Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Dalibor Talajic
Colorist: Stjepan Bartolic
Letterer: Rob Steen
Cover Artists: Dalibor Talajic
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $7.99
Release Date: March 26, 2025
Leo and Yoni enjoy an idyllic suburban life. They feel blessed with their son Matt and infant Ivan. Their neighbor may snooze in her beach recliner on her front lawn each evening. Still, Leo and Yoni won't let that smoking and drinking eyesore get them down. What happens when a strange event shatters their American dream? Let’s leap into The Kids #1 and find out!
Story
It's just another tranquil evening in Leo and Yoni's home. After putting little Leo in his crib, the happy parents tell Matt to finish his handheld game and head to bed. Everything is fine until the early morning hours when strange sounds erupt from their baby monitor. Leo and Yoni rush to Ivan's room, where they find a naked man amid the shattered remains of Ivan's crib. He yells at them, hurls Leo away, and grabs Yoni's breast. Matt hears all the shouting and crashing and comes to investigate. Yoni orders their son to call 911.
Knocked for a loop, Leo, Yoni, and Matt flee their home in The Kids #1. Outside, they find more chaos. Naked people stumble around shouting. Their neighbors have fled their homes or lie in the streets. Their neighbors hold a gun on a shuffling naked woman while a yowling naked man knocks another neighbor through her front window. While the streetlights glow, a helicopter dumps water on a plume of smoke from a nearby fire. As a naked man hurls Leo against their four-door hatchback, Mrs Skilling appears. The woman they never bothered to befriend plunges a knife into the attacker’s back and yells for everyone to get in their car.
Garth Ennis presents a world radically changed by a mysterious event. The family drives through a neighborhood devastated by an apocalypse. Naked people bring chaos wherever they go, and no one answers Matt’s 911 call. Leo and Yoni don’t want to believe their son’s assertion that he saw Ivan's birthmark on the adult in the baby's room. By sunrise, the truth dawns on the family and Mrs Skilling. Baby Ivan isn't little anymore. The Kids #1 reminds us that our world can change overnight. Unexpected tragedies can destroy the future we expect, forcing us to adapt to changing circumstances.
Art
Dalibor Talajic shows the family's struggle with this unexplained event. The streets and highways are empty. Few people have fled their neighborhoods. A police officer treats them like looters. Leo, Yoni, Matt, and Mrs Skilling are afraid to follow his instructions and return home. After the attack, Leo carries his arm in a sling made from his belt in this double-length, magazine-size one-shot.
Stjepan Bartolic paints interior scenes in limited colors as the family and neighbor flee their homes and seek aid and understanding. Despite the Walking Dead-like scenario, the nearby fire adds cloud-tank movie coloring to the family's early morning flight in The Kids #1. Daylight brings living color to their exploration of their altered hometown. Red stains the asphalt, a terrible accident fills the city with yellow and orange, and more crimson awaits the family and their neighbor amid a fight for their lives.
As parents realize their precious bundles of joy have become irrational and violent, Rob Steen enhances their living nightmare with uppercase black letters in dialogue balloons. Characters and infants-raised-to-adulthood-overnight struggle to understand their surroundings with words and wails that grow bold for intonation, swell for raised voices, and rarely shrink. An absence of sound effects lends a silent film quality to this Twilight Zone story that tears away the characters’ illusion of permanence. Thanks to Image Comics and Ninth Circle for providing a copy for review.
Final Thoughts
While parents worry they are unequal to raising their children, others feel that the demands of the next generation often outweigh the results. The Kids #1 tackles parents' fears of untrustworthy children, childless adults' frustration over being forced to excuse bad behavior because "they don't know what it's like to raise children," and societal debates over caring for those with special needs.
Rating 9.5/10
To look inside see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.