The body bags mount up, but Erica now must deal with monster babies. And what will happen when Aaron, from the House of Slaughter, arrives on the scene? Find out in Something is Killing the Children #7 from BOOM! Studios.

SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN #7

Writer: James Tynion IV
Artist: Werther Dell’Edera
Colorist: Miquel Muerta
Letterer: Andworld Design
Editor: Eric Harburn
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 10, 2020

Previously in Something is Killing the Children: The monster is dead. James is in the hospital. Tommy wants answers, but Erica gets him out of the way by breaking his arm. Erica goes to the police station to talk to the little girl, Bian, who quietly talks about the monster having babies. Erica’s battle is just beginning. Then the story cuts to an elegant house in Chicago, where a couple people in bandanna’s similar to Erica’s are talking. The man, Aaron, is being sent out after Erica, who has apparently always been a little bit too troublesome and independent for the organization. The plot thickens…

AND THE HORROR GRINDS ON

Something is Killing the Children #7 opens with a close-up of eyes, Tommy’s mother’s haunted eyes. She is with the crowd of people behind barriers watching body bags being unloaded. Her daughter, Tommy’s sister, must be there, and she is set to stay as long as she needs to while they sort things out. And sort things out, they must, literally. There are so many remains they’ve brought them to the school gymnasium. People want answers, and there are none yet.

Erica is out in the woods and dressed for battle. Her stuffed octopus tells her that this won’t work. The baby monsters gather around the remains of their mother, keening and wailing. She tries to kill them, and they sort of fade away into nothing. And Aaron shows up. We rapidly find out that he was her mentor, and that while he’s happy to do the politicking in their organization, he is not as hands-on as Erica is with monster killing. Their conversation is heated; they don’t like each other much, but they do know that they understand what is going on better than anyone else they can talk to.

The babies won’t be material until they’re feeding. They need to set a trap for them, and Aaron suggests Bian as bait. Erica refuses, but the fact of the matter is that they need someone who has been touched by the creature, and that limits their choices. Aaron suggests that maybe James would work and accuses her of dragging him with her to mask her own scent so she could get to the monster. Erica has been hard to like all along – can she really be that callous? Probably.

They make their plans to pick Bian up and leave. Unbeknownst to them, one of the police has been keeping an eye on them, and he makes a call to the station, telling the woman with Bian to pack her things up and hold her there until he picks her up.

THE HUMANS AND THE MONSTERS

There’s something about the art in Something is Killing the Children #7 that feels so gritty and dark. The lines have a kind of roughness about then that emphasizes how burned out everyone in Archer’s Peak is. People look tired and unhealthy, somewhat stunned, as though they don’t know what has hit them, which they don’t.

I like the brief fight Erica has with the baby creatures. She knows this won’t work, but she has so much anger she needs to work out, and fighting is how she works out her feelings. The colors are deep and dark with the only brightness being Erica’s green eye. It is unearthly. When Aaron shows up, the body language is really something. Erica gets in his face; he holds his own and is not afraid to point out where she’s made mistakes. They may not like each other, but they know each other, and for better or worse, they know what they’re facing.

BOTTOM LINE: WHAT’S REALLY AT STAKE?

Something is Killing the Children #7 is a tale of an awful bunch of events, with people who aren’t heroic and who may even be awful themselves. It’s tense and gripping, making you hope it works toward an ending because the deaths are so horrible you just want them to stop. It’s visceral in every sense of the word, and awfully good at it too.

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