We juicily loved it when Nicholas Cage famously cried out “Not the bees!” in the 2006 flick, The Wicker Man. Of course, the internal human terrors imbued by cults and their inner workings is the bee’s knees for fans of horror fiction.
Still, let’s face it: cults are real and they can affect people in any number of negative ways – whether as a member of one, or as a family member of an individual indoctrinated into one. Cult’s break bonds, strip away free thought and motivations while erasing years of a person’s built-up history and the internal traits that made them who they once were. At their very worst, cult’s commit other, unspeakable acts of human horror.
And all at the behest of one leader, grooming his or her membership to do their often-crooked bidding.
Cults are fertile ground for the horror genre. And that soil is even richer when the fiction is steeped in real-life history. Which brings us to today’s release of the first issue of a new mini-series called The Brother Of All Men #1.
Written by Zac Thompson (I Breathed A Body, Undone By Blood, Ka-Zar) and illustrated by Eoin Marron (Killer Grove), who are both no strangers to the horror genre, The Brother Of All Men, published by Aftershock Comics, is a grim, early twentieth century noir-tale of mystery and terror, rooted in the relationship between two estranged brothers.
A damaged veteran of The Great War and now a part-time private eye, Guy Horn undertakes a trip to Canada’s far west in 1928 to retrieve his brother from a dangerous spiritual community called the Aquarian Foundation, led by the enigmatic, and controlling Brother XII. Internally at war with himself and stressed by the charisma of the cult’s leader and the group’s cause, Horn must find a way out of a terrifying maze of the mind and body, saving both himself and his brother in the process.
Interestingly, the Aquarian Foundation and Brother XII were real-life figures in the storied history of Canada’s idyllic and, sometimes frightening, west coast. That history grounds The Brother Of All Men with a sense of real folk-horror, a dark mystery full of twists and turns and a sense of something that is both possible and inescapable. It all makes for perfect reading during hot and stormy summer nights.
Make the run to your local comic book shop today and join in on the cultish horror that is The Brother Of All Men #1.
