In Clossdale, teenage girls keep disappearing and turning up dead. When 17-year-old Ash receives a chilling warning that she’s next, she refuses to wait for the town’s useless police to take the threat seriously. Together with her foster sister Cassie and best friend Jamie, she sets out to uncover the truth behind the killings. But what starts as a desperate attempt to protect themselves soon spirals into something far darker than they ever expected.
Never in my life have I felt my age as much as I did while I was reading Dead Girls.
In a way, this graphic novel felt like a study in humor and the way it changes and, dare I say, evolves from generation to generation.
So congrats to this graphic novel for a) making me feel old AF and b) making me appreciate how humour—just like language—is ever changing and expanding.
Some of the writing reminded me a lot of shows like Riverdale and Scream Queens which are masterpieces and horrible messes all wrapped into one neat package. They’re funny, over the top, ridiculous and even when you really, really want to take a step back, it feels like a trainwreck you can’t look away from. Reading Dead Girls felt exactly like that in the best of ways.
Multiple times I muttered to myself out loud how stupid characters can be or how ridiculous a plotline was (furries. I don’t even have words for seeing this in traditionally published fiction, I need to lie down…and also clear my Ao3 search history stat) and wanted to just chuck my tablet across the table to never look at it again because what in the world!?
Does this make it a bad graphic novel or bad humor? Absolutely not.
It actually speaks for how well Kubrick manages to bring the best and worst of slasher films into a whole new format and encapsulates the fine line between over the top dramatic and just downright bingeable. While hitting all the bases of a classic slasher film – the spooky woods, the missing people, the “for the love of God, don’t split up and why would you even think of going through that door!?”—Kubrick manages to bring something new to the table with gorgeous, atmospheric illustrations, hilarious one-liners and snappy dialogue that makes you fly through the pages.
Is it over the top? Yes. But that’s where the fun comes from in Dead Girls! It’s dark, reveng-y, funny and you truly never see what’s coming next to a level of unpredictability some episodes of Black Mirror could take some lessons from.
The characters are eccentric and relatable, and you absolutely root for them to not become the proverbial final girl while they do everything in their power to make the senseless killings stop. Meanwhile, other secondary characters (and especially the bad guys) make you want to rip your hair out (or their head off) to a degree that should not be spoken of in a review that could be read by psychologists…or police officers.
Sure, it might not appeal to everyone—if you’re not a fan of slasher films or shows like Scream Queens, this might not be your cup of tea—but sometimes it’s exactly these out of the ordinary stories that can make you fall in love with reading all over again.
It’s been a while since a graphic novel took me for a rollercoaster of emotions and for that alone, I would recommend reading it. This truly is a Gen-Z murder mystery and a love letter to slasher fiction wrapped in one stunning graphic novel that is guaranteed to make you feel things—what exactly those feelings are and what you’ll do with them will be entirely up to you.
Dead Girls is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of September 22nd 2026.
Will you be picking up Dead Girls? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis
The teen daughter of an infamous serial killer must prove she isn’t the one behind recent copycat murders in this “tongue-in-cheek” (Booklist, starred review) graphic novel that’s a campy, feminist send-up of slashers that both celebrates and subverts classic tropes.
In the cozy town of Clossdale, a serial killer rampages! Five girls missing in as many weeks! Bodies turning up on the forest floor! And all fingers point to one vile fiend: Ash Hargreeves.
Except Ash didn’t do it. She may be the daughter of the infamous Clossdale Killer, and these copycat killings aren’t exactly convincing proof of her innocence—and okay, she’s kind of a weirdo who has two friends total, but when the murders strike a little too close to home, Ash decides to take a stand.
With the help of her besties, Ash is going to hunt down the killer, clear her mother’s name, and stop there from being any more dead girls—now and forever. After all, WWJLCD: what would Jamie Lee Curtis do?
