As the wildly popular comic book series Something is Killing the Children series approaches its 5-year anniversary in September 2024, the Slaughterverse creators and editorial team with BOOM! Studios are looking to ever-so-slightly lower their toothy masks and reveal some secrets about what's to come this year. The team announced and teased several upcoming comics and stories at their spotlight C2E2 2024 panel, 'Enter the Slaughterverse: The Legacy of Something is Killing the Children.'

In addition to the newly announced Kickstarter campaign commemorating a full decade of James Tynion IV's comics at Boom!, Tynion IV announced that the 5-year anniversary issue will be Something is Killing the Children #0, taking readers back to the moments before we met Erica Slaughter in the series' first arc, and answering some of the most long-awaited fan questions. The issue zero flashback connects with the recently kicked off "Erica Slaughter: Year Zero" arc of Something Is Killing The Children, which began with April's issue #36 and will continue for most of 2024. "We're now going to see where she earned her teeth. It's a story I've been wanting to tell for a long time," said Tynion IV.

The moves away from more recent harrowing developments at the hands of Cutter will give the team a chance to step back and focus on where Erica comes from, and also ideally offer a cleaner entry point for new readers during the anniversary year.

Related: Something is Killing the Children's reach expands this winter with Book of Butcher

On the Friday panel with collaborators Tate Brombal, Werther Dell'Edera, Eric Harburn, and Sam Johns, Tynion IV also announced that the third entry in the seemingly annual "Book Of..." one-shots will be the Book of Cutter, arriving in December 2024. This follows on the heels of 2022's Book of Slaughter and 2023's Book of Butcher, telling the story of Maxine Slaughter as she becomes the new Black Mask. Cutter is uniquely sadistic in the world of Something is Killing the Children, Tynion said, describing her as the answer to needing a Sabretooth to Erica's Wolverine.

Intriguingly, the Something is Killing the Children: Silver spinoff announced at last year's San Diego Comic Con does not yet have an announced creative roster, but was mentioned as a series (or perhaps one-shot) still in progress. "Silver" will focus on the silver masks, who Tynion IV described as the graduate students of the order, and the most versed in all monster lore, including things like vampire movies to understand how pop culture is influencing children's manifestations of monsters in the current day.

Beyond that, there are still plenty of monsters left to hunt in the Slaughterverse for years to come. As Tynion IV teased about what's to come after the Year Zero arc, "We left Erica in a desperate, desperate place. When she goes back on the radar of the House of Slaughter, it's going to be brutal."

Re-live the majesty of C2E2 with our the C2E2 2024 Main Stage panel videos on-demand, all the major things Popverse found at the Chicago show, and C2E2 2024's best cosplay.