John of the Night Review: Darryl Cunningham Delivers Cosmic Chaos With Heart

Darryl Cunningham’s John of the Night is a wild cosmic ride that kicks open the door with multiversal chaos, god-killing cults, witch-queen drama, time-stream madness, and a father-daughter bond strong enough to shake creation itself. This book starts with a scientist noticing reality glitches and quickly turns into a full-blown cosmic street fight where universes can fit inside bullets, higher powers act like bad middle management, and everybody seems to want John and his daughter Aysha dead, sacrificed, erased, or spiritually audited. In other words: it’s a lot but in the best comic book way possible.

At the center is John of the Night, a brilliant, emotionally locked-down cosmic agent who acts like feelings are a software bug he refuses to patch. He is cold, curt, funny in that dry “I might save your life but complain about the timing” kind of way, and clearly lying to himself about how much he loves his daughter. That emotional tension gives the book its real power. John may operate on science, war suits, and cosmic logic, but every major choice he makes screams one thing loud and clear: that’s his kid, and the multiverse better back up.  

Aysha is the spark that makes the whole thing pop. She is sharp, impatient, brave, funny, and not buying anybody’s cosmic nonsense wholesale. Whether she is calling out bad logic, surviving impossible odds, or figuring out how to outmaneuver people who think they are ten steps ahead, Aysha becomes more than the emotional anchor of the story she becomes the future of it. Her relationship with John brings heart to the madness, and their dynamic keeps the book grounded even when the plot is dealing with gods, assassins, pocket universes, and reality-breaking weapons.

Cunningham also gives us Medea, Aysha’s mother and a mythological nightmare with queen-level presence and toxic family energy for days. She wants Aysha sacrificed to restore her magic and save her dying world, which makes her both monstrous and complicated. That is where John of the Night gets interesting. It is not just “good guys versus bad guys.” The book asks hard questions: Is one innocent life worth millions? Who decides what sacrifice means? Can perfection exist without destroying everything beautifully flawed about being alive? Heavy stuff, but Cunningham keeps it moving with humor, action, and enough weirdness to stop it from becoming a philosophy class with capes.

The Jack Kirby influence is alive in the scale, the gods, the strange machines, the bold cosmic stakes, and the feeling that reality itself is one bad decision away from exploding. But Cunningham does not imitate Kirby; he channels that big-idea energy through his own clean, playful, deceptively simple style. The artwork is clear, colorful, expressive, and easy to follow, which matters because this story is juggling time loops, divine politics, mythology, multiversal warfare, and emotional trauma like a comic book circus act on a flaming unicycle.

The only real knock is that the middle stretch gets dense. There are factions, backstories, cosmic rules, and timeline mechanics coming at you fast, so casual readers may need a minute to catch up. But for fans who love ambitious sci-fi comics that swing big, think big, and still remember to have a sense of humor, this is the good stuff. John of the Night is strange, heartfelt, funny, tragic, clever, and packed with imagination. Darryl Cunningham delivers a cosmic adventure with brains, heart, and swagger a family drama performed on a stage made of collapsing universes.

John of the Night is a cosmic banger with emotional weight, sharp humor, and enough multiversal weirdness to make your pull list salute. It is big, bold, thoughtful, and wonderfully odd in all the right ways. Comic Crusaders says: add this one to your radar, tell your shop, and prepare for a graphic novel that proves once again comics can go anywhere, do anything, and still hit you right in the heart. Wepa approved.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4/5

By Darryl Cunningham
Published by Avery Hill Publishing
184 pages | Paperback | £14.99 / $19.99
ISBN: 978-1-917355-33-9

In Shops: September 2, 2026