Nightschool: The Weirn Books Volumes 1 & 2

Beware the creatures of the night... they have hall passes. Nightschool, the latest series from the creator of Dramacon, plunges into a fantasy world where teenage witches and vampires may wield fearsome powers of darkness, but they still have to go to school.

Part supernatural horror, part high-school comedy, part fantasy of going to a really cool school, Nightschool is an enthusiastically told story with cute art and a lot of charm. But it suffers from the lack of a strong central protagonist or plot, building too many plotlines too quickly.

Svetlana Chmakova’s otaku romantic comedy Dramacon was one of the breakout hits of the first wave of original English language manga. Nightschool is a more ambitious series, a shojo-style supernatural story with a complex plot. Maybe too complex.

Nightschool has a huge cast and several parallel plot threads, and it dumps the reader unceremoniously into its Harry-Potter-meets-Buffy setting. The premise: an ordinary high school serves, come nightfall, as a school for supernatural beings like vampires, werewolves and witches. It has a Night Principal, the stout Madam Chen, and the Day and Night Keepers, who manage the link between the worlds. The Night Keeper, Sarah, is a frazzled young woman who tries to start geeky clubs at the Nightschool between putting out figurative and literal fires.

Meanwhile, there’s a supernatural world outside the Nightschool, represented by a gang of "Hunters" who fight evil creatures of the night. When some of the Hunters are struck by a curse, their leader, Daemon, seeks advice from Mr. Roi, a powerful (and sexy) wizard who teaches at the Nightschool.

Not until the end of the first volume does it become clear which of the many characters is the protagonist. That would be Alex, Sarah’s younger sister, a teenage witch who insists on being homeschooled. When Sarah vanishes, Alex enrolls at the Nightschool to find her.

In addition to being a gifted witch, Alex is periodically possessed, Dark Phoenix-style, by a powerful alternate personality. Is Alex’s hidden power connected to the magical crisis foreshadowed in the other plot threads? Does it have something to do with the as-yet-unrevealed reason she fears going to school? Probably, but the story seems to have a lot more ground to cover before it gets even close to answering questions.

Alfred Hitchcock once explained suspense by asking his interviewer to imagine that, as they were sitting there talking, their desk suddenly exploded. That would be exciting, but only for a moment. But if an audience could see the bomb under the desk, ticking down, as they talked, their entire conversation would become riveting. Nightschool grows engaging as the situation and characters start to establish themselves. But in the opening chapters, where it’s not clear what the characters want or which ones we should root for, it’s less engaging.

Chmakova’s art is on the light, action/humor end of teen shojo style. If anything, it’s a little too light for this type of story, with characters turning chibi at a moment’s notice. Chmakova is better than most manga artists at drawing a wide variety of character designs; at least the sprawling cast is easy to keep straight, because, thank goodness, everyone looks different. Her full-color work is great, and kudos to Yen for including color pages.

Nightschool starts shakily, but it has a lot of promise.

Shaenon Garrity is a manga editor, writer and comics creator. She is the author of CLAMP in America, and the creator of Narbonic.