Postal: Deliverance #2 Seeks Retribution But Doesn’t Fire On All Cylinders
by Richard Bruton
Postal: Deliverance issue 1 didn’t do all that much for me, an intriguing idea, but making that big fist issue mistake of tantalising too much and telling just too little. It was a frustrating thing, promising much but delivering nowhere near enough. But, it’s always worth giving these things a second look on a second issue, especially when there is that potential for things to come good…
However… much of what bugged me about Postal: Deliverance in issue 1 is still bugging me about issue 2, despite me really hoping it would begin to come good. There’s the same deliberate vagueness, the same lack of direction, the sense of trying to be all mysterious and interesting, but just not giving me enough meat to get into things.
Last issue we were introduced to the three strands of storyline. And at least here, the 22 pages is only split between two storylines. Latterly, we catch up with Laura, whose life reeks of former spy or something similar, in some other place, where she’s taken a young street victim under her wing and is teaching him to stand up for himself, showing him how to beat the living crap out of his bullies.
But first, we return to Erik Cayman’s story (mean, moody, bad news) which joined up with the story of the mystery town of Eden. Erik’s paid good money to bring his messed-up, grief-stricken life into town, where he’s already been warned not to cause trouble by the local law. He, oh so predictably, ignored that. And that means first the warning…
swiftly and brutally followed by retribution… these cops just aren’t messing around in Eden…
But, just as with issue one, there’s just not enough here, it might be down to just two storylines but neither of them covers enough ground, and it’s all still so frustratingly vague.
As before, Ienco’s artwork is the big attraction here, the big, open storytelling at least suiting his style, even if it doesn’t really go much of anywhere. The thing is, a few years ago, when I wasn’t reading all that much contemporary work, you could accuse me of being out of touch with modern storytelling, but no, it’s not even that. I’m reading more and more single-issue comics now, and there’s still some fabulous comics that do everything they need to in 22 pages, deliver plenty of plot and character development, but also manage to build things into a longer narrative and keep up some ideas of mystery and slow reveal. Sadly, Postal: Deliverance just isn’t one of those comics.
POSTAL: DELIVERANCE #2 – Created by Matt Hawkins, written by Bryan Hill, art by Raffaele Ienco, letters by Troy Peteri. Published by Top Cow/ Image Comics.
