"The Goddamned: Before the Flood" is an ultra-violent trip to the prehistoric past

The world of The Goddamned series is dark, gloomy and awfully bloody.  There is no order whatsoever, only carnage and violence, and the landscape of the story seems to be a disgusting place where only corpses and rotten flesh fill the air as far as the nose can smell and the eyes can see.  The story takes place about 1600 years after the Biblical story of Eden, but what we see resembles hell a lot more than heaven.

Written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by R.M. Guera & Giulia Brusco, The Goddamned: Before the Flood is a brutal and unforgiving tale of one man inflicting violence against many murderous rapists and cannibals of his time and place.  Claiming himself to be the Man who Created Murder, Cain is almost invincible to violence of any kind, even able to regrow his right arm completely after a villainous version of Noah (yes, the one who built the Ark) cuts it off with his shiny steel axe.  When he decides to help a desperate woman look for her young son, he will, for the first time, show a sense of compassion he didn't think he was capable of.

The artwork by Guera and Brusco is rich in filth, rotten flesh and, most of all, blood.  The world they create is cruel looking and full of ruin and despair, and most (if not all) of the characters that Cain runs into (and eventually slices in half) are deformed or badly scarred.  The illustrations are so strong in carnage and bile that we can almost smell the very same disgusting aura that surrounds the endless amount of corpses.

Aaron creates a strong character in Cain, a (anti?)hero we can admire, in a way, because placed in his situation, we'd probably be doing the same.  The realization that the hero has late in the story about not helping another one-armed boy early on hits him hard, and the regret that soon overwhelms him is only confirmed during the last few pages, where Cain witnesses that violence will only breed more violence, as the young engage in murder early in life due to the absence of parenting and order and morals.

The Goddamned isn't for everyone, but those looking for a bold new take of a bitter, God-hating, and indestructible hero will be in for a treat.  It's a bloody good examination of post-apocaliptic pre-historia.
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