Another tale in the Brimstone universe, Necrocide has a decidedly different feel about it. More than just tales about hell and the frightening creatures that come from down below, Necrocide is genuinely creepy. It’s kind of a bizarre shift, given that the issue that I read prior to this one was Luscious. But the art works well with the storyline — it actually kind of reminds me of a couple of the cartoons that used to be on TV when I was a kid. The muted colours, the exaggerated facial expressions, looks like something straight out of the Saturday Morning Cartoons of my childhood my mother was very adamant about not letting me watch. Combine that with the fact that this is a comic in a universe where teams locate creatures from hell, and we’ve got ourselves a gloriously creepy issue.
This issue is backwards from what has been shown to us in Brimstone in the past – this time, it’s the monsters telling the story, and Brimstone himself is the actual ‘monster.’ It’s an interesting take, a sort of- things that go bump in the night talking about things that go bump in the night- feel, where the good guys (as they’re displayed to us) are viewed as monsters by the very creatures that they’re meant to take down. It wasn’t something I was expecting, to be honest, and I ended up really enjoying it.
One thing in particular that I enjoyed about this issue was that it was told as the narrator relays it to his overeager grandson. Necrocide has an interesting premise – I mean, the definition of necrocide is the dead… killing the dead, so kind of like a zombie free-for-all. It’s quite fascinating and is one of those things that needs to be done well in order to keep it interesting, otherwise it comes off as campy and bizarre. But it really does work in this Brimstone special edition. It’s a hero’s tale, where Brimstone is, of course, our hero, saving the narrator from a grisly death by, well, dead people. (It’s quite bizarre, yes.)
Bizarre is good, though. A lot of times I read comics that are cookie-cutter issues of other issues that have taken ideas from everything else and everything’s the same. It’s “ah, refreshing” probably isn’t an excellent description here, given that it’s grisly and gory and the faces on these creatures are really, very frightening, but it’s cool to see a take on something I don’t have a lot of experience with reading. Zombies everyone knows about. Zombies eating zombies? Bizarre.
The storytelling is good — our narrator, Grandpa, accompanies the panels with his epic tale. But the art is what’s really meant to be commended here: it is creepy. I mean, stay-up-late-at-night-wondering-what-you-just-read, seeing-it-when-you-close-your-eyes creepy. I love horror, I could watch horror movies all day and all night probably, but this was something else. Necrocide is gloriously creepy, a quick read, a decent story, and the art will stick with you for ages. Probably not something that I’d hang up on my wall and crow about, but definitely an issue of Brimstone that I would recommend to horror fans and those who enjoy something that’s a little bit different from their regular fare.