Review by Booklist Review
Abandoned in no-man's-land at the height of WWI, sensitive new recruit Barrow must now decide to either evade his new monstrous squad or join them and lose whatever humanity he has left. Though the start is bogged down by some heavy exposition and familiar language of the horrors of war, Romesburg quickly ramps up the tension by dragging Barrow into the action in a fight for his life. A few unexpected and horrific twists on his journey keep the piece engaging and surprising, and the story is certainly elevated by the artwork--Vázquez's elongated and barbaric facial features of the Hound squad punctuate the grotesque horror without veering into the realm of cliché, while his cold color palette and character design feel reminiscent of the 1980s and '90s horror comics that seem to have inspired this. Chase and fight scenes stylistically capture the violence and terror of the front. Simple yet gripping fare for fans of horror comics or historical fiction with a speculative twist.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"War turns men into animals," warns a soldier in this frenetic comics horror story set on the battlefields of WWI. In the script by Freeman (Basic Instinct) and Romesburg (Children of the Grave), feckless young British private Barrow is tasked with managing the Hounds, a regiment in the "Gas Quarter" of the trenches in 1917 France. Holed up in a dilapidated farmhouse, wearing gas masks that don't fully protect them from the toxic atmosphere, the Hounds descend into an atavistic state of secret rituals and bloodlust-crazed raids. As war closes in around them, Barrow is warned by the murderous Hounds that "there is no place for you in our new world." The narrative loses some cohesion on the way to its bloody climax, but newcomer Vázquez's art, marked by loose, boldly inked linework and a lingering sense of menace, remains striking throughout. The muddy, overgrown landscapes and period military details are rendered as memorably as the scenes of terror and wartime violence. It's a solidly entertaining spine-tingler in a concise package, perfect for horror fans who like a dash of existential terror mixed into their gore. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In Freeman and Romesburg's graphic novel, a soldier encounters a strange cult on the front lines of World War I. In this graphic novel, a moldering old diary tells an astonishing story: A young man named Barrow (a thin, innocent waif) is sent to the front lines of the British troops in southern France while fighting in WWI, told by his commanding officer that he'll be serving in an unusual regiment nicknamed the Hounds because of the long snouts of their omnipresent gas masks. With the Hounds, Private Barrow journeys to a ruined house in the shattered countryside where, to his horror, he finds that his new comrades are far darker than they seem: They're keeping a group of brutalized German prisoners in the house, and worse is to come--when they release these prisoners, the Hounds devolve into semi-human monsters to hunt and consume the fleeing men. "Before my arrival, I feared the change the trench would force upon me," Barrow reflects; "I had forgotten that the trenches were dug by the hands of men." Private Barrow and the Hounds embark on a collision course that will see the young soldier descend to the farthest depths of tragedy that the war has to offer. "I've always believed people can turn," Private Barrow writes in his journal, "from good to bad, then back again. But this … this feels different." This stark, unsettling story is told by Freeman and Romesburg with confidently effective understatement--they seem well aware that excess verbiage is the enemy of mood. And that mood is greatly enhanced by Vásquez's vivid, jittery, full-color artwork, full of scratchy line-work that underscores the gruesome horrors that Private Barrow both witnesses and perpetrates; as he's told when he's a boy, "In this life, we will hurt those that don't deserve it." A visceral and neatly executed graphic parable of war's dehumanizing power. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
