Erica is on the trail of another monster, but her child assistant is not one for keeping quiet. Can she complete her hunt and protect the town from being swept away in the name of secrecy? Find out in Something is Killing the Children #37 from BOOM! Studios.

SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN #37

Writer: James Tynion IV
Artist: Werther Dell’Edera
Colorist: Miquel Muerto
Letterer: Andworld Design
Editor: Ramiro Portnoy and Eric Harburn
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 22, 2024

Previously in Something is Killing the Children: We visit Erica’s past and get to learn a little more about monsters and hunting them. Erica is hunting an Oscuratype, but this one does not fit the usual pattern. A couple of children were killed, but now the killings seem to involve the dogs in town. As a young boy, Randy, helps her, Erica finds a dog, Birdie, whose owner was one of the children who died. Birdie recently had puppies, but only one of them has survived. A thought strikes Erica. Could the dog’s young owner, who was known to be a mean kid, have been mean enough to hurt puppies? Birdie trusts Erica, and Erica takes advantage of this trust to try using the puppy as bait. It works. The monster is lured in. Erica urges Birdie to flee with the puppy and she kills the Oscuratype.

AN HONEST MONSTER HUNTER

Something is Killing the Children #37 opens in a video store where Francie and Ed idly chat while waiting to see if any customers show up. Their topic of conversation is Ed’s friend Jake, whom Francie considers his boyfriend even if Ed denies it. The door chimes and Erica walks in with a little Black girl who announces that a monster is coming to eat everyone. Erica chides her for not keeping a low profile. They walk around to a corner of the store. Ed asks Francie if Erica was really bleeding.

The door chimes again, but clearly, nobody walks in. Ed wonders if they should call Andi, their manager. He is also much more concerned than Francie is about the bleeding lady. Suddenly there is a crash and a row of shelves flips over. Ed tries his phone, but there is no signal.

Erica calls Aaron back at Slaughter and demands a full blackout for the town. He reminds her that she said she was going to take care of this two nights ago. She gets more frantic, and he tells her that the blackout is in place. He was just yanking her chain. When she hangs up, the little girl asks if that was her brother. That has been the explanation she is using. The little girl recognizes that kind of fighting. She used to do that with her own brother. Before the monster killed him.

The lights go out. Ed starts to freak out and talks about ghosts. Francie, more level-headed, thinks people are just playing tricks on them. This does not reassure Ed. I do enjoy seeing their reactions. They live in a world that does not believe in monsters, and they try to make sense out of the incomprehensible that has come on them so quickly. Francie turns on her phone flashlight and they see nothing. But Ed swears he can feel a presence.

Erica steps up with a chainsaw. She instructs the two teens to listen to the little girl who is taking them away from the fight. Francie suggests the basement. She also thinks there is something real going on and convinces the little girl to tell them about it.

Andi, the manager, walks in and the monster grabs her. Erica kills the monster, which flings Andi aside, knocking her out, before it dies. Then there is nothing left but the cleaning up. Erica knows how this usually goes, but she is willing to let people live, if they can keep things secret.

HORROR IN THE EVERYDAY

One of the hallmarks of Something is Killing the Children #37 is how even the most mundane location or circumstance can become terrifying with the addition of an invisible monster. Francie and Ed are a terrific couple of teenage workers who have enough of a friendship that they can talk to each other comfortably yet there is still some distance between them. Ed is more high-strung, which develops even more as the story does. He is more sensitive to the weirdness that begins with Erica’s arrival. Francie is another story. She is much more cool-headed, yet she is still open to the possibility of monsters being real, and we can see that she sort of wishes it were true, even though she does not fully understand the ramifications.

For once, it isn’t Erica’s strange green eyes that draw attention, nor her unusual mask with the teeth. It is simply that she is bleeding. Again, I like how the story is framed within the viewpoint of normal people who are old enough that they cannot see the monsters. We also see much of the fight from their eyes – lots of noise as things fall over or their boss flies through the air, the sheer movie-terror of seeing Erica wielding a chainsaw – but of the monster itself there is no visible trace, not even its blood. It is sort of the reverse of a slasher film in that respect.

BOTTOM LINE: THE BALANCE BETWEEN TRUTH AND LIE

Something is Killing the Children #37 shows us more of Erica’s urgency. Not only is she honest with the children, but she dares to be honest with some of the older people she meets in order to save their lives from her own Order.

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