LITTLE MONSTERS 1–6, beautiful art by Dustin Nguyen retells postapocalypse tale of survival

LITTLE MONSTERS 1–6
JEFF LEMIRE (illus. Dustin Nguyen)
Image Comics
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: They are the last children on Earth... who also happen to be vampires.

For longer than they can remember, these child vampires have lived a life of eternal wonder amongst the ruins of humanity. But shocking events fracture the group and set them on a path of discovery that will shatter their innocence forever.

It's Lord of The Flies meets vampires in the first volume of a bold new ongoing series from Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen, the Eisner-winning creative team behind the best-selling DESCENDER and ASCENDER series.

Collects issues #1 - 6

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There's a reason I included a work with such a well-trodden plot-path in my #Booksgiving recommendations. It's not for the sheer inventiveness of reusing Lord of the Flies only vampires trope. Jeff Lemire, as comics people know, delivers on his stories as promised. That is a given.

It's the choice of Dustin Nguyen for the art, and the way these character-establishing pages make the story to come and the characters who will enact it feel so full and investable. I feel clear that these forms are very much the ones that the words were written for:

The reasonable issue that I have heard said of these stories is, well, what about this is new...why should I invest in this iteration of The Walking Dead with kid vampires?

You and I should probably gravitate to other stories. The teens I say should get this are not quite as sophisticated yet. There is violence and there is definitely blood. Those are givens, in the genre and in this medium. To someone who has not read a hundred iterations of this scenario, though, it is fresh and can be very involving. I won't say this is the most action-packed take on the tale, but it has enough to give a fourteen-year-old a lot to chew over with their helping of gore.

Well done art lifts a familiar story higher than it started out to be.