I have been wanting to read this graphic novel series for a while and Netgalley has an omnibus of the first four volumes. I went into this knowing nothing about this story. We follow a boy named James who is the sole survivor of a mysterious killing of three of his friends. There are other kids being killed and there are even more missing. He heard and saw what perhaps killed the kids. This woman named Erica comes into town to try to kill the monster. She approaches James and he wants to help. She has a massive map and she is marking where all of the bodies were found.
Erica ends up getting arrested and blamed for being the killer because she is being suspicious. She calls out the sherriff for not looking for the kids who went missing first because he doesn't want to look bad. Erica and James go into the woods near where the first girl went missing. They find the cave and the guy at the restaurant Tommy, who also has a little sister missing follows them. He is pissed at the police for letting Erica go. He ends up shooting James and Erica stabs Tommy and gives him the ability to see the monster. There is also a little girl who is still alive but her name wasn't on the list of missing.
I am getting confused everytime it goes back to past chapters when James is with his friends on the night of the killings. Turns out it is memories while James is healing in the hospital. We get introduced to two people who work for the House of Slaughter. The guy named Aaron has to go take care of Erica because she has screwed up and the leaders are not happy. This is like mob style organization, called the Order of St. George. Erica busts James out of the hospital and she tells him how she first learned of the order and that her stuffed Octopus carries the demon of the monster that she killed when she was a girl.
All of the bodies of the dead children are in the school gymnasium because the morgue was not big enough and while the police have been getting parents to identify the bodies, the baby monsters have been gathering behind the school because they are hungry.
We have met the big guns at the House of Slaughter. The main leader is called the old dragon and it looks like a really old person with a metal mask permanently attached to its face. He or she, don't really know, they send off every single person of the order to go and clean up Erica's mess and to bring her back. They get to the town and close off all exits and disrupt cell service. They get to the gym to take care of the people by killing them and then kill the monsters.
Erica does a ritual with Bian and James. She shows them what her monster looks like and that it can only hurt her. Erica ends up killing the brood of monsters and the Order of St.George make sure the sherriff arrests Tommy to help cover up the monster story and make him a scapegoat.
Tommy is annouced as the killer and Erica talks to The Old Dragon. He tells her that she could have done things differently and now that Aaron is dead, she is the last black mask and that she can have Jessica's seat. Erica ends up renouncing the House of Slaughter and the Order of St. George. She gets on a bus and James is on there as well to go to his mom's house.
We get Erica's backstory and we see how she learned to trap monsters in stuffed animals. We meet Jessica who brought her into the order and is telling her about the initiation process and how the people will bully her and that she can be a bully back. I really like that Erica and Aaron got off on the wrong foot, but then Erica has a nightmare and Aaron is there when she wakes up and tells her that the monster is supposed to feed off of her fear and to not die because he wants a sibling. I thought that was so cute, and it makes me sad that Aaron is now dead.
I could not imagine having my favorite stuffy becoming a totem for a monster that was trying to kill me. I felt so awful that she had to use her favorite Octo to trap the monster. I was shook when it was revealed that the monsters use to be big like the one that killed Erica's parents and then the order started to use small ones, to boost Order numbers. While Erica is getting her tattoo, she gets told on what the differenct color masks mean. Erica meets the Old Dragon and he is fascinated with her because she is a monster and only a monster can tame and kill monsters.
I will definitely be picking up the rest of these volumes. I really like how the past and present were entertwined. It didn't leave off on cliffhangers and make me not interested in what was coming.
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