Some new blood has come to town to spill some old blood.
Creative Staff:
Story: Bryan Hill, Matt Hawkins
Art: Raffaele Ienco
What They Say:
POSTAL returns to find Mark struggling with the responsibilities and horrors of being the new Mayor of Eden, as the newest member of their community has brought his own personal war with him. Mark’s mother, Laura Shiffron, tries to enjoy her retirement in Florida, but violence finds her… and violence might be the only way Laura Shiffron can find peace.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With seven collected volumes behind it, twenty five-issues and some one-shots, a new Postal series gets underway and it’s a title that’s been completely under the radar for me. I didn’t delve into past books beyond a cursory glance at the concept for the first to get an idea of the basics but it’s certainly an intriguing world that Bryan Hill and Matt Hawkins have put together here. This series has Raffaele Ienco handling the art duties and I was definitely curious to see how they do here, having been introduced to their work through the Batman: Sins of the Father digital series a while back. It was an odd pairing of creative and character at the time that slowly grew on me as I came to appreciate their artwork.
The premise of a town of criminals that police themselves and keep things as clean and decent as possible is interesting since it has to have a lot of rules. We get a bit of that when it comes to Mark, the new Mayor of Eden whose past makes up I’m guessing a huge chunk of the prior run of books. Here, we see him struggling with his wife Maggie and the daughter that isn’t his, Eva. There’s a disconnect of emotion with him to some degree that’s interesting and has me even more curious about the prior works. We see him dealing with a new arrival to Eden, a man named Erik, who had lost his family before. Mark’s laying out the basics of the rules pretty clearly, which makes sense if you’re basically easing in each new person like a fish in a bag to a controlled aquarium.
We do get some of Erik’s past as we see the fallout and how his wife and daughter were killed, and that factors into him coming here with the mindset of how little he deserves. That feels a little contrary to him stepping into town against the rules and getting into a deadly fight by the end of it, which is well choreographed, but you get the sense that he may be trying to push things in order to have someone really come after him. But that feels too easy. The book also hits us with a side story that’ll come around to be sure with Laura, living in Florida with her husband, who helps out a kid being changed by much older gang members bullying him into joining their gang. She’s got a lot of boredom going on and I assume she ties back into the other series so I can see her causing some trouble in her little slice of the Sunshine State.
In Summary:
I’ll admit, Postal has me interested in what the first series is like, though with seven volumes for it I find it a bit daunting to get into quickly. Postal: Deliverance leans on what’s come before when it comes to knowing certain characters I’m sure but the team here made it pretty accessible with a little casual research and I really like how Ienco’s artwork comes across here. It definitely connects well and has the right kind of physicality to it as well as the emotion coming out of the characters as bad things happen in pretty much each place. I’m definitely curious about the Florida story but I really want to see what Erik’s real goals are here as it could be almost anything at this point.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Image Comics / Top Cow
Release Date: July 3rd, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
