyone, including the adults, look like emaciated children with large bulbous heads and tiny skinny bodies. Sandoval needs to take an anatomy class because these people look like they need to eat a sandwich more than anything else.

[Edith Campo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continúa la historia del anterior, con el agente Henson queriendo sacar a la luz a los vampiros y un "garganta profunda", tipo expediente X dándole información.
Esta vez hay un culto de vampiros que se lo intenta poner fácil, porque siguen a un predicador vampírico que quiere convertir a todo el mundo en vampiro, y masacrar a los que no quieran.
Mucha matanza y sangre y un concepto un poco raro del vampirismo, ya que esta vez no se transmite por una mordedura (Ojo, spoiler: No es la primera vez que la cerveza convierte en monstruos a la población. En un capítulo de Buffy, cazavampiros, convertía a los estudiantes en neandertales)
No sé muy bien si me gustan estos comics. Ey, son vampiros, y cuentan cosas originales, pero la narración es confusa...

[Bruce Dixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this. The 30 Days universe seems to be full of really interesting concepts, but they're slowly fleshed out so you're really only picking up one per book. I'm going to keep tracking down other Vols to keep it going. My only detractor on this one was that the art was weird, almost off-putting, which is a statement since the original book had weird art, but it seemed to make more sense to me. Shrugs, check it out if you like different vampire stories.

[Gerald Sessions · Rating 5 out of 5]

My volume has 6 on the spine.
Barrow was mentioned.
FBI agent Henson from vampires in space without to try to stop the vampires, but he is being used by his superiors to cover up the existence of vampires .
The fun part of this book was preacher Gant and being reborn. It’s not religion fun .

[Arjun Rajkumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better arcs in 30 days of night!

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This volume was a hot mess. The story is a chaotic jumble of politics, religion and conspiracies.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this edition covers the idea of vampirism spreading under the guise of religion. Agent Henson is trying to discover the priest Gant's plan to spread the disease throughout the general populace. A strange 'friend' keeps calling Henson, and helping him find where Gant will strike next... and covering it up. So, what's going on? Why not read the volume?

While the ideas were fairly fresh, I felt that it was a bit too easy. Vampires in space? That's a fun concept. Vampires in Alaska? Why not? The complex web of underground vampires is fascinating, but this one just felt like a bit of a cheap shot. Blood of Christ, body of Christ? Yeah, yeah...

The artwork also felt a bit shabby to me. I'm continuing to read the stories, but this one just didn't hit the same nerves that the other volumes did.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

The 30 Days crew tackles the spread of the vampirism under the notions of religion. In search of answers to the "vampire in space" questions of the previous volume, Agent Henson is finding out that no one wants to listen; even his government is out to shut down this investigation. In order to uncover the truth, Henson must drop into the lion's den and hope to come out alive.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

UGH. with the original writers now NOT writing, these are getting quite tedious. The artist switched from Alex Sanchez - who was not too bad to Tony Sandoval midway through which messed a lot with the continuity. It's not that I don't like his work.... they are both great illustrators in different ways, but eh. I yearn for Ben Templesmith to return. And Steve Niles.

[Waffles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow! The art work in this graphic novel was just god-awful - I couldn't tell the humans from the vamps!
The story was a good idea, but poorly executed. The dialogue read like something out of a ghost-written celebrity memoir.

[Elizabeth Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very weak compared to the first one. The art wasn't my favorite either. Decent story though. Almost a three star because of it, but didn't quite make up for it.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot and artwork both leave much to be desired, especially compared to the Niles/Templesmith stuff earlier in the series. Sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad.