Something is Killing the Children #2

It finally came out!  I'm going to act like I stopped writing some reviews for a while because my review of Bad Reception 2 was so good, but really, I became incredibly busy at work, and now that i have a few down moments during my planning period, I can read and write about some books. This is also interesting for me since I'm revisiting the first series I started this blog with.

Simply put, Tynion, Dell'Edera and Muerto killed it. If you haven't picked up the first book, in a small town named Archer's Peak....something is killing the children... At the end of the first book, we meet our monster hunter who is there to find the monster and any survivors, and I was hoping we would get some insight into her method, which happens....sort of.

Instead of focusing exclusively on James, who survived an attack in book one, we meet Tommy.  Tommy is the older brother of one of the children who has gone missing, and no body has been found.  On the third page spread of the book we see Tommy getting into his car, with something demonic hulking over him, but it seems as if Tommy can't see the nightmarish figure with blood dripping from its body.  But it is scary as hell.  

Tommy goes to work at the local Applebeans (and as someone who is in the midwest where there is a proliferation of Applebees I smiled) where he has to agonize through a day of work in addition to putting out missing persons flyers for his sister.  Tommy meets our hunter who is looking for a place to set up shop for a few days while carrying out her hunt.  All we get from the exchange is that she is using James to set up a map of where the victims lived, their bodies were found, and apparently she is looking for a cave where "food" is being stored.  

Our monster hunter gets in a fight with Tommy, flees the Applebeans and the police show up at her hotel, where it appears she's talking to a weird stuffed animal like my toddlers do.  When she opens the door, there is a random-ass spirit that is hovering over the animal....and that's where the book ends.

WHAT THE HELL!  I flew through this book twice to let it soak all in and see if I could find any nuggets to help figure out the hunt.  We get some qualifications of our hunter across a couple of panels where she is absolutely tearing through a pile of something awful, after James asked "have you done this before..." But we still don't have a good sense of who she is, who sent her there or she speaks to on the phone, or WHAT IN THE SAM HILL that spirit is.

Again, the art is on point.  I'm haunted by the visage of our monster hunter when the front cover is opened, there is a grit and darkness to each panel (especially given the content) and the nods to things like Applebeans makes me smile.  This book both infuriated and excited me at the same time.  While we got some more insight to how the horror of murdered children is tearing at the citizens of Archer's peak, I still have no goddamn clue as to what is killing the children, or how our hunter will find them.  Still, I'm coming back for more, and will keep reading the first two books constantly until #3 drops in a month.