Niles, a prolific writer of all shades of horror script, grisly to guffaw inducing, for several comics publishers, here offers an underdeveloped variation on John Wyndham's sf classic The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), in which mutant children are born simultaneously to a community's women, and it compounds failing to explain the basic situation with dialogue written in Beverly Hillbillies patois. All Niles gives artist Ruth to work with is an escape-and-chase scenario as one boy, after preventing Dad from shooting his monstrous brother, rounds up the other mutants and leads them in an attempted breakout from their home valley. Fortunately, Ruth rises to and exceeds the occasion. Working in pen and ink and watercolor, and limiting his palette to black, white, and sepia that he expressively alters with varying admixtures of yellow and red, Ruth creates one knockout panel after another. The night settings of many scenes allow Rembrandtesque lighting effects that Ruth exploits in tandem with the narrow range of color to deepen characterizations beyond anything Niles has written. A triumph of presentation over (lack of) substance.