Apache Delivery Service

Unlike another miniseries I just wrote about, the solicitation for this one didn’t endear itself to me.  Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins’ latest miniseries for Dark Horse, after the intriguing but ultimately forgettable “Fear Case,” was described in a way that made it feel like it was overstuffed with lots of random ideas.  All you need to know about this series is that it focuses on one Ernie Nez, a scout during the Vietnam War who gets the nickname “Apache Delivery Service” due to how good he is about finding enemy combatants to radio in airstrikes on.  With  the war getting to him, along with the fact that his squad doesn’t realize he’s Navajo instead of Apache, Ernie decides to spend his week of leave in the jungle getting a head start on deserting the army.  This goes badly for Ernie as he winds up being captured by a strange man who tells him a story of Nazi gold hidden in the jungle and how he needs the Native American’s skills to help find it.

Kindt’s recent run of Dark Horse miniseries has felt more like the writer is throwing half-finished story ideas at the wall in the hopes of seeing what will stick.  It’s the only way to explain stuff like the aforementioned “Fear Case,” “Bang!” and “Crimson Flower,” which all had interesting ideas at their cores, but ultimately fizzled out in the execution.  “Apache Delivery Service” is different in that it ultimately feels like a fully developed story with a proper ending.  A better approximation might be comparing it to an unpretentious B-movie that’s focused in its storytelling and entertainment ambitions.

That’s to say the story has the right amount of character development, action, and twists for its length.  Kindt makes Ernie appropriately sympathetic as he tries to navigate this treacherous moral path and get out of Vietnam with his soul intact.  Jenkins, on the other hand, doesn’t deliver a depiction of the country for the ages, but his artwork feels appropriately ragged for the struggle being depicted on the page.  It all adds up to a solid story that, while not revolutionary in its storytelling, is solidly constructed enough to entertain, and to make it the best thing I’ve read from Kindt in quite a while.