Thursday, February 3, 2022

#IReadsYou Review: POST AMERICANA #2

POST AMERICANA #2 (OF 7)
IMAGE COMICS

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

STORY: Steve Skroce
ARTIST: Steve Skroce
COLORS: Dave Stewart
LETTERS: Fonografiks
28pp, Color, $3.99 U.S. (January 2021)

Rated M / Mature

Post Americana is a seven-issue miniseries written and drawn by Steve Skroce and published by Image Comics.  Post Americana is set in a dystopian future and focuses on two rebels' attempt to save the “Wasteland” from a rogue President of the United States.  Colorist Dave Stewart and letterer Fonografiks complete Post Americana's creative team.

Post Americana  has two settings.  The first is “The Bubble,” an installation inside the Cheyenne Mountains that is the most sophisticated super-bunker in the world.  Inside, the new President of the United States plans to use the bunker's resources to build the “New America” by turning the second setting, the “Wasteland,” into what he wants it to be.  Determined to stop him are Mike, a hapless rebel, and Carolyn, a deadly Wasteland girl, who is already hellbent on revenge.  But Carolyn and Mike will have to survive the Wasteland in order to save the Wasteland.

As Post Americana #2 opens, the President makes big promises about “the Great American Reclamation” and orders some bloodshed to emphasize his talking points.  Elsewhere, Mike and Carolyn are in the middle of a cannibal holocaust-shindig thrown by “The Followers of the Path,” a cannibal blood cult.  Mike and Carolyn are the entertainment on the main stage, but luckily, Carolyn has the parts to put a crimp in cannibal plans.

THE LOWDOWN:  As I wrote in my review of Post Americana #1, I am a fan of writer-artist Steve Skroce's mainstream comics work, especially “Blood Debt” (May 2000 to August 2000), a four-issue story arc he produced for the original Wolverine ongoing comic book series (the one that began in 1988).  I have immensely enjoyed his recent comic book miniseries from Image, We Stand on Guard (created with writer Brian K. Vaughn) and Maestros.

I love Post Americana, even after only two issues.  It is part crazy post-apocalyptic, dystopian, Mad Max-like, action-science fiction.  Post Americana is also hardcore anti-American exceptionalism.  2020 was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II, and since the end of that “great war,” the United States has been on a mission-rampage to make the rest of the world serve its interests.

The way I see it:  Post Americana takes aim at the last forty years of American imperialism.  Its President of the United States looks like President Ronald Reagan and talks like Reagan's vice-president and successor, President George H.W. Bush.  He makes war like Bush's son, President George W. Bush, and is a media savvy psycho like President Donald Trump.  From the glimpses we get of the denizens of the Bubble, they seem like what U.S. citizens have been for the better part of the last century – consumers more than citizens.

Skroce also gets the usually superb coloring from Dave Stewart, and the lettering from Fonografiks heightens this story's sense of boldness.  I can't wait for the third issue.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of Steve Skroce's comics and of post-apocalyptic sci-fi will want Post Americana.

9 out of 10

[This comic book features a five-page sneak preview of the upcoming comic book, Two Moons #1, by John Arcudi, Valerio Giangiordano, Dave Stewart, and Michael Heisler.]

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


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