Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Mark Kidwell
Artist: Jeff Zornow
Release Date: 2nd April 2014

I’m sick of zombies. The horror genre has been drowning in reanimated corpses for a good few years now and it’s about time they went away for a wee rest in my opinion.

In the meantime, there’s still a veritable mountain of mouldering media to wade through and fortunately, some of is pretty decent, like this. Of course, it helps that there’s more going on than just zombies. Set in Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict, ’68: Rule Of War sees Special Agent Declan Rule tracking down a very human monster, a neurosurgeon carrying out grisly experiments that turn P.O.W.s into living (or not) weapons.

Essentially, imagine if at the end of Apocalypse Now, instead of finding a fat Marlon Brando, Captain Willard came up against Doctors Frankenstein or Moreau. Making weaponized zombies. Fun, eh?

Mark Kidwell’s script rattles along at a furious pace, encapsulating the chaos of a particularly bloody conflict before throwing bizarre cyborg zombie assassins into the mix. He’s helped no end by Jeff Zornow’s heavy pen and ink style, which is reminiscent of Darick Robertson at his bloodiest. Zornow’s love of the horror medium really comes across on every splatter-encrusted page, which is always nice to see.

War is full of horror at the best of times, but Kidwell and Zornow are cranking it up just a little bit more here, with a comic that sits above the endless landfill zombie titles currently cluttering up the shelves. Recommended.

Rating: 4/5.

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The writer of this piece was: Jules Boyle