Road To Perdition 2 - On The Road!

Road to Perdition began as the last of the Pardox Mystery line but it's wild success both on the newsstand and in theaters meant a sequel was almost essential. Not really a sequel really, but a continuity implant. The story of the "Angel of Death", a mob enforcer who loses his family to mob violence leaving only himself and his son on a desperate journey seeking safety was a long and winding one and Max Allan Collins wrote the story with room to expand from the inside. In Road to Perdition 2 - On the Road we are treated to some of the harrowing adventures the father and son team encountered. 

"Oasis" us drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez with inks by Joe Rubinstein. The art lacks a bit of the edge of the original, but no one can argue that Garcia-Lopez can't tell a rousing story. The Sullivans find refuge of sorts on a remote farm when the boy comes down with Scarlet Fever. They find haven because the wife of the farmer was a friend of Sullivan's wife and a former romantic interest of his. Two bounty hunters called "The Two Jacks" get on the trail and things come to a head as one might expect. The plight of farms during the depression is highlighted to some extent by this yarn. 

"Sanctuary" sees Steve Lieber take on the art chores. We learn that Mike Sullivan has a history with one of the two bounty hunters still seeking him which complicates things when a brutal killer escapes from a chain gang looking for vengeance against the Two Jacks for killing his brothers. We meet Queenie, a singular woman who gambles and once owned her own gambling house in NYC. She is an associate of the Two Jacks. This story has a little bit of a flashback, and we meet an exceedingly famous criminal from the Old West who gives a young Mike Sullivan a hand when he needed it most. (Hint: Paul Newman who played the role of Mike's boss Looney in the movie version of Road to Perdition also played this western outlaw as well.)

In "Detour" Garcia-Lopez returns with inks by Lieber. Our stories come together when the object of Mike Sullivan's quest for vengeance escapes his keepers from the Capone outfit and seeks his own revenge on the woman who he knows helped the Sullivans in the first installment. The Two Jacks and Queen return as well in a story set largely in Kansas City, itself a notoriously wide-open mob town in the Depression Era. The Angel of Death must make some different choices in this finale of the story about saving a life and not taking one, an event which brings the father and son even closer together. 

(Jose Garcia-Lopez Pencils)

These stories are not as compelling as the original. I'm an unabashed Jose Garcia-Lopez fan but his work is too idealistic for a story of such gritty criminal events. It's handsome and he does a fantastic job, but the atmosphere is not there. Lieber gets closer but his storytelling is not quite a sharp. It's always difficult to make stories which are continuity implants have much impact since we know that our players will survive to fight another day. It might add context, but it cannot have the emotional involvement of the original saga. That said, I recommend this one for anyone who wants to savor these classic Collins stories of a crime in an era which has become part of the American mythology. 

There is a third volume of the series titled Return to Perdition, which I only became aware of when I prepared these reviews. It was done in 2012 for Vertigo Comics and Terry Beatty joins Collins for this sequel which moves the story ahead a generation into the early 1970's. Maybe I'll get around to getting a copy and reading it someday. 

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