FOUR OF THESE ARE ISSUE ONE.

Something Is Killing the Children— The Complete Comic King Guide

Children are disappearing from a small town. The adults cannot see what is taking them. A young woman arrives with a white bandana over her eyes and a machete, and she can. That is the pitch, it is one of the cleanest in modern comics, and it has been enough to carry the book for seven years and counting.

This is the best thing to happen to a comic shop in a decade, and we mean that commercially as well as artistically. A creator-owned horror comic from a mid-sized publisher, with no film, no cartoon and no character anybody had heard of, sold out before it reached shelves and became one of the few genuine four-figure keys of the last ten years. It is proof that new comics still make keys — and that when they do, almost nobody sees it coming.

It is also, right now, the single easiest book in the shop to get wrong. ISSUE ONE HAS BEEN PRINTED TEN TIMES. Most copies in circulation are not first printings. And the value order of those ten is genuinely strange — one of the later ones is worth far more than the ones either side of it. We will walk you through it, and we will do it with the books in front of you.

Quick Facts

Story: A young woman with a white bandana and a machete kills the monsters that only children can see, on behalf of an order that is not remotely as heroic as she is.
Creators: James Tynion IV writing, Werther Dell'Edera on art, Miquel Muerto on colours — the same core team since 2019.
Publisher: BOOM! Studios, from September 2019.
Length: Still running. Issue forty-nine shipped in July 2026, and the writer has said the series is contracted through issue ONE HUNDRED — so the halfway point is only just arriving.
Printings of issue one: TEN, between 2019 and 2026. The second, third and fourth each have completely different cover art; several of the later ones do not.
Where to start: Volume one of the collected edition. It is in print, it is cheap, and it is the answer to almost every question anyone asks about this title.
The spin-offs: House of Slaughter is a complete thirty-issue run, plus three one-shot specials and a new miniseries running in 2026.
Age guide: ⚠ ADULT, and the title misleads people. This is a genuinely disturbing horror comic rated seventeen and up by its publisher. It is not a children's book and the name is the reason we say so every time.

Ten Printings, and They Are Not Worth What You Would Guess

ISSUE ONE HAS BEEN PRINTED TEN SEPARATE TIMES, between September 2019 and March 2026. That is the single most important fact about this book, because the majority of copies in the world are not first printings and most people holding one have no idea which they have.

★ THE GOOD NEWS FIRST, AND IT IS BETTER THAN ON MOST BOOKS LIKE THIS: the second, third and fourth printings were each given a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT COVER by a different artist. You can tell them apart from across the room. That is unusual and it is a genuine kindness from the publisher — on most famous first issues the reprints copy the original artwork exactly and you have to open the book to find out.

⚠ THE HARDER HALF: several of the LATER printings went back to the original cover artwork. Those ones genuinely cannot be told from a first printing by looking at the front, and you have to check the small print inside. If a copy has the original cover, that does not mean it is a first — it means you have not finished checking yet.

★★ AND NOW THE PART NOBODY EXPECTS, WHICH IS THE REAL REASON THIS PAGE EXISTS. THE PRINTINGS ARE NOT WORTH WHAT THEIR ORDER SUGGESTS. A second printing is worth roughly a third of a first. A third printing is about a fifth. A fourth or fifth printing is about a seventh. Everything from the seventh printing onward is worth under a twentieth. ALL OF THAT IS WHAT YOU WOULD PREDICT — and then THE SIXTH PRINTING IS WORTH ABOUT THREE-QUARTERS OF A FIRST PRINTING. More than the second. Roughly four times the fourth.

The reason is timing rather than quantity. The early reprints shipped while the book was a curiosity, so they were ordered in volume and everyone has one. The sixth arrived at a moment when the title had momentum but the collector market had not yet arrived, so comparatively few were printed and nobody put them away. Quantity and demand crossed over, and the ladder bent. It is the clearest example we can show anyone of why print run and value are related but not the same thing.

★ AND THERE IS A LIQUIDITY INVERSION SITTING ON TOP OF IT: THE MORE A PRINTING IS WORTH, THE LESS OFTEN IT TRADES. The second printing is one of the more valuable ones and it changes hands roughly ONCE A YEAR — we have seen a handful of sales of it, ever. The eighth printing is worth almost nothing and sells more than once a week. So if somebody wants a printing they can also sell again one day, the honest answer is not simply 'buy the highest one you can afford'.

None of this requires you to become an expert. It requires somebody to show you the covers side by side once, and then point at the small print for the ones where the covers match. We keep them behind the counter and we will do exactly that, whether or not you are buying.

The Run, Era by Era

Seven years, one publisher, one creative team, and a franchise that grew out of a five-issue miniseries nobody expected.
Every era, the one issue that represents it, and why collectors care.

The Keys — Issues Everyone Hunts

ISSUE ONE, FIRST PRINTING, IS THE KEY and it is one of the most valuable comics published this century — the first appearance of Erica Slaughter, in a book that sold out before it reached shelves. It is also, encouragingly, a genuinely liquid comic: raw copies change hands several times a week and top-grade certified copies trade twice a week. This is not a trophy you cannot move.

★★ THE BUY-ON-SIGHT RECOMMENDATION IS NOT ISSUE ONE, THOUGH — IT IS THE SET OF ISSUES TWO THROUGH FIVE, FIRST PRINTINGS. Together the four cost less than a single copy of issue one, and every one of them trades more than eighty times a year, which is BETTER LIQUIDITY THAN MOST OF THE ISSUE ONE PRINTING LADDER. Issue five in particular is the most valuable book in the run after the debut, and it is routinely priced as an ordinary early issue. If somebody cannot afford the first issue and wants something real, this is the answer and it is not close.

★ THE SLEEPER FOR SOMEBODY WHO WANTS SOMETHING GENUINELY SCARCE: the SECOND PRINTING OF ISSUE THREE. It is the hardest object in this franchise to find with a real market behind it — its sales data is completely clean, its price has been consistent for years, and it trades about four times a year. It costs roughly what the sixth printing of issue one costs. Almost nobody asks for it, which is exactly why it is worth knowing about.

★ AND THE UNDER-TWENTY-DOLLAR TABLE IS BETTER ON THIS BOOK THAN ON ANY OTHER MODERN TITLE WE STOCK. The seventh printing is a foil edition that trades every week in both raw and graded form — the only cheap object in this franchise with an active market at both ends. The eighth printing, the tenth printing, the anniversary prequel one-shot and the current issues are all a few dollars each and all move weekly. That is a real display, it is honest, and it lets somebody start collecting this title for the price of a sandwich.

⚠ THE ONES WE ARE CAUTIOUS ABOUT, AND WE WILL SAY SO BEFORE YOU BUY. The scarce retailer and convention exclusives of issue one — the five-hundred-copy store variants, the convention virgins, the library promo — carry serious prices and have effectively STOPPED TRADING. Several have had one recorded sale in the past year and some have had none at all. They are beautiful objects and they are display pieces, not inventory. If you want one we will happily find it; just know that selling it again is a project rather than a transaction.

★ THE SPIN-OFF KEY IS HOUSE OF SLAUGHTER NUMBER ONE, and here we have to be straight about something: the published price data on it is unusable. Almost every recorded sale under that name is actually a second printing or a completely different free-comic-day issue with a similar title. Certified copies have a real and modest market. Raw copies do not have a reliable published price at all, and anyone quoting you one confidently has not checked what they are looking at.

AND THE PART OF THE RUN THAT IS SIMPLY CHEAP: everything from about issue six onward is affordable, readable and deep. At forty-nine issues and heading for a hundred, completing this run is a realistic want-list project that costs very little outside the first arc — and it is still coming out, so it is a project you finish alongside the book rather than behind it.

Every Format You Can Buy

Screen & Series Status

Updated August 2026, and being right about this is worth something because most shops are still saying the wrong thing.

★ THE CORRECTION FIRST: THIS IS NOT COMING TO NETFLIX. It was in development there as a television series with a well-known horror filmmaker attached, that version did not proceed, and he moved on in 2022. A great many people still repeat the Netflix line. It is several years out of date.

★★ WHERE IT ACTUALLY IS: a major horror studio took the film and television rights in late 2025 and is developing BOTH a live-action feature and an adult animated series, with the writer and artist attached as producers. In July 2026 the writer said publicly that the film SCREENPLAY IS FINISHED and the team is completing the animated series bible so that both can be taken out together. NOTHING HAS BEEN GREENLIT, nothing is set up at a studio or streamer, and there is no release date for either.

★★ AND HERE IS THE PART WE THINK YOU DESERVE TO HEAR BEFORE YOU SPEND ANY MONEY. Issue one has gone UP by roughly a fifth over the past year in top grade, on a steady trend — and it has done that on nothing more than a finished script. That is not an adaptation premium being priced in and then quietly leaking away. It is a premium STILL BEING PRICED IN, with the actual decision still ahead.

Which means the honest position is that this book is exposed IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. If either project gets picked up, it moves quickly — and the window between an announcement and the price catching up is now measured in hours, not weeks. If both are shopped around and nothing lands, some of what has been built in over the past year comes back out. We do not know which happens. Anyone who tells you they do is selling.

★ THE DURABLE HALF, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THAT: this is a genuinely excellent horror comic with an iconic lead, it has run for seven years without an adaptation, and it is contracted for another fifty issues. Reader demand built this book before anybody optioned it and reader demand will still be here afterwards. If you are buying it to read, none of the above matters. If you are buying it to hold, all of it does.

THE EVERGREEN PLAYBOOK: know what is in your case BEFORE the news rather than after, because on a modern speculative key the announcement and the repricing happen the same day. And note that this franchise now generates its own news without any screen involvement at all — a landmark issue, a new miniseries and a crossover with a major DC horror character all landed in 2026. Publication events move this book too.

Collector's Corner — Grading, Care & We Buy

Four habits govern this franchise at our counter.

WE ESTABLISH THE PRINTING BEFORE WE SAY A NUMBER, EVERY TIME. With ten printings in circulation and most copies being reprints, assuming a first printing is the single most expensive mistake available in the modern section of this shop — in either direction. On this book the covers do a lot of the work for us, and where they do not, the small print inside settles it in a few seconds.

WE CHECK THE COVER AS WELL AS THE PRINTING. Issue one has a large number of retailer, convention and incentive variants and some of them are worth a great deal more than the standard cover. Printing and cover are two separate questions and both get asked. It is the same discipline the heavily-variant modern books demand.

WE ARE HONEST THAT THIS IS A MODERN SPECULATIVE KEY. Its value rests on a small first printing, a strong reputation and an adaptation that has not been greenlit — not on age, not on survivorship, and not on scarcity in the way a 1960s comic is scarce. Modern keys can move sharply in both directions. We say that before somebody spends, not after, and it is the reason they come back.

AND WE HANDLE THE COLLECTION-BUY CONVERSATION CAREFULLY, because it usually goes one way. Somebody arriving with 'the whole run' is most often bringing later printings and modern issues, and the one book that really matters is a first-printing issue one. We look for that specifically, we tell them honestly what the rest is, and we still buy the rest — because it is a good comic and somebody wants to read it.

On grading: certification earns its cost at the very top of this book and on the significant variants, and almost nowhere else. Storing them: bag and board, boards behind the comic, upright and out of sunlight. These are modern comics on modern stock, so condition expectations are high and a genuinely sharp copy is worth having.