Something is Killing the Children vol. 2

If nothing else, having my expectations adjusted after reading the first volume of this smash-hit series helped me enjoy this one a little more.  Now that I know that there’s no special hook for this series, I can try to enjoy it on its own terms with my lowered expectations.  With that in mind, I can say that writer James Tynion IV and artist Werther Dell’edera have delivered a decidedly readable second volume as monster hunter Erica Slaughter now has to deal with the fact that there are five baby monsters running around Archer’s Peak.  Five very hungry baby monsters.

Erica remains a compelling presence in this volume as her no-nonsense mindset towards monster hunting is tempered by the genuine compassion she feels for all the potential victims.  We even get some hints as to how she got started in this life, and get to find out about the organization she belongs to, The Order of St. George.  It’s decent worldbuilding and Tynion even gives Erica an operative from the order to work with and set up potential conflicts with as we find out that the Order is more interested in the covering up of what the monsters do than actually stopping them.  The writer also does a good job of showing how the townspeople are dealing with the tragedy of all these dead kids as their remains are slowly identified, while he also slowly raises the tension as the babies get closer to town.  Dell’edera again gives this volume a stylish look, making everything look slightly off so that you remain unnerved even before the monsters make their appearance.

All of these are definitely good things.  The problem is that they’re balanced out by the fact that this will be a fifteen-issue arc when it ends in the first chapter.  That leads to the pace being fairly glacial in vol. 2 as remarkably little has been accomplished by its end.  This is even with the introduction of her handler from the Order who is introduced by having Erica make a boneheaded move, only for him to try and correct her and reveal that he’s kind of an idiot in the process.  While I like getting to know more about the Order, they’re made out to be pretty one-dimensionally antagonistic here.  Not evil, just so dedicated to their own orthodoxy that they can’t seem to adapt to a situation that has grown beyond their control.

Then there’s Dell’edera’s frequent use of double splash pages to tell the story.  There may not be anything wrong with that in practice, but he needs to do a better job of establishing that he’s telling the story over two of these pages.  I lost track of how many times I started reading the left-hand page down from the top only to realize that the story continues from the top over to the right-hand page.

The end result is a comic that’s still readable on its own familiar monster-hunting terms.  Tynion and Dell’edera have plenty of good ideas, but they’re not living up to their potential due to the above-mentioned lapses in logic and execution.  I feel like I’m committed to seeing how this first arc ends, at least.  Except that it’s to see whether or not I’ll continue to read this series or just to cut my losses before I invest any more into it.