‘I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer’ Review: Stitched, Slashed, and Stunning

I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer is one of those titles that basically did half the work for me. Fashion school. Serial killer. Doug Wagner and Daniel Hillyard. I did not need a PowerPoint presentation.

I already love the kind of horror Wagner and Hillyard make together, where the characters are deeply strange, the violence gets completely out of control, and somehow you still end up caring about the people involved. So putting that energy inside a fashion school and giving us a lead character who would really like to become a designer if these pesky murderous urges would stop getting in the way? Yes. Obviously I was reading this.

And after all five issues, I can safely say the title is somehow not even the most unhinged thing about it.

Wagner and Hillyard have become one of those creative teams where seeing both names together gets my attention immediately. Plastic, Plush, Vinyl, and now this all have that very specific combination of horror, dark comedy, weird characters, and violence that probably should not be as charming as it is.

What Is I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer About?

Rennie Bethary has been accepted into one of New York City’s most prestigious fashion schools, which should be the beginning of an exciting new chapter in her life. There is just one tiny complication: Rennie is a serial killer.

And when I say her fashion and murder hobbies overlap, I mean they overlap quite literally. Rennie’s designs can involve human flesh, including some extremely fashionable tattooed skin, because apparently regular fabric stores are simply not challenging enough. She wants to become a designer. She wants friends. She wants to survive school, deal with rivals, and maybe experience something resembling a normal life. She also wants to kill people. A lot.

That could have easily been the entire joke. Fashion student secretly kills people, makes clothes out of them, blood everywhere, everyone goes home happy. And listen, I would have read that book too.

But I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer gets much better once it becomes clear that Rennie is not just a setup for increasingly ridiculous murder scenes. There is an actual person underneath all the blood, anxiety, confidence, friendships, insecurities, and very questionable material sourcing.

Rennie Is Why This Works

Rennie is absolutely terrible, and I love her. That is probably the easiest way to explain the problem.

The series never asks you to forget that she is a serial killer. Rennie kills people. She enjoys killing people. She makes things out of dead people. At one point we are dealing with human-skin fashion and blood baths, so nobody can accuse this comic of trying to quietly hide what kind of person she is. But Wagner also gives her enough personality that she becomes more than “girl who murders.”

She is talented. She is anxious. She can be incredibly confident and somehow deeply unsure of herself at the same time. She cares about what people think, even when she acts like she absolutely does not. She starts forming friendships and attachments that complicate this neat little separation she has built between Rennie the fashion student and Rennie the serial killer.

And that is where the series really clicked for me, because the question stops being, “Can Rennie stop killing people?” Please. Look at the title. The more interesting question is whether she can actually care about people while still being exactly who she is.

By the final issue, those two parts of her life are not sitting neatly on opposite sides anymore. Rennie has people and things she genuinely wants to protect, and apparently the solution to that problem is more murder.

Character growth!

The Fashion Is Not Just a Gimmick

I really love how committed this book is to the fashion side of the premise. It would have been easy to use fashion school as a funny backdrop and then spend five issues doing slasher scenes, but instead Rennie’s designs and creativity are part of who she is.

The clothes matter. Her ambition matters. Her eye for design matters. The fact that some of her materials would result in several very uncomfortable police interviews also matters.

There is something so fun about the contrast between this world of creativity, competition, personal style, and artistic expression, and then Rennie comes along basically asking, “But what if this jacket was a crime scene?” It gives the horror its own personality.

And it is one of the reasons the book reminds me a little of what I like about stories such as Orla!. The violence is outrageous, but it is tied directly into the main character’s life instead of feeling like gore added because the book needed something nasty to happen.

Daniel Hillyard Makes Murder Look Very, Very Good

Daniel Hillyard’s art is such a huge reason this entire thing works. The book needs to be stylish enough that you believe Rennie actually belongs in this fashion world, but it also needs to switch into completely ridiculous violence without feeling like you suddenly started reading another comic. Hillyard handles both.

The character expressions are fantastic, especially with Rennie. She can look confident, annoyed, uncomfortable, excited, or completely ready to turn somebody into next semester’s final project, and you always know exactly what kind of mood she is in. Then the violence starts, and this book does not suddenly become shy.

The kills are bloody and exaggerated, but the pages never become difficult to follow. There is movement to everything. You can tell where characters are, what is happening, and exactly how badly someone’s day has just ended.

Michelle Madsen’s colors also work perfectly with Hillyard’s style. This is a book about fashion, so it needs personality on the page. The clothes, blood, environments, and characters all pop without the horror losing its nastiness. It looks fun. It looks gross. It looks fashionable. Apparently those three things can coexist.

That Final Issue Is INSANE

I need to talk about issue #5 without actually telling you what happens in issue #5. Very helpful, I know, but seriously, the finale is one of the reasons this series stuck with me so much.

The story stops holding back and turns everything up. The action, the violence, Rennie’s relationships, everything that has been building across the series suddenly collides. And the fight sequences are incredible.

There are pages where the choreography is so good that I stopped reading normally and started going panel by panel just to look at how the movement was being handled. The positioning, pacing, impact, and transitions make the whole thing feel fast without becoming confusing. That is hard to pull off.

Sometimes comic fights turn into a collection of cool poses where your brain has to do unpaid labor figuring out how everyone got from one side of the room to the other. Not here. The whole sequence flows, and it feels brutal, stylish, and completely appropriate for a series that has spent five issues combining fashion-school drama with serial murder.

The finale also brings Rennie’s character arc together in a way I really liked. Without spoiling it, the book understands that the solution was never going to be turning Rennie into a normal person.

Normal left this building several corpses ago.

Instead, it takes everything we have learned about what she wants, who she cares about, and what she is capable of and lets those things crash into each other.

Perfect.

The Coven’s Verdict

I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer is exactly the kind of horror comic I want when I am looking for something bloody, strange, stylish, and completely committed to its premise. Yes, there are human-skin clothes. Yes, there are murders. Yes, Rennie makes decisions that would cause most therapists to simply close the notebook and leave.

But what made me love the series was that underneath all of that, there is an actual character story. Rennie wants to create things. She wants to belong. She wants people around her even though caring about people makes her life significantly more complicated. And she is trying to figure out how all of that fits with the fact that murder is very much still part of the Rennie Bethary lifestyle.

Doug Wagner and Daniel Hillyard could have made this a fun five-issue joke and I probably still would have enjoyed it. Instead, they made Rennie someone I actually cared about, which feels concerning.

The art is fantastic, the fashion angle gives the horror its own identity, and the final issue goes completely off the rails in exactly the way I wanted it to. If you like serial-killer comics, dark comedy, ridiculous gore, complicated women, and books where you suddenly realize you are emotionally invested in someone who makes jackets out of people, you should absolutely read I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer.

The full five-issue series is available now in trade paperback. Go support Rennie’s dreams.

Just maybe do not volunteer to model anything.

Related Reading

If Rennie’s combination of murder, personality, and terrible decision-making worked for you, we have plenty more questionable people waiting. Orla! turns modern dating anxiety into monster horror and gives us another woman whose coping mechanisms occasionally involve people dying.

For another serial-killer story with a much darker psychological edge, The Deviant digs into murder, obsession, identity, and the secrets people carry for decades. And if what you really want is more fashion mixed with horror, we also covered Smile: For the Camera, which brings the Smile universe into the modeling world during Fashion Month.

FAQ

What is I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer about?
I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer follows Rennie Bethary, a talented student accepted into a prestigious New York City fashion school who is also secretly a serial killer. Her fashion ambitions and murderous urges quickly begin colliding.

Who created I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer?
The series is written by Doug Wagner, with art by Daniel Hillyard, colors by Michelle Madsen, and lettering by Ed Dukeshire.

How many issues is I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer?
It is a five-issue Image Comics miniseries.

Is I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer available as a trade paperback?
Yes. The collected edition contains all five issues and is available now from Image Comics.

Is I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer gory?
Very. The series includes serial murder, blood, body horror, human-skin clothing, and graphic violence, but it mixes the gore with dark comedy, fashion-school drama, and character-focused storytelling.

Who should read I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer?
Readers who enjoy darkly funny horror comics, serial-killer stories, stylish gore, complicated protagonists, and books like Plastic and Plush should have a very good time with this one.