Advance Review– ‘A Quiet Place: Rising Tides’ #1 Succeeds On The Back Of Simple, Effective Visual Storytelling

The world of A Quiet Place isn’t one I know well; I’m aware of the broad strokes. John Krazinski, Emily Blunt, monsters hunt by sound so everyone has to live in … a quiet place … and somehow there’s a baby living in a trunk in this silent dystopia — but have never seen any of the films.

So me picking up this issue, a spinoff/tie-in to a franchise I only know via trailers and word-a-mouth, may seem strange. But as the old adage goes, every comic might be somebody’s first. While fans of the movies drawn to this can speak to how well it does or doesn’t fit within the context of that world, my limited experience makes me the perfect person to ask: does this issue work simply as a comic book story?

A Quiet Place: Rising Tides #1 opens innocuously enough, with a young woman trying to pin down the identity of an older man parked at a marina, hooked up to oxygen. Before we can learn more about them, a flock of crazed birds herald the arrival of something ominous, and the story smash jumps three days into the future.

The same setting is now rendered with an overcast, inky gray tone and it’s clear something terrible has happened. The woman and the man are now on his boat, floating slightly off shore. Notably, there is no dialogue. What follows is the beginning of a simple survival story between two characters who, we will learn, share a more complicated past than it seemed at first.

It all works because writer Declan Shalvey keeps it small. This is a ground-level look at a monster apocalypse, with little indication of what is happening anywhere outside the two characters’ fields of view. The two main characters are the only ones with any dialogue, and unless I missed it, we don’t even learn the woman’s name (the older man is Mr. Hernandez). This tight focus makes it clear that this is a story specifically about their experiences, and not a sweeping high-level exploration of the mechanics governing this ruined world. That makes it relatable, and on a base level compelling, without knowing anything about the movies it’s ostensibly tying into.

Shalvey is ably abetted by Luke Sparrow‘s art. Sparrow, who worked with Shalvey on Dynamite’s Terminator and is no stranger to IDW, having dabbled in their Star Trek corner, brings a pleasant, straight-forward look to the opening pages (with a touch of Shalvey’s own style), and relies on Colin Craker‘s colors to sell the shift into the post-monster world. But that consistency of style underscores just how broken the new world is, the mundane tipped into the horrific, with the overall look still consistent with what came before.

Not surprisingly for a story set in a world with sound-hunting monsters, large portions of Rising Tides #1 are silent, with the only words on the page sound effects. From Marvel’s “‘Nuff Said” event to G.I. Joe‘s silent issues, there’s a tradition of comics which lean on their artists to progress the story entirely via the visuals, and its obvious technique to apply for a story set in a world containing sound-sensitive monsters. Sparrow meets the challenge ably, his clean lines and methodical panel construction making it easy to both follow the characters’ actions and get a sense of how they feel about what they’re doing. A story like this absolutely needs an artist with strong storytelling chops to succeed, and Sparrow delivers.

The end result is a comic that tells a tense, tight story on the almost-microscopic level of a monster apocalypse. By eschewing a focus on pre-existing characters or matters of lore, Shalvey and Sparrow deliver an issue which requires no prior knowledge of the films (they even make sure to establish that the monsters are drawn to sound, arguably the one thing any average person would know about the films). I can’t say how Rising Tides #1 would play to diehard fans of the movies, but I can say it’s a rewarding experience for anyone who would enjoy a slice-of-life survival story set in a world of creepy-ass monsters.

A Quiet Place: Rising Tides #1 is set to release on November 18th, 2026, with final order cutoff falling today. Let your local comic shop know if you want a copy.