That said, Ennis never descends into gratuitousness merely for the sake of it.
This is not a book for the faint hearted: it contains explicit depictions of violence, rape, torture, infanticide, evisceration, amputation, a degree of gore generally not seen outside of an abattoir, the kind of language that would make a sailor blush and some very bleak insights into human nature indeed. Jacen Burrows artwork perfectly compliments the grim machinations of Ennis' storyline and he is unflinching in his depictions of the barbarity perpetrated by both "The Crossed" and their human prey (who are driven to increasingly desperate, gut-wrenching extremes in order to survive). The survivors of this apocalypse are flawed, traumatized, terrified, increasingly losing their capacity for humanity and steadily dwindling in numbers.
For my money, it's the most perfect piece of survival horror to yet grace the comic book field because it is both genuinely shocking and the complete antithesis of the recent glut of run-of-the-mill zombie comics in which heavily armed groups of chiseled, good-looking "Matrix" clones wade effortlessly through the ruins of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. "Preacher", "War Stories" and "The Boys" alumnus Garth Ennis first long-form foray into the survival horror field is an unflinchingly visceral piece of work that channels the sensibilities of eighties splatterpunk authors such as Shaun Hutson, John Skipp and Craig Spector as well as the likes of "Deliverance/To The White Sea" author James Dickey, Sam Peckinpah and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". This is the story of a group of those that were cursed to survive just that little bit longer. Those that survive the first weeks can expect little more than to survive the day. Few survive the first few days of their onslaught. America, The Present: When the end comes, it is without warning overnight seemingly ordinary people transform into "The Crossed" - psychotic killers afflicted with a bizarre cruciform facial scar who exhibit an insatiable appetite for murder, torture, barbarity and sexual violence - and rampage across the continental United States in an orgiastic frenzy of bloodlust and carnage.
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