Horror Comic Haul #2: Something is Killing the Children
The biggest problem for me when it comes to comics is that I see something interesting, maybe a character I love or a cool cover that grabs my attention, maybe just a clever sounding title but then I grab the book and boom, it’s issue #18 and I’m absolutely lost. Next thing you know I’m digging through boxes searching for back issues or ordering digital copies online which just messes up the whole collection. The two fantastic series that I will be covering in a later installment of this series required digging, bribing and even some accidental luck, but until then…
Welcome back to Horror Bound’s Horror Comic Haul where we dive deep on the best and brightest horror comics available at your local comic shop. In this entry, we will be covering volume #1 & #2 of Boom! Comics’ Something is Killing the Children.
Remember when I said something about grabbing a comic because it had a clever title only to find out it was on issue #18? Well I was talking pretty specifically about Something is Killing the Children, luckily for me the comic book shop had a paperback collecting the first five issues available at the front of the store, so I lucked out for once.
The story opens with a group of boys playing truth or dare on a dark night before flashing forward to one of the boys, James, in a police interrogation room covered in blood explaining to the police officer that his friends were ripped apart by monsters. The story then jumps again to give us a view of our other main character, Eric Slaughter, in a bad ass black mask with fangs, covered in blood, dual wielding machetes standing at the edge of the forest exhausted from battle. Her phone rings and a mysterious voice on the other end of the line tells her to go to Archer’s Peak, the home of James and a wave of missing children. Erica meets up with James and informs him that he is not crazy, that there are monsters in the woods and she is here to kill them. Naturally, he asks to help.
The middle chapters provide a lot of world building and are for the most part light on the gore minus a few panels of children getting ripped apart by spider monsters. We are introduced to a handful of characters dealing with grief caused by the loss of a child, most notably Tommy whose sister has gone missing and suspects Erica and James of being involved. In a scene typical of an ‘80s action movie, Erica gets arrested and has to explain that Slaughter is her real last name before telling the chief of police that he will get a call from a secret person and she will be released to do “what needs to be done”. Then in a scene straight out of an ‘80s horror movie she heads to the hardware store with James to buy all sorts of chainsaws for monster killing. Perhaps the most interesting part of this bit of world building is the introduction of a purple stuffed octopus that talks to Erica and provides information about the monsters. In one panel we see an orange floating octopus aura around the plushie giving us the idea that monsters are real but perhaps not everyone can see them.
Volume #1 ends with tons of questions left unanswered. Erica ventures into a cave to fight a monster only to find a pile of dead children, Tommy follows her, armed and ready to kill. James, tricked by the stuffed octopus who uses his guilt and grief against him, follows along as well. When the monster finally shows itself it is absolutely incredible, a gigantic dark black creature with too many limbs to count, drooling blood all over the place. Of course no one else can see it but Erica, at least until she stabs Tommy in the head with a weird dagger and then he can see everything. In the final panels, the monster is defeated, our heroes are battered and bruised and Erica reveals that the monster she killed is a mother and her children are still out there and they are hungry.
I am a HUGE fan of stories that don’t fully explain what’s going on or if they do give an explanation, it simply raises more questions, Volume 2 of Something is Killing the Children does exactly this. Sure, there is the overall story arch that will have you begging to find out what happens next but questions like; What’s up with Erica and this creepy mask? Who is the mysterious voice on the other end of the phone? Whats up with the purple stuffed octopus? Where the hell are these monsters coming from? Why are they here? What’s up with the dagger Erica stabbed Tommy with? Just tons and tons of strange things that happen with little to no explanation pop up in Volume 1 and some of them are answered in Volume 2, kind of.
For starters, we find out that Erica works for some creepy people in creepy masks just like her that live in a creepy old mansion in Chicago called The House of Slaughter. We also learn about the voice on the phone call, Erica’s handler Aaron Slaughter who looks cool as fuck in a suit, with a cane and a mask just like Erica’s. His superior is sending him to help Erica and to kill Tommy who has seen too much, after all, they “cannot accept anymore strays.” And just like that, we get two questions answered and two more to ask. I absolutely love this kind of stuff because it gives me a reason to keep flipping the pages, kudos to the writers as often modern audiences are treated with long detailed exposition explaining the whole world where the story lives instead of it being some sort of mystery for the reader to figure out as the story evolves.
Some things that we do learn is that Erica is not a big fan of Aaron or the House of Slaughter in general. Her goal is to kill the monsters and save children while their goals seems to be self preservation and covering up the horrific deaths. When Aaron shows up there are clashes between the two but throughout all their interactions you can tell that even though Erica is not a big fan of Aaron, he is a big fan of hers. Since the story doesn’t tell you everything up front I assumed that perhaps Aaron saved Erica from a monster when she was a child but my assumptions were wrong. A short flashback shows Erica being saved by a woman when she was a child, although this does give us an answer about the stuffed octopus; apparently it’s a monster that killed Erica’s family and they imprisoned it in the stuffed animal. Again, every time we get a question answered, we get a few more to ask.
The final two chapters of this volume are absolute madness. There are five children of the original monster and they are a special kind of monster that cannot be harmed unless it has recently eaten. Three children get brutally ripped apart in the woods and a fourth is literally ripped in half in front of the whole town. And when I say literally ripped in half, I mean an unforeseen entity raises her up into the air and splits her in half mid-torso spraying blood all over everyone. Panic ensues, the townsfolk rush into the school that’s being used as a makeshift morgue, which is a terrible idea because apparently the little monsters have a taste for dead flesh. Erica and Aaron debate who is going to fight the monsters, Aaron decides to lead the charge into battle but in the final panels Erica lets on that perhaps winning the fight is not Aaron’s plan. The final page shows Aaron’s arm getting ripped off before a big ole’ To Be Continued…
I need Volume 3 ASAP! I am absolutely loving this series and I hear a rumor that Netflix is developing it into a series headed up by Mike Flanagan who I’m not really a fan of due to his horror-drama style tends to be more heavy on the drama and not so much the horror. Perhaps with Something is Killing the Children, a story that is more Action-Horror, Flanagan will have to be more heavy handed with the horror which, when he does in films like Hush he’s absolutely incredible. Volume #3 of Something is Killing the Children is sitting on a shelf at my local comic shop, The Dragon’s Lair, and Volume #4 does not come out until January 2022, either I am going to wait or start digging through boxes trying to find issues 16-20. You can find Something is Killing the Children on Amazon and Comixology but seriously, take a trip to your local comic shop, support a local business and search out this excellent series on your own.
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