The All-Nighter
by Chip Zdarsky, Jason Loo, Paris Alleyne, Frank Cvetkovic, Allison O'Toole
Genres: Fantasy, Graphic NovelsPages: 114
Series: The All-Nighter #3
Rating:
Synopsis:In this final arc, the staff at The All-Nighter are trying to piece their lives back together in the wake of Alex’s disappearance. They know that Alex would stop at nothing to get any of them back, so they have no choice: it's time to bring this fight to The Takers.
With unexpected new allies, the crew will have to live up to Alex’s dreams of super heroes. If they want to rescue their friend and uncover the mystery of The Takers, they’ll have to do it as a team—or as a family.
The third volume of Chip Zdarsky’s The All-Nighter certainly goes places. Alex’s been kidnapped by the Takers, and everyone else is trying to figure out what the new rules are. The found family splinters for a bit, each trying to figure out a way forward, and God shows up.
Yeah, God. Or at least, the (Christian) God humans tell stories about, in the same way they tell stories about vampires, werewolves, etc. It’s a reasonable development from what we know about how stories work in this world, giving birth to monsters and heroes, but I’m going to guess it’ll make some readers profoundly uncomfortable. However, it doesn’t preclude God really existing, if you read carefully. The “God” we meet as a character is a made creature, but that doesn’t mean there’s no real God in the world of The All-Nighter. It’s pretty wild to speculate about, but Zdarsky didn’t go there.
Anyway! It goes kind of predictably from there, because of course Lucifer shows up, amongst other developments like the found family all saving each other (though not without loss).
The idea behind this series isn’t super original (stuff like American Gods leaps to mind, but also — though not set in our world — Michael Scott’s Paedur the Bard books, and quite a few others that I’m just not retrieving from memory in this second), but it’s a fun enough exploration of it, which maybe nudges the idea in a slightly different direction by having superheroes a la Marvel also be part of the mythology that comes to life.
Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)
Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid books also do this concept, and I think the later books include superheroes (it’s explicitly stated there are multiples of many deities/entities, so that both Old Norse Thor and Marvel Thor both exist). Not that I think well of the Iron Druid books: they’re kiiiiiiiiind of accidentally racist and also Irish folks don’t actually like people pillaging their mythology and folklore and people using Iron Druid as a source has actually made a mess of Wikipedia entries on Irish folklore!.
Shinto as a religion is fundamentally similar – belief creates some entities, others exist regardless but are strengthened by belief, etc. You can see this in media like the game Okami and the anime Kamichuu!