In a doom-shadowed Cambodia infested with the living dead, CIA Special Agent Declan Rule and his canine companion Nero stalk a human monster, a neurosurgeon bent on carrying out grisly experiments that turn P.O.W.s into vicious instruments of war.

In ’68: RULE OF WAR Kidwell focuses on the horrifying capabilities of humans, rather than just zombies alone. “Readers will see how a human imagination, backed up by years of medical and scientific education, can take a threat like a shambling, cannibalistic demon and make it worse by wiring it to a radio transmitter frequency, packing it with high explosives and aiming it at an unsuspecting opposition,” said Kidwell. “Also, with the dead, surgical application and augmentation could be performed without boundaries. The threat of ‘losing’ a patient due to lab table trauma is zero as long as you don’t destroy the brain. Think Frankenstein on steroids with the bedside manner of Joseph Stalin and you’re getting warm.”

In Vietnam, Private Kuen Yam and his ragtag band of survivors battle their way across a murderous no-man’s-land in a desperate search for a ticket to the skies. The war is over, but the battle for humanity’s survival has just begun.

“The concept of ’68 owes its roots to the fact that George Romero and John Russo unleashed their original vision of the American flesh-eating undead in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead,” explained Kidwell. “If you take that birthdate as gospel in the creation of the zombie sub-genre, it’s a no-brainer that the conflict in Southeast Asia would have become an instant, overnight hell teeming with hungry ghouls and unburied war dead. The goal then, was to introduce the supernatural horror of the zombie plague into the equation already established by the horrors of an out-of-control war and let the readers decide which is worse.”

‘68: RULE OF WAR #1 is the first in a four-issue miniseries, arrives in stores on 4/2, and will be available for $3.99.