Graphic Novel Review: Spectators by Brian K Vaughan and Niko Henrichon

Posted on September 11, 2025 at 6:32 am by Gene Ambaum

Spectators by Brian K Vaughan and Niko Henrichon. Image, 2025. 9781534331211. 344pp.

After Val is killed in a Manhattan movie theater, her spirit emerges into the black-and-white world where those who haven’t moved on can do nothing more than observe. This isn’t terrible for Val; she’s a movie fan and she enjoys watching pornography, so there are a lot of “stories” for her to follow.

Jump forward to the future, where Val is trying to find a couple with potential. It’s now a world of flying machines and giant robots. Many people are addicted to sex robots, though, so it’s not always easy to find folks who are going to put on a show she wants to watch. She follows a crowd of ghosts to an underground fight club and ends up in the house of a hot young couple. And that’s where she meets Sam, another ghost — he looks like a cowboy, complete with six shooters. The couple has sex while she and Sam talk. And they’re together when they see a TV broadcast announcing that a nuke has gone off in California.

It’s probably the end of the world. So Val and Sam head off to try to find a threesome to watch before it’s all over. Along the way, they talk about movies, their lives and deaths, and even the dwarf planet, Pluto.

The first graphic novel Vaughn and Henrichon produced together was Pride of Baghdad, a beautiful book about lions that escaped from a zoo during the Gulf War. Spectators was originally written in installments on the creators’ Substack newsletter and completed at the end of 2024, and I believe that the original version has been expanded for this print edition.

Worth noting: This book contains graphic sex and violence. And you’re going to like it, but you’ll particularly enjoy it if you’re a Michael Biehn fan and/or if you’ve watched the silent 1903 film The Great Train Robbery.