Comic Book Review: Something is Killing the Children 

A Chilling Horror Movie Delivered as a Graphic Novel 

I knew nothing about this comic before picking it up at our local Barnes & Noble. The cover looked amazing, the story blurb on the back was compelling, and flipping through a few pages made me instantly fall in love with the artwork. Diving into the story was every bit as rewarding as I hoped. It quickly turned into one of those books that you tell yourself to space out but wind up reading in one day. 

This horror story starts with children being murdered and disembodied in the woods outside of a small Wisconsin town. The killings have only one survivor. He’s a young man named James who everyone believes to be the murderer. The adults all believe this because they can’t see the monsters actually killing the children. Enter the story’s fabulously flawed protagonist, Erica Slaughter. 

Erica kills monsters and she’s here to end the killing spree. She is no superhero. She’s got her own demons, a mysterious organization tracking her, and the challenge of stopping monsters that almost no one else can see or comprehend. She’s not exactly an anti-hero, either. She’s just a desperate women trained in very specialized skills, hoping to end the carnage and to save children. 

James Tynion IV paces the storytelling with careful craftsmanship. The story starts intimately and grows to reveal the history of the monsters and the organization that tracks them. Erica’s tragic history is revealed in pieces, not dropped on the reader all at once. The dialogue is spaced out when it serves the story, and the comic reads in a way that feels legitimate. There aren’t long speeches or unnecessary expositions. The readers discover the events the same way that the townspeople do. This pulls the reader into the small town and the dark woods. I found it a similar experience to Jack Kilborn’s Afraid or Black Crouch’s Run. 

Artist Werther Dell’edera has a style that almost feels like photographs in places, and pure otherworldly terror in others. Colorist Miguel Muerto alternates between bright spaces like hospital rooms and the police station and chooses long shadows and creeping darkness to accentuate the monsters. Their combined approach makes reading the comic feel creepy in all the best ways. 

The sizable omnibus is broken into 20 chapters, each building on the last. Each chapter is a full comic book in length, so there is plenty to enjoy in this masterwork from Boom! Studios. The material is appropriately rated Teen 13+. Grab a copy of omnibus one now and pre-order omnibus two, due out in August 2026.