Review: POSTAL DELIVERANCE #1
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Creator:Â Matt Hawkins
Writer:Â Bryan Hill
Artist:Â Raffaele Ienco
Letters:Â Troy Peteri
Reviewer:Â Tony Farina
Summary
Postal Deliverance is not about the US Postal service just so you know. In issue one of this new series from Image and Top Cow, the opening panels start with a bang, literally. We meet Erik, who does not seem to be an upstanding guy, but whose family pays the ultimate price for his actions.
Crash cut to Florida where we meet Laura and her partner Magnum. They look pretty miserable. Laura stumbles across a young boy called Pascal who is being harassed by a gang. She decides to help him out with his problem. I don’t think things will go well for the gang members.
Finally, welcome to Eden, Wyoming where the sheriff, Maggie and the Mayor, Mark are married. They have a young daughter called Eva…Well maybe. It is complicated. We learn that Eden is not your normal town. It is a place where killers and other people on the run can buy safety and absolution. It does not look like a place you would want to visit.
Positives
Postal Deliverance starts out with a literal bang. It is so tense and fast paced, that I was done before I realized I started. The characters are not remotely one dimensional. It is clear they have back stories and it is clear, we will figure it all out at the series progresses. Writer Bryan Hill does something that is extremely difficult, he has made us care about cold blooded killers. The excellent thing about this book is that instead of Hill pandering to those people who have a poster of Tony Montana on their walls, he is telling a story about bad people, who do bad things and who are not heroes. They are messed up. They have psychological issues. They have PTSD. The violence in this book is not cool. It is not played for laughs. It is compelling and it is visceral. Children are harmed. It is hard to see but hard to look away.
Artist Raffaele Ienco is busy here telling this brutal story. He has a choice to make. He can tell Hill’s story with Kick-Ass kind of gore or he can do it in a mature, adult way. He thankfully chooses the latter. Again, this book is hard to see, but it is hard to unsee. I know that some of the images from Ienco are going to haunt me for a while, but that is, believe it or not, a good thing.
Negatives
This is a rated M for mature book. Do NOT under any circumstances leave this lying around where anyone under 15 picks it up. Seriously. This is a comic book, but this is not filled with comic book violence. Be warned. The last panel is particularly hard to see.
Verdict
Postal has been around for a few years, so it might behoove you to go back and read some back issues, but I think this is a great way into the series. I think this is an explosive beginning and I am keen to see where it goes. It is compelling to say the least.
