The black eyed kids have an agenda
Creative Staff:
Story: Joe Pruett
Art: Szymon Kudranski
Colors: Guy Major
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
What They Say:
The urban legend come to life. The Black-Eyed Children have announced their presence with horrific authority, leaving lives shattered and multiple bodies in their wake. Jim Loudin and his family, along with a local police officer and a mysterious stranger, seemingly with past ties to these devil children, fight not only for their own lives, but for potentially mankind’s very existence.
Collecting issues 6-10 of the critically-acclaimed series, and the original short story from the AFTERSHOCK GENESIS one-shot.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Children turned monsters has a long history in horror. From 1960’s Village of the Damned to 2009’s The Children, the idea of giving birth to monsters that will murder their parents stokes genetic embers of creepiness. Black Eyed Kids falls squarely in the range between those iconic films. Instead of overcoming an alien invasion or surviving a mutating pandemic, this story offers more of a survival horror vibe with lots of violence directed squarely at the children.
“Black eyed kids” is creepypasta, an urban legend created and spread online. Being so new, the legend has appeared in many forms, but there is no canonical version. That means the story can be adapted not only for varied subgenres but reworked for each medium where it is presented. Joe Pruett’s version of the story pulls from many classic and current horror traditions. When reading the first volume, I felt a strong connection to Cold War sci-fi. Volume 2 seems purposefully injecting different flavors of mind control and zombie horror. The complexity is not layered as much as woven in this telling of the B.E.K. legend. Many of the stories from this subgenre play on the fears of 20 and 30-year-olds contemplating starting families, and as such tend to wrap the characters in a modern cultural production of what family means. This narrative skips education and psychological catalysts for a more visceral trip into the taboo of violence by and against children.
The horror begins with a suburban family facing a change in their son who creepily enough had a problem with sleepwalking into his sister’s room at night. He becomes one of the first to change and attack his family. Then there is an older single woman who is kidnapped by the B.E.K. leader, a boy Szymon Kudranski has drawn with a striking resemblance to Martin Stephens’ character in Village of the Damned. And then there are other adults, an alcoholic cop and a man who has been running from the kids for 20 years. With a few detours down roads where the kids do very violent things to adults and pets, we arrive in Volume 2 where adults who have no understanding of what really is happening face the danger of the kids and a public who only sees the adults as child killers.
Character design pops against the limited details of the backgrounds. Kurdanski’s faces range from stark planes of reflected light to others etched with worry lines and stubble. Somewhat classic comic styles with modern fashion help push past the barrier of suspending disbelief and creating momentum in the story. Most of the colors fit a noir style with blacks and blues dominating the volume, and reds and yellows punctuating the violence. Sepia effects and muted browns and yellows tend to create a world devoid of color when the characters find themselves in a lit space. Guy Major’s consistency in color patterns establishes a tone of hidden information and a traumatized vibe for the characters as they seem caught in a Catch-22 of questioning what is happening while running from a direct confrontation with that knowledge.
In Summary:
Black Eyed Kids picks up where the previous collection left the characters trying to figure out what’s going on and how to survive. Pruett’s version of the legend has been seasoned with classic and modern sci-fi and horror without falling into any one mold. The story rewards fans with varied experiences without depriving any reader of the suspense and horror. While violence dominates the action, the horror comes more from questions and threats hanging over the characters.
Black Eyed Kids is a collaboration of story and art worth the cost of admission.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: April 19th, 2017
MSRP: $14.99
