The following ain’t exactly Donkey Kong.
In 2024’s Cemetery Kids Don’t Die, the titular youngsters barely escaped with their lives — and their sanity — after spending countless nights trapped in Nightmare Cemetery, a video game played while you sleep. But in the series Cemetery Kids Run Rabid (due out August 13), writer Zac Thompson and artist Daniel Irizarri return to the horrors of the Dreamwave console for a decidedly more personal, extra disturbing journey at the crossroads of technology and humanity.
Within that in-universe video game, the newly-released DLC, The Blighted Sprawl, promises answers about the game’s mysterious origins — and forces the friends to once again confront the line between game and reality as the nightmares begin bleeding into the waking world.
“We’re taking everything we explored in the first volume and pushing deeper,” Thompson said during a recent chat. “What parts of ourselves do we lose to digital worlds? And can we ever get those parts back?”
The result is a horror story with sharpened teeth. From the start, both creators wanted to up the ante — emotionally, visually, and viscerally.
“Everything needed to be pushed further: the cerebral body horror, the character-driven drama, and the over-the-top fight scenes,” Thompson said.
For Irizarri, that meant making sure “none of these kids are safe… They’re emotionally on edge, they don’t have the maturity to understand what they’re going through, and they’re bringing all of it into a game world that’s ready to weaponize those feelings.”
Courtesy of Oni Press.
Suburban Decay and the Gamification of Ruin
The Blighted Sprawl serves as a major setting shift from the first volume’s eerie Americana.
“We’ve moved beyond the small-town limits,” Thompson said. “Now we’re in dead malls, cookie-cutter houses, the mess of highways. It’s the dying suburbia just beyond city limits.”
The game’s design itself deepens the mythology, introducing Yzhog the Blighted One, a new demigod at the heart of this corrupt codebase.
Irizarri describes the aesthetic as “closer to home.” He sees the environment itself as commentary.
“It evokes that sense of unease that comes from seeing a child hold a Walkman like an artifact, Irizarri said. “The Blighted Sprawl is the inevitable gamification of our society’s ruins.”
Two Realities, One Nightmare
One of the series’ most gripping aspects is how it straddles real-world anxiety and digital terror. According to Thompson, their storytelling craft is just as layered.
“You get clean gutters and lines in the ‘real world’ and jagged, darker gutters and weirder page designs in the ‘game world,’” Thompson explains. “The tension of the real world bleeds into the conversations they’re having in the game.”
Irizarri added that their visual language becomes increasingly unstable as the kids’ psychological grip slips.
“Textures from the game start to show up IRL…panels start to disjoint,” Irizarri said. “We want you to feel with our characters when they start to lose their grip on things.”
Courtesy of Oni Press.
Changed Kids, Fragile Friendships
Enough time has passed for the Cemetery Kids, and with it comes fractures and shifting roles in their lives and friend group. Birdie and Pik are back but different. Enid has drifted away after a brutal injury. Meanwhile, Wilson is dealing with a condition that makes dream-gaming deadly. And into this tense mix comes a new presence: Maddy. Irizarri took the opportunity to redesign the cast’s looks to reflect these changes.
“Enid was a shining beacon of light and warmth… that space is now filled with Maddy’s chaotic energy,” Irizarri said. “If I did my job right, you’ll see that reflected in her design.”
Thompson is more blunt about the state of the group.
“They’ve all sworn off dream-gaming…until the DLC drops,” Thompson said. “This isn’t a story about best friends solving everything with the power of love. Ignoring the truth has allowed wounds to fester.”
Techno-Horror Rooted in Real Life
The horror in Run Rabid isn’t just imaginary. Thompson draws on real-life gaming addiction and fears about technological overreach.
“I worry about the years we give to these secondary realities while our primary reality decays around us,” Thompson said.
Irizarri connects it to modern “psycho-technologies” that manipulate our emotions.
“Outrage, love, sadness — [it’s] all being converted into metrics,” Irizarri said. “Once that barrier is breached, it might be game over. Will our emotions be our own?”
Courtesy of Oni Press.
What’s Really Lurking in the Code?
While the new DLC promises answers, the creators are more interested in blurring the lines.
“As with any good sequel, we’re answering a few questions from the first book,” Thompson said. “But we’re also asking plenty of new ones.”
Or, as Irizarri added, “There’s very little info about the people developing these technologies. And online communities can be full of liars and trolls. So who can the kids really trust?”
As such, the new volume doesn’t shy away from visual shocks.
“Daniel just delivered a sequence from the end of issue #2 that honestly had me gasping,” Thompson said. “Which is the dream when you’re making a horror book.”
And Irizarri is just as impressed with Thompson’s skills/feats as the writer.
“Zac has such a deep knowledge of cinema that I’m comfortable coasting off his vision,” Irizarri said. “But he also gives me space to twist details, choreograph scenes differently, and really make it my own.”
Hope, Horror, and Dead Futures
Ultimately, Cemetery Kids Run Rabid is about more than surviving another nightmare. It’s about reckoning with what survival costs.
“Is it really winning if you come back with an incurable disease?” Thompson said. “You can lose sight of the future in your teenage years. And just as easily, you can lose sight of yourself.”
Whether the Cemetery Kids make it through this new trial — or lose themselves in the process — remains to be seen. But one thing’s certain: The game isn’t over — not by a long shot.
Cemetery Kids Run Rabid #1 debuts August 13.
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