Little Monsters Vol. 2
Jeff Lemire, writer; Dustin Nguyen, artist & cover
Image Comics, 2023
The first volume ended in strife and disagreement, with one group of child vampires sheltering a human and another group thirsting for more human blood. This story opens with that conflict but contrasts it with flashbacks reminding us how relatively harmonious the children's life together had been before they discovered that humans still existed. The mute child Romie reveals surprising, almost superhuman strength and a flashback reveals that he is the oldest of the children: plus, he was tasked with keeping the group together and away from humans. He had been allowing the children to believe the idea that the Old Ones would return–lying to them to keep them together as the Old Ones planned–but now he leads them to the bodies of the Old Ones lying in state in an old church.
The Old Ones knew that they had only aged and died because of hunting humans (although it is never explained how they figured this out), so they wanted to keep their young charges sequestered in order to keep them young and happy. Romie still isn't talking, but presumably, he has decided to reveal the truth in hopes of keeping the remaining untainted children from tasting human blood. There is a lot more information given about the dystopian setting. As the world was going into an apocalyptic spiral, the vampires took the children to one of the last cities standing so they would have what they needed to live. They were to represent the survival of the vampire race. So, the dystopia is more than just a cool sci-fi detail: the situation was bad for humans and the world at large, but it was ideal for making a vampire children's community possible.
In the end the children appear to have found a way to survive. Romie shows them an infinity sign, and Laura has moved from prey to a member of the vampire band. In the next scene we see her recruiting another frightened human child. The age of humans really is over. Granted that we were being led to pull for the vampire kids, but it is still a very dark ending.
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