‘A Quiet Place: Storm Warning’ Review: The Franchise’s First Comic Delivers

I’ve been curious about this one since the day it was announced. A Quiet Place is a franchise built almost entirely on the absence of sound, so the question I kept asking myself was simple: how do you translate a story about silence into a medium that’s already silent by default? Comics don’t have sound design or a score to build dread with. Everything has to come from the page. That’s a genuinely hard problem to solve, and it’s exactly why I went into Storm Warning more curious than confident.

I’m happy to say the challenge paid off.

What Is A Quiet Place: Storm Warning About?

The world ended in a hush, and the creatures that hunt by sound came for the cities first. Pearl, Iowa, a small island town on the Mississippi, is far enough removed from the coasts that its mayor and townsfolk convince themselves the danger is somebody else’s problem. Fire chief Lonnie Fry knows better. The threat is moving west, and Pearl isn’t nearly as safe as everyone wants to believe. That’s the setup, and from there, Storm Warning splits its time between the town’s last quiet days and the far more desperate present, once the creatures have already found their way in.

WHAT WORKED

What struck me first is how grounded this story stays, even with monsters on the page. A town in denial, a sibling relationship strained by one person being right and the other refusing to listen, a family trying to hold together while everything around them falls apart, these are the actual engine of the book, and the creatures are almost secondary to it. Watching Pearl slowly, reluctantly come around to the fact that their fire chief was right the whole time is one of the more satisfying threads here, and it’s handled with real patience instead of being rushed for a jump-scare payoff.

The book also doesn’t shrink from putting characters in genuinely difficult positions given the rules of this world. There’s a child in the story who vocalizes involuntarily, which, in a setting where any sound can get you killed, adds a level of tension and emotional stakes that hit differently than the usual “don’t make noise” survival horror beats. It’s handled with more care than I expected, and it gives the story a heart that a lot of monster fiction skips right past.

As for that translation challenge I mentioned up top, Hester and Kelly clearly thought hard about it. Silence in a comic can’t be heard, so it has to be shown, through body language, through spacing, through what characters do and don’t allow themselves to do. When that tension breaks, it breaks hard, and the shift between the held-breath quiet and the sudden chaos of an attack is where the book earns its horror credentials. It’s a smart, patient adaptation of a concept that could have easily fallen flat on the page.

The Art, Color, and Tone

Ryan Kelly’s linework and Lee Loughridge’s colors do a lot of the heavy lifting here, and it shows. There were pages I genuinely wanted to slow down and sit with, the kind of intense, beautifully composed panels that make you want to admire the layout before your brain catches up and reminds you these people are in mortal danger. That push and pull, wanting to linger versus needing to turn the page and find out what happens next, is exactly the feeling good horror comics should create, and Storm Warning nails it more than once. Nathan Widick and Jacob Bascle’s lettering does careful, quiet work too, which matters enormously in a book where sound itself is the antagonist.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ll admit the story keeps its scope fairly contained for a first outing in this universe, one town, one specific crisis, but that restraint actually works in its favor. It gives Storm Warning room to focus on character instead of spectacle, and as a franchise’s first-ever comic, that feels like the right call. If you’re a fan of the films, or just someone who likes horror built on tension rather than gore, this is well worth picking up.

I’ve loved A Quiet Place as a horror concept since the first film. I wasn’t as taken with Part II if I’m being honest, but Day One won me back over completely, and I’m genuinely looking forward to Part III next year. That first film’s bathtub birth scene alone tells you everything about how committed this franchise is to using silence as its sharpest weapon, and it’s that same commitment that makes Storm Warning worth your time on the page.

And the good news is this isn’t the only stop. IDW Dark has already announced A Quiet Place: Rising Tides for November 2026, a five-issue limited series from writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow, following a father and daughter surviving on a houseboat in the Florida Keys as the creatures close in and a hurricane bears down. Entertainment Weekly broke the news, and if Storm Warning is any indication, this universe is in good hands on the page.

More from the creative team

Phil Hester is a name superhero readers already know well, with credits across Green Arrow, The Darkness, Green Hornet, and Wonder Woman, plus his pencil work on Image’s Family Tree, a series we’ve genuinely loved. Ryan Kelly brings his own pedigree from Lucifer and his Stranger Things comics work, and colorist Lee Loughridge has been having a busy stretch lately across other series worth watching, including his work on Black Diamond, Dispatched, or White Sky.

Related Reading

• Our review of Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rite of Spring, another standout IDW horror release
• Smile: For the Camera was announced the same day as Storm Warning, also worth a look if you’re deep in horror comics right now

FAQ

Is A Quiet Place: Storm Warning worth reading? Yes, especially if you’re a fan of the films or of horror that leans on tension rather than gore.

Do you need to watch the movies before reading Storm Warning? No. It’s a standalone story set in the same world, so it works fine on its own.

Who is writing and drawing A Quiet Place: Storm Warning? Phil Hester writes and pencils the series, with Ryan Kelly on pencils and inks, Lee Loughridge on colors, and Nathan Widick and Jacob Bascle on letters.

Is Storm Warning an ongoing series or a limited series? It’s a five-issue limited series, IDW Dark’s first comic set in the A Quiet Place universe.

When is the collected edition out? The TPB is scheduled for January 2027, if you’d rather wait and read it all at once.

Will there be more A Quiet Place comic books? Yes. IDW Dark has already announced a follow-up, A Quiet Place: Rising Tides, a five-issue limited series set for November 2026 from writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow.