Review: Postal #1
I’ve got to say, I’m impressed. I don’t know if this is related at all to the Postal game series of the same name, I can’t find evidence to confirm or deny that. I don’t know why else you would use the Postal name and the Postal font however so I’m assuming it is. That fact just makes this all the more impressive. The Postal franchise has been haunted by mediocrity since its inception. The first game was a low budget violence title that delivered on controversy and little else. The sequel decided to amp that up to a million but it should be given credit that you CAN do a non-violent run of the game. The game makes that very hard though and mostly you end up committing terrible acts of violence on relatively innocent civilians. The Uwe Boll movie and a third game are barely worth mentioning but fall under the same category of “criminally misunderstanding everything”. This, this however, does something not only interesting with the concept, but it does it very well. We have a main character, a postal worker, who is described as autistic that is sympathetic and compelling. We put him in a town, ostensibly, entirely built out of former criminals and in that town it seems they have their own form of justice. At first he bumbles into a crime that causes the town to act upon the criminal but at the very end our main postal protagonist gets a murder mystery dropped, quite literally, at his feet.
The writing on this is phenomenal, the art compliments it very well and the tone is consistent. They took something that is associated with mindless violence and extreme controversy and turned it into something smart and interesting. The whole thing has a very Twin Peaks feel with mystery layered upon mystery and stocked full of colorful characters. I’m really looking forward to the next one. I’d recommend going out of your way to check this out.
Score: 4/5
Writer: Bryan Hill/Matt Hawkins Artist: Isaac Goodheart Colorist: Betsy Gonia Publisher: Image/Top Cow Price: $3.99 Release Date: 2/4/15 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital