House of Slaughter #20 from BOOM! Studios, written by Sam Johns with art by Letizia Cadonici, ends the best arc of the book so far.
We reviewed the book on the Stack podcast. But in the interest of highlighting more about the title, here’s a summary of the conversation with our thoughts. And if you prefer the longer audio version, that’s below as well!
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House Of Slaughter #20 Review:
In the latest issue of House of Slaughter, we wrap up the arc of Bait, a little boy with no arms, fighting a bunch of monsters while reconnecting with long-buried memories. And things turn out very badly for everyone.
“This has been one of my favorite arcs of this book, hands down,” host Alex Zalben said. In particular, he was impressed with how hard it went in ending the arc with the characters we’re rooting for in dire straits, or just plain dead.
“This comic is great for a lot of reasons,” Pete LePage added. “Every time you think [you] know where this is going? No, no you don’t.”
He also added that this issue had “one of the scariest last panels… So creepy.”
Zalben felt a lot of that was up to Letizia Cadonici’s art, which he finds to be “the perfect pairing with Werther Dell’edera over on Something is Killing The Children. It’s such a good complement to flesh out this world… It has its own [flavor], it’s more exaggerated.”
“It takes bigger creative swings,” LePage said, “but also has this realism… The way it portrays motions is really cool.”
To throw out a bigger statement, Zalben said that “Something is Killing the Children is maybe the new Sandman,” at least in terms of creating “this new universe that feels fresh and different from anything else in comics… It’s clearly selling incredibly well, and capturing a lot of our imaginations. House of Slaughter is a fantastic spin-off in the same way we got a lot of Sandman universe spin-offs… They’re expanding this world and it’s creating its own mythology in a very new and exciting way that feels tonally consistent throughout, so good stuff.”
House Of Slaughter #20 Official Synopsis:
Bait and Nannette are cornered during the final hour, trapped in a veritable haunted house of monsters as Bait fights against impossible odds, even for him.
And if help does come… what price will Bait have to pay for revealing the Order’s secrets?
