I have been unfortunately conditioned to ignore any comics that even allude to Korea. Webtoons and Tapas promote an overwhelming amount of boring, safe, generic isekai and romance dreck, and it's all produced using South Korean slave labor. Seeing a Korean name attached to a webcomic has come to trigger a pavlovian warning bell in my brain, as if I've adapted to instinctively notice and avoid middling self-insert feel-good content.

Something about Class 1-9 caught my eye, though. Maybe it was the uncanny artstyle, or the "Lord of the Flies" premise, or just the fact that it's NOT an isekai, but I felt myself drawn to it.

The whole fun of slasher films like Friday the 13th is seeing a bunch of obnoxious people killed horribly by an unfeeling psychopath. It preys upon the heavily repressed bloodlust of modern 'civilized' man and the secret wish of the powerless for the strength to take what they want.

What makes Class 1-9 so unusual in this regard is that which kids live and which ones die are spoiled right at the start, but as the story progresses the implications surrounding their deaths become more and more intense. It feels like the island they're stuck on and even the field trip which stranded them there carries some big secret which is gradually being unraveled bit by bit. I can't get enough of that sort of thing and it does a lot to help set this comic apart from just being "Korean Lord of the Flies".

This is probably my favorite horror comic. I can't recommend it enough.