Released on March 18th, 2020
Well it's official: all of the big comic book companies won't be releasing digital comics in April (they've already announced print comics have been delayed for the foreseeable future). I shouldn't say all month because they've all said that April 29th is the date they're looking at to start publishing again, but who the hell knows if that's feasible since the infected and death toll is rising in the U.S. everyday and the peak is supposed to come in a week or two. As of this moment, the United States has 188,578 confirmed cases of the corona virus and 4,054 deaths. Which means that comic book stores are closed in most states since they're non-essential and people aren't supposed to leave their homes unless in dire need. The companies could publish comics digitally and make some money but they decided not to do that because it would hurt comic book stores and those that only read print. And you don't really want to hurt the hand that feeds you, even though one would think that digital is the future. If you look at sales, though, digital books are very low when compared to print. My guess to why is because most comic book fans are older so they're more inclined to read print since that's how they've always read comics...but also the companies have never made digital books cheaper, they're the same price as print, which makes no sense logically if the future is digital. They have stats online for digital comic sales versus print but 2018 is the most recent year. That year, graphic novels made $635 million, printed comics made $360, and digital comics made $100. So digital comics are not the breadwinner of the business, so they've been delayed this month. Which means no new comic books tomorrow, Wednesday, April 1st, which is crazy. When was the last week that no comic books were released? It's probably been awhile if ever. But I read digitally, and have over 300 comic books on my ipad, so I'm set. After all of the death in the news, I probably should be reading something happy and fun, not Something is Killing the Children #6, but it's actually one of the best books currently. The plot is pretty much been-there-done-that, but it works. Monsters are real and they kill kids. Adults can't see the monsters. There's a secret society of monster hunters and they've sent one of their soldiers that's a young woman to a small town that's overrun with monsters in the woods killing children. The big reveal at the end of this issue is that Erica, the young woman soldier, is not an original member of The House of Slaughter, the monster hunter group, but one of the kids that survived a monster attack and was basically adopted/trained by them. So there's a lot going on in this weird, crazy little book. This issue is fairly quiet, and there are no monsters. Everyone is just picking up the pieces of a big battle last issue. The art by Werther Dell'edera is great; sketch and line heavy but crisp and fluid at the same time. Writer James Tynion IV, who's writing Batman, seems to always do his best work on independents, and this, so far, is his best yet. ***
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