Review by Karl Verhoven

Time has moved on for the beginning of Their Kingdom Come, which opens with some strange dreams of strange events. Do they have any bearing on the real world?

We discover these are Milly Ting’s dreams as she finally awakens from a coma during which much has changed since Her Little Reapers ended, and Sana Takeda’s sample art brings Milly up to date on how the world now is. Pal Ming is also being hailed as the saviour of Los Angeles for pouring so much money into rescue and renewal efforts, but he’s masquerading as a benefactor when the truth is that he’s behind everything.

Takeda’s pages are once again astounding, taking an already thrilling script and enhancing it. The basics of the art are solid, with personalities and intentions clearly defined, but so many little touches elevate things further, such as the way Takeda shows people infected by demons with heads almost transparent and the intruders seen curled around their brains. She’s so good at switching from ordinary conversations to people eating a squidgy eye.

Over the previous volumes Marjorie Liu has developed some magnificent dynamics for the Ting family, and that continues with the adult children being frustrated by the parents, whose attitude seems casual, but masks even greater power than might have been assumed. Billy and Milly’s relationship continues to be the beating heart of The Night Eaters, funny and easygoing, with both learning as they forge forward with good intentions attempting to discover for themselves what their parents won’t reveal.

As we’ve mentioned not revealing, Their Kingdom Come is best consumed without any great knowledge of the plot beyond what’s noted above. The fate of humanity is at stake, we learn the history of the world before humanity, and as always in the best stories, it looks utterly dark before the dawn. Some complex situations have been set up, and Liu has us worrying about the decisions Billy and Milly make, and what also works well is switching between those who want to keep humans on Earth, and those who don’t. And a wise woman notes “in the rock, paper, scissors of the apocalypse… family beats everything”.

This is funny, thrilling and with plenty of surprises, but there are still places where Liu artificially extends matters by information not being passed on or conversely via a conversation that doesn’t really need to take place. It makes this final volume feel a little inflated in places. Still, The Night Eaters should be considered in its entirety, and taking that into account it’s built beautifully from a creepy quiet start to the possible end of the world as we know it. We’ve laughed, we’ve shuddered and we’ve punched the air as our investment has been at that level. That said, not everyone is going to like the ending. It’s clever and consistent, but not everyone will like it. After that there’s an epilogue chapter showing how things progress, and then over and out. What a ride!