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Something is Killing the Children is a series that has plenty to be proud of. The Boom! Studios horror comic has won numerous Eisner Awards, and the trade paperback collections have regularly topped graphic novel bestseller lists. The series is currently building towards its 50-issue milestone, which hits stores this October. However, if writer James Tynion IV had stuck with his original plans, the series would’ve been over after its fifth issue. What changed? A monster hunter named Erica Slaughter.

“I really kind of just had the core pieces, and when I started writing the first issue, I had a very different vision of the series,” James Tynion IV says during a panel at San Diego Comic Con 2026. “I saw it as a five-issue miniseries. Every issue was going to be a standalone one-shot story. But then two things happened very quickly. One was [artist Werther Dell’Edera] came aboard the project and drew Erica Slaugther for the first time. And the thing that I had not ever conceived of before was the idea of the bandana.”

“The moment I saw the bandana I understood the energy of the series. And then I started writing the first issue, I realized in the first five pages that I needed all five issues to tell one story, not just the one-shot. And then even beyond that, starting the second issue, I was just like, I can’t tell this story in five issues.”

“I reached out to Boom and was like, ‘Hey, I need more.’ Thankfully they said yes. And then it was around the 11^th issue of the series that the sales kept rising issue to issue once we were a few arcs in, and I remember getting a call from Filip Sablik, and he was like, ‘You have an open road, and you can go as long as you have story for.’”

According to Tynion, that road currently goes to at least issue 100. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. And it never would’ve happened if it wasn’t for Dell’Edera’s first sketch of Erica Slaughter.

Interested? Here's where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here's a guide to how (and where) to read comics online. If you're looking for the best comics in recent memory, check out the Eisner Awards winners and the Harvey Awards nominees. And if you like free comics, here's everything we know about Free Comic Book Day 2027.