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Cemetery Kids Don’t Die #1 Crafts an Engaging Horror Story and World

Cemetery Kids Don't Die #1

The Dreamwave console offers the perfect escape from the mundanity of your lives in the modern age, all the while you play it as you sleep. Aside from the popular system is the game “Nightmare Cemetery,” which attracts all teens to it. One group of friends, The Cemetery Kids, have become obsessed with the game and spend every night exploring its various quests. However, when one of the teenagers does not wake up and finds their mind still connected to the machine, it’s up to his friends to rescue him and prevent what lurks inside from attaching. 

Zac Thompson and Daniel Irizarri’s Cemetery Kids Don’t Die #1 offers a fresh take on similar past narratives by delving into a more prominent horror direction. While calling to mind films like Jumanji, the series shares a much closer DNA to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, focusing on a group of misfit friends who have to band together to battle horrors while asleep in another realm. Considering the amount of ground to cover for a first issue, Thompson and Irizarri do an excellent job of establishing the characters, the story, and the world of the video game. As an RPG fan, they did a solid job of capturing the stakes and emotions while playing those types of games and capturing the aesthetics of the genre. 

Thompson nails the ensemble nature of the story by providing enough information about the individual characters and crafting engaging relationships among them. Outside of working together as a party in the game, you see their dynamics and quirks in real life. I quickly became invested in Pik, his sister Birdie, and their friends, who come across as realistic teens with real problems who want to escape the mundanity of their lives by playing “Nightmare Cemetery.” As a result, when horror comes to the forefront of the story, it hits on a much more intricate level due to the attachment to the characters. 

Irizarri’s art superbly contrasts the boring reality the teenagers live in with the more fantastical horror of the video game setting. Aside from crafting visually unique designs for the players’ avatars, Izarri makes sure to have some familiarity with them to help differentiate each role they have in the party. Also, I love the fantasy horror aesthetic, which never comes across as cliched but is well-realized and designed. The design of the teenagers also feel appropriately angsty and moody. Brittany Peer’s spooky color palette of blues, pinkish purples, and green helps the world of “Nightmare Cemetery” come to life while calling to mind classic 80s horror movies. I also liked Andworld Design’s strong lettering, as it is cohesive with the comic book world. 

Combining fantasy horror with RPG flourishes, Cemetery Kids Don’t Die crafts a solid first issue as it sets up the overwhelming odds the teenagers must overcome to succeed. The series is perfect for not only horror fans but fans of fantasy and RPGs as well. Once you start reading, it’s hard to let go.

Story: Zac Thompson Art: Daniel Irizarri
Color: Brittany Peer Design Letterer: Andworld Design
Story: 8.3 Art: 8.3 Overall: 8.3 Recommendation: Read

Oni Press provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review


Purchase: Zeus ComicsKindle

NYCC 2023: Oni reveals a first wave of five new series

Oni Press has revealed ONI 2024—a high-intensity first wave of five propulsive new monthly comic series from a wide-ranging cast of award-winning creators and fast-rising stars that will fully embrace the potential of the comics medium to invert, collide, and reinvent the foundational genres of horror, science fiction, crime, fantasy, and beyond throughout the new year . . . 

INVASIVE

Written by CULLEN BUNN
Art by JESÚS HERVÁS
Covers by JESÚS HERVÁS, LUANA VECCHIO, BRIAN LEVEL, JAE LEE & MORE

Beyond excess, beyond ethics, beyond science . . . Enter a terrifying new experiment in pain from Eisner Award nominee Cullen Bunn (The Sixth Gun, Basilisk) and acclaimed illustrator Jesús Hervás (The Empty Man, Cyberpunk 2077)!

Dr. Carrie Reynolds was a veteran trauma surgeon with a godlike mastery of muscle and bone. But outside the operating room, her rigidly ordered life spiraled into chaos when her daughter, Heather—a recovering plastic surgery addict—suddenly disappeared, only to mysteriously reemerge in a catatonic state, her vocal cords removed . . . the latest in a series of victims scarred by a battery of brazenly cruel medical procedures that have baffled police and left an alarming number of once-ordinary citizens maimed, mutilated, or dead on arrival.

Deep beneath the streets of Carrie’s city, a new kind of underground hospital has opened its doors . . . and, once inside, there are no rules, no oaths, and no taboos too deep to not to be broken. Together, a new class of surgeon has sworn to pierce the final threshold of accepted medical orthodoxy one incision at a time.

The scalpel is their tool. The alleys are their operating theater. Murder is their medicine. And only Carrie can stop what they’re planning next . . .

FOUR ISSUES | BEGINNING DECEMBER 2023

INVASIVE

JILL AND THE KILLERS

Written by OLIVIA CUARTERO-BRIGGS
Art by ROBERTA INGRANATA
Covers by SANYA ANWAR, MARGUERITE SAUVAGE, ALISON SAMPSON & MORE

A DOUBLE-SIZED AND DANGEROUS 48-PAGE DEBUT! Rising stars Olivia Cuartero-Briggs (Mary Shelley Monster Hunter) and Roberta Ingranata (Witchblade, Doctor Who) present a new kind of game where even murder is much more than it seems . . .

Returning to school after the unsolved disappearance of her mother, teenager Jill Estrada can’t wait for things to return to normal . . . even as her friends become compulsively obsessed with Box Killers, a true-crime subscription game where each month’s “unsolved case” is custom-tailored to the life of its player. There’s only one catch: Jill’s game seems to be all too real . . . and when her clues begin to connect to a series of disappearances in her town, Jill and her friends must uncover the truth behind these mysterious crimes before one of their own becomes the next victim.

FOUR ISSUES | BEGINNING JANUARY 2024

JILL AND THE KILLERS

CEMETERY KIDS DON’T DIE

Written by ZAC THOMPSON
Art by DANIEL IRIZARRI
Covers by DANIEL IRIZARRI, DUSTIN WEAVER & MORE

YOU’RE ONLY ALIVE IF YOU’RE ONLINE . . . Experience 2024’s most exhilarating, terrifying adventure downloading from critically acclaimed writer Zac Thompson (Hunt for the Skinwalker, The Dregs) and blockbuster artist Daniel Irizarri (XINO, Judge Dredd)!

The 21st century sucks hard, but it’s been made somewhat tolerable by the latest and greatest media innovation to finally unseat the iPhone. Enter the Dreamwave: the first gaming console played entirely while you sleep.

Now the obsession of millions around the globe, it’s also the one point of solace for four friends whose lives have been marred by trauma and dysfunction. Together, this group of ultra-online “Cemetery Kids” spend their nights roaming the open world of the most immersive and brutal horror game ever created: “Nightmare Cemetery.” Together they seek to dethrone an enigmatic humanoid monster known only as the “The King of Sleep.”

Which was fun—until one of them doesn’t wake up . . . and finds their consciousness locked inside a horror game that is anything but imaginary. Now, the three remaining Cemetery Kids must navigate the game’s forbidden landscape to rescue their friend . . . and pray that the secret lurking at its center doesn’t follow them home.

FOUR ISSUES | BEGINNING FEBRUARY 2024

CEMETERY KIDS DON'T DIE

NIGHT PEOPLE

Written by BARRY GIFFORD & CHRIS CONDON
Art by BRIAN LEVEL, ALEXANDRE TEFENKGI, ARTYOM TOPILIN & MORE
Covers by BRIAN LEVEL, JOËLLE JONES, J.H. WILLIAMS III & MORE

From the mind of literary icon Barry Gifford—internationally renowned creator of Wild at Heart and cowriter of David Lynch’s neo-noir masterpiece Lost Highway—Night People is a pulsating roadmap of the American subconscious, where neon-lit Southern nights give way to lipstick, sweat, and blood, and the odd, the innocent, and the evil are all fellow travelers down an interstate of dark, elusive dreams.

Adapted from Gifford’s acclaimed novel by breakout writer Chris Condon (That Texas Blood, The Enfield Gang Massacre) and a rotating cast of stunning artistic talents—including Brian Level (Poison Ivy), Alexandre Tefenkgi (The Good Asian), Artyom Topilin (I Hate This Place), and more—follow an uneasy cast of wanted men, cartel-killers, and lost souls through four interlocking tales as they travel a path of intoxication, lust, and spontaneous violence from New Orleans to Egypt City, Florida, and back again.

In our first tale of desperation, fanaticism, and murder: Two ex-convicts—a pair of inseparable lovers named Big Betty Stalcup and Miss Cutie Early—are out on parole using their newfound freedom to purify the world of men’s evil influence . . . and leaving a trail of mutilated bodies in their wake. As the psychotic dimensions of their star-crossed romance—and the twisting paths that first led them to their fateful meeting at the Fort Sumatra Detention Center for Wayward Women—come into full view, their experiment in righteousness culminates in the kidnapping of Rollo Lamar, a kindly attorney whom Betty and Cutie abduct just to see if they can reeducate at least one man on the planet before the demise of civilization.

FOUR ISSUES | BEGINNING MARCH 2024

NIGHT PEOPLE

AKỌGUN: BRUTALIZER OF GODS

Written by MUREWA AYODELE
Art & Cover by DOTUN AKANDE

In an age thought forgotten . . . when man, monster, and the divine all strode the Earth . . . a lone warrior emerges to test the immortality of the cruel gods who would deal destruction with impunity . . . He is a one-man reckoning that stands in defiance of his divine masters with a sword in hand and a thirst for godblood. His name: AKỌGUN THE BRUTALIZER!

In the tradition of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Thor, and the best-selling God of War franchise, superstars-in-the-making Murewa Ayodele and Dotun Akande—the creative duo behind I Am Iron Man and Moon Knight: Black, White & Blood—usher in a new epoch of African dark fantasy on the ancient continent of Alkebulan with a mythic cycle of cosmic destiny and unrelenting warfare colliding man against god . . . and blade against blade!

Told across three powerfully oversized chapters, steady your mind and spirit for a glorious new comics milestone revealing the fabled origin and battle-tested fury of . . . Akǫgun: Brutalizer of Gods!

THREE OVERSIZED ISSUES | BEGINNING APRIL 2024

AKỌGUN: BRUTALIZER OF GODS