Halloween is almost upon us, and fans of fright and fantasy are always looking for new worlds to explore, both for spooky season and all the other months of the year. Fortunate for us, writer Jeremy Lambert and artist Alexa Sharpe are ready to take us to realms unfamiliar and wondrous in their new graphic novel The Night Mother Book 1, on sale now from Oni Press. The first of book of a trilogy, this first installment introduces us to the mysterious and inscrutable Night Mother, tasked with sending the souls of the dead to their eternal rest and reward. A desire for power, however, pushes the Night Mother to turn her attention to the souls of the living, leaving 12-year-old Madeline Tock to defend her town from the living and the dead from suffering.
I spoke with Jeremy Lambert and Alexa Sharpe about the conceit of The Night Mother Book 1, the Edwardian and Victorian influences on the plot, characterization, and art, the themes of loneliness woven into the story, and the folkloric mood of the book.
The Night Mother Book 1 is one of those comics I tore through, cover to cover, and found myself reflecting on days after, thumbing through the pages here and there. If you’re looking for a new fantasy world that also feels somewhat familiar, The Night Mother is well worth your time.
THE NIGHT MOTHER Book 1 cover
FreakSugar: For folks reading this, what is the idea behind The Night Mother?
Jeremy F. Lambert: The Night Mother is a woman who lives on the moon. Her gown is a map of the cosmos, her hair is a tangled constellation, and her eyes are like the lights of faraway stars. She descends to Earth at every full moon to gather the souls of the dead in her old and creaky lantern and then turn them into moonlight, to forever shine on for their loved ones and the living. But now she’s halted the full moon in the night sky. There’s no more sun, no break of day. And she’s not just taking the souls of the dead, but of the LIVING as well. And our story follows the only one who can stop her: a little girl that lives in the graveyard, named Madeline Tock. Because Madeline can hear the whispers of the dead, and they’re telling her that the Night Mother wants one soul in particular for her nefarious plans: and that’s Madeline’s.
THE NIGHT MOTHER Book 1 page 1
FS: What can you tell us about our principal characters, Madeline and the Night Mother?
JFL: Madeline is a lonely kid who lives next to the graveyard. Her only friends are buried in the ground, and she can always hear what they’re saying. Even still, that doesn’t exactly help with the loneliness. Just makes it worse, really. She does her part though, burying the dead in the graveyard with her dad and helping them find some peace before their whispers go away. The Night Mother hears those whispers too… which comes with the job of ferrying souls to the moon, though, so that’s par for the course. What’s not par for the course is that this Night Mother, for the first time in a long line of Night Mothers, has warped her responsibilities and has stopped the moon in the night sky. We don’t know why she’s gathering all these souls of the dead and living, but it can’t be good…
THE NIGHT MOTHER Book 1 page 2
FS: I love the whimsical, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling feel of the story. What was the discussion like about what the book’s look should be?
JFL: The short answer is that Alexa is an incredible artist and storyteller! Slightly longer one is that Alexa and I, along with our editor Sarah Gaydos, talked a lot about the atmosphere, color palette, and designs of the story for a long time before going to layouts, which was a helpful approach, because it gave us some time to steep all those ideas into something nocturnal and elemental that gradually gets singed at the edges with more otherworldly and fantastic color and design. But it roots so much of the story in this Edwardian design with earth and moon tones that bring the familiar, and then whenever we’re dealing with the Night Mother we get the more unfamiliar elements. And Alexa just took all those ideas far beyond anything I could write up! With Becca Carey bringing so much weight to the words with wonderful approaches to the Night Mother and the whispers!
Alexa Sharpe: Jeremy’s script was so vivid from the get-go, he has a writing style that’s really easy to get immersed in. The overarching whimsical eeriness was there from the beginning, building off that, creating the initial character art and pitch pages, felt like second nature to me. From there, Jeremy and Sarah, our editor, really honed my interpretations.
THE NIGHT MOTHER Book 1 page 3
FS: As much as this story has fantastical elements, it seems like its focus is a good deal on loneliness and how to combat that. Is that a fair reading? If so, how did you decide to convey that, both in story and in imagery?
JFL: It’s absolutely fair! It’s a central foundation of Madeline’s character didn’t necessarily intend it at first, but I realized pretty quickly that’s why Maddy and her dad are out on an island, removed from the rest of the town. Why Maddy doesn’t have any friends but the dead. That loneliness and somewhat forced isolation are a foundation for Maddy to want more than this, and to highlight that she doesn’t have too many people to talk to about life. Second guessing her gut instinct sometimes. She’s unsure of things, like so many kids are, like I was, and who trusted what other people (whether that’s teachers, authority figures, parents, etc.) thought of us and told us we should be perhaps a little too much. So having Maddy at this remove, and then introducing a character called Nura the Lamplighter really brings so much of that into focus, story-wise.
AS: It’s absolutely an undercurrent that runs through Maddy’s story. On the visual side of things, Jeremy wrote in a lot of scenes in which a character is set against vast, sweeping scenery- usually the darkness of the night sky or the ocean. I really tried to push that sense of loneliness, especially when Maddy is on the page- where often the moon is her only company.
THE NIGHT MOTHER Book 1 page 4
FS: The story has the feel of something pulled straight out of folklore or mythology. Were you influenced by tales of old when putting this tale together?
JFL: Absolutely! I lived in a little library of fairy tales around my desk for quite some time and it was wonderful. Mostly Grimm tales, but I scoured the shelves of libraries and used bookstores for a long time and bought far too many books on myths and deities as well. The research is always so fun for me, but one of the most interesting deep dives was on the moon itself, various topography maps and names given to craters or points of interest. There were a couple books in particular that were helpful, one on the more topographical side of things, (21st Century Atlas of the Moon by Charles A. Wood and Maurice J.S. Collins) and another on the Moon as it relates to storytelling and mythos worldwide (The Moon: Myth and Image by Jules Cashford).
AS: On the art side of things, I definitely wanted to match the folkloric mood Jeremy has baked into the script. One of my north stars for developing the character designs and environments in The Night Mother is Victorian and Edwardian children’s book illustrations. It’s such a classical time period, familiar but whimsical, and very often associated with fairy tales.
THE NIGHT MOTHER Book 1 page 5
FS: You have plans for further stories. Can you tease what those might look like?
JFL: It’s such an interesting project, because I wrote Book 1 in 2018/2019, Book 2 in 2023, and Book 3 is going to start up shortly. So it’s felt like I’ve been a bit of a different writer for each book, just with the very same heartbeat and emotional North Star throughout. And this really lends itself well to these 3 books in particular, just given Maddy’s arc and journey, and the focus of each book. I don’t think it will be much of a surprise that the moon (where the Night Mother and a character you’ll meet called Nura the Lamplighter come from) will factor heavily in Books 2 and 3, and the adventure gets as grand and mysterious as you can imagine!
FS: If you had one last pitch for The Night Mother, what would it be?
JFL: Cottagecore Coraline! Ha, I heard that from a friend at Oni (Kaia!) and thought it was apt.
The Night Mother Book 1 is on sale now from Oni Press.
From the official Book 1 description:
Oni Press, the multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning publisher of groundbreaking comics and graphic fiction since 1997, is proud to announce THE NIGHT MOTHER– a mysterious new graphic novel from Jeremy Lambert (Doom Patrol, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Goosebumps) and Alexa Sharpe (Lumberjanes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Uncanny Magazine). THE NIGHT MOTHER is the first in a series of three volumes that will wrap readers in star-filled worlds of coffins and whispers, fate and foes – watch for book one ascending onto shelves October 8th!
The moon is stuck like a broken clock in the midnight sky, the sun a distant memory. No one in this quiet seaside town can remember how long this unnatural darkness has lasted. No one, that is, except for the curious girl who lives in the graveyard, caring for the dead: twelve-year-old Madeline Tock. In gratitude, the departed whisper their worries to her, sounding just like her overprotective but loving father: beware this endless night and she who causes it.
Because there’s someone else who can hear the whispers, too . . . someone whose gown is a map of the cosmos, hair a tangled constellation, eyes like the lights of faraway stars. The Night Mother. Her elemental duty is to gather the souls of the dead in her lantern, then send them to their eternal rest as beautiful moonlight. But when her hunger for power drives her to take souls from the living, Madeline bravely stands up to defend her town and those she loves. Can Madeline help bring back the sun, or will she be lured by the starry promises of this mysterious woman?
“The Night Mother is a supernatural snow globe world of the unknown where a frightened Madeline Tock must learn to trust herself in a place of warped expectations. A place where the dead can whisper and the woman from the moon gathers their souls in her lantern,” said Lambert. “We all have our own crucible when we are younger… a pressure cooker of fears, loves, and discoveries… when we learn about who we are along with the many shadows that follow us. This is Maddy’s.”
The Night Mother is perfect for fans of dark fantasy and cozy horror–this eerily beautiful graphic novel is for older middle-grade readers and resonates with both young adult and adult audiences. Tweens and teens who enjoy Laika films such as Kubo and the Two Strings, Coraline, and books like Through the Woods, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, The Starless Sea, and The Plentiful Darkness are sure to find haunting solace in this graphic novel.
Written by Jeremy Lambert (Doom Patrol, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Goosebumps) and richly illustrated by Alexa Sharpe (Lumberjanes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Uncanny Magazine), The Night Mother is a lush gothic tale perfect for readers of all ages who relish in the wonder of the night sky– don’t miss its debut October 8th!