Apache Delivery Service by Matt Kindt, Tyler Jenkins & Hilary Jenkins

There's a fine line between laconic and nonexistent; at times, Apache Delivery Service runs right along that line. Some readers might find it falls off to the far side. Writer Matt Kindt definitely lets the pictures do the storytelling most of the time here: on the positive side, that can be difficult for a writer, and he lets this story be visually compelling, quick-moving, and atmospheric by that choice.

Two men - we learn the name of the central one after following him for two issues, and the other's last name is said once, much later - are in Vietnam, in 1967. Ernie Nez is an Army tracker who calls in airstrikes, spending long stretches alone in the jungle to find enemy locations. His comrades call him the "Apache Delivery Service," but don't seem to know him at all as a person: he's actually Navajo, has no specific experience in tracking, hates killing and hasn't done any personally, and spends as much time as possible in the jungle to avoid his fellow soldiers.

At the beginning of this four-issue series, he comes back to base camp after one mission, talks to a few soldiers and superiors, and leaves again almost immediately: he's just trying to get through his tour, and the end is in sight.

But out in the jungle, he's captured by a man named Sobrat, a treasure hunter chasing a story of an Imperial Japanese admiral who hid "Nazi gold" in a cave somewhere in the area, at the end of WWII, only to be killed by the locals immediately afterward. (As with all such stories in fiction, we're not meant to wonder how anyone ever heard this story if everyone involved died immediately.) Sobrat, a Frenchman with a dark past, is somewhat older and does not seem to be under military orders.

He's been chasing this legend for a while, and now is close - but he says he needs a local guide, and apparently the only non-native who knows the area well is Ernie. So he basically kidnapped Ernie, tells him the story, and enlists him as a partner.

Ernie "agrees." We assume he doesn't trust Sobrat, and soon learns more reasons not to trust him. But, still: massive treasure, a chance to be rich beyond your wildest dreams, why not?

The two have a run-in with a local village, which we think protects the hidden treasure. There's talk of a curse. They escape. They find the gold. Sobrat is not as fond of sharing as Ernie would hope. Ernie is not as enthusiastic as Sobrat would like. The locals are lurking outside the caves, ready to kill them both as they walk out, burdened by heavy gold bars. It all ends.

Apache's description calls it a horror story, and Tyler Jenkins's scratchy, organic art, under Hilary Jenkins's moody, night-toned colors do set that mood. I may have more experience with more...expressive horror, in the Lovecraft tradition, full of descriptions and detail, so Apache read to me more as an adventure story - dark, clearly, but still well within the bounds of a normal Vietnam story. And, as I said up top, I would have preferred a bit more detail - Kindt and the Jenkinses use a lot of flashbacks to Ernie's pre-war life as visual parallel to this adventure, but I found that tended to undercut the supposed-horror aspects of the story. (If an experience reminds you of deer hunting and a car accident, it's pretty close to your normal life, isn't it?)

However you genre-type it, Apache Delivery Service is a dark, moody, fast-moving story of two men chasing gold in the middle of a war, told crisply with compelling art and a story that has no extraneous moments or pieces.