Cranial Gunk

James is the sole survivor of an otherwise innocuous sleepover game of truth or dare. He and his friends go into the ravine in the back of his house in search of a monster he swore he didn’t make up. Unfortunately, there is a monster there and it kills all of his friends. The book begins with James recounting the sleepover to the sheriff during his interrogation.

Erica is a part of a secret organization that hunts monsters. She is introduced smeared in blood and sitting on the ground somewhat hunched having a conversation with a little girl with an eye patch. It is alluded to that she is exhausted from just killing a monster. Her phone rings and it can be assumed she is given directions to the next monster.

She deboards a bus at the town of Archer’s Peak where she immediately bumps into the sheriff while examining a large bulletin board of “missing children” flyers. She interviews James about the sleepover and they head to a local restaurant to explore the incident further. Tommy, the restaurant’s manager and whose sister is among the missing children, suspects Erica and James are the ones killing the children.

This was my introduction to James Tynion IV’s Something is Killing the Children. It’s a familiar story at a quick and engaging pace. Moments of exposition were integrated well into the natural progression of dialogue between characters and did not feel disruptive to the flow of the story.

More importantly, they didn’t feel like “classroom moments,” where you expect to be sat down with your hands folded and told why this or that is important. James Tynion IV’s expositions were subtle and organic, so what I didn’t know were mysteries to be revealed and not frustrating omissions to the story’s world that I had to Google.

(Though I did Google “James Tynion IV” and learned that he wrote another book I enjoyed, The Nice House on the Lake.)

I read the Kindle version of Volumes 1-3 on my tablet, so cannot speak to how the panels look on a physical page. However, I am tempted to find a copy of the books or individual comics just to leaf through and to see what Werther Dell’edera spreads look like in real life. Having panels run across two pages provides an uninterrupted visual storytelling experience and does not interrupt the physical act of reading the dialogue or examining the art with a page flip (in my case, a swipe).

James was my favorite character in the story. To her chagrin he clings to Erica after their initial meeting. Later in the story, he does not hesitate to present himself as bait to lure the monsters into a trap or rush to her aid when Octo says she is in trouble. It would be wrong to simply dismiss this eagerness as survivor’s guilt. At the end of the “Archer’s Peak” story arc, its revealed that he needed to be able to “do something.” He needed to be able to help Erica rid the town of monsters to give his survival a greater meaning than just dumb luck.

The notion of “help” is an interesting one to explore in James Tynion IV’s Something is Killing the Children. You could apply James’ reasoning to Tommy’s. At the end of the Archer’s Peak arc, Tommy makes a humongous personal sacrifice to save the town. Based on what he says before his decision, it can be safely assumed that he also needs to “do something” to save the town because he couldn’t save his sister.

Erica ignores the House of Slaughter rules because she believes she is helping the victims’ families gain closer. The House of Slaughter kills monsters because they believe they are helping save children. John, the lead detective on the “child killing” case takes Bi’an, another survivor of the monster attack, from the sheriff’s station because he believes he is helping to keep her safe.

I can’t say for certain but I believe it was “helping” that was also the catalyst for his series, The Nice House on the Lake, where a group of friends avoids the devastation of an alien invasion that decimates the earth with “help” their unknown alien friend.

I haven’t read the next arc in Something is Killing the Children yet. I hope James has a role in it. And I hope the consequences of “helping” are explored further. The head of the House of Slaughter warns Erica that they are not the only house and it is unsafe to be unaffiliated, so though you can guess at what’s to come it will be exciting to see how the actual story will be laid out.