SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN #1 is the Start of a Gruesome and Dark Story

Something is Killing the Children #1 is finally available and it is a doozy. The series is written by James Tynion IV, illustrated by Werther Dell’Edera, colored by Miquel Muerto, lettered by Andworld Design, and published by BOOM! Studios. From here on out, there will be spoilers, so beware.

I got big Stranger Things vibes from this issue. A group of pre-teen or teenage boys hanging out telling stories just makes me think of that, I guess. We get a solid start of kids playing Truth or Dare and then the kid telling the scary story is in a police interrogation room. Your typical Friday night. Then, we meet a teenage (maybe?) girl who looks like serious business who gets a call that leads me to believe she’s some kind of monster hunter. Maybe she works for the people responsible for creating these monsters and is cleaning up the mess.

We then cut back to the boy James and find out his friends had died, hence the interrogation room. A boy named Dan is taking out his anger on James, thankfully, Dan’s friend is able to put a stop to it. Well, James ends up in the principal’s office and that is an interesting visit. The principal is dealing with a lot and is apparently young. He seems like he genuinely does want to help James as he offers to send him home if he wanted, but James says he wants to watch the movie playing in his English class.

We then hop over to the bus station where the girl from earlier (I’m going to guess she’s Erica Slaughter from the synopsis) arrives. Conveniently, James is there, and she convinces him to tell her what he saw that night. We then see some pretty gruesome images of James’ friends dead/dying and one is even ripped in half. It’s pretty hard to look at, but then we see the monster and it looks like something that would kill you. Erica then tells James she’s going to kill it and we close with James saying he wants to help.

Is this going to be a comic where the inexperienced boy gets in the way at first, but then gets the hang of things and is a great asset to Erica? I could also see it being a thing where he accidentally lets something slip which then results in the police or others getting in Erica’s way. It’s still a little early in my opinion to say where this is going to go, but I’m very interested. If you don’t mind some gore and horror elements, you’ll want to check out Something is Killing the Children #1.