It’s Clerks meets Assault On Precinct 13.
It’s Intruder meets The Warriors.
It’s Dawn of the Dead meets Rosemary’s Baby.
It’s none of those things because it’s altogether too original to be classified that easily.
I’m talking about The Night Stockers by Triana and Harding, a true masterpiece of absurdity and gore.
Freshway is struggling now that Devil’s Food has opened up across the road, stealing customers as well as some of the staff. In a desperate, albeit transparently futile, attempt to combat the erosion of the bottom line, Todd demands that most of this Freshway staff work an unexpected overnight shift for deep cleaning and stocking. A miserable night is soon to become altogether worse as the Freshway staff learns that competition between grocery stores can not only be fierce, it can be deadly.
It stands to reason something like that would have to happen when the Devil’s Food chain is owned and operated by Satan. Fueled by a desire to live up to the expectation of his dark lord–and his petty impulse to seek vengeance against the Freshway manager who helped drive him to the dark embrace of Devil’s Food–Desmond decides he and his staff will be destroying the competition. Of course, even with Satan on his side, Desmond and his crew of miscreants might have a bit more on their plate than he could anticipate.
Equal parts an homage to death metal of the late 80s and early 90s and the early days of splatterpunk horror, the authors create a world that feels entirely real so that they can do the most unreal and unspeakable things to the people populating that world. Drawing from their own experiences working in retail during that period as well as their lasting appreciation for the music that finds itself repeatedly referenced throughout the narrative, Triana and Harding successfully bring the world of Freshway to life–for the express purpose of converting it into a funhouse of death and dismemberment.
Filled to the brim with graphic sex and violence, often in tandem, The Night Stockers becomes a barrage of viscera and perverse humor that remains constant from the first to the final page.