The Last Delivery by Evan Dahm
Iron Circus Comics (June 2024)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Evan Dahm was born in 1987, growing up in Asheville, North Carolina. He’s been a resident of Brooklyn, New York since 2010, and has been creating and self-publishing comics online and in print since 2006. His prior work includes Vattu and Order of Tales, the Iron Circus graphic novels The Harrowing of Hell and Rice Boy, and The Island Book series for First Second. His newest book is The Last Delivery.
The Last Delivery focuses on a delivery person who has one box left on their run. They arrive at a sprawling, chaotic mansion, trying to deliver the package. However, there is a drunken party with entertainment at the mansion, so what happens next can only be described as an existential nightmare of surreal proportions. From drunken orgies resulting in violent decapitations and body mutilation to being violently attacked by wild animals for the entertainment of the partygoers, the delivery person is put though a hallucinatory ordeal.
What makes this graphic novel so compelling is the determination of the delivery person to complete their Sisyphean task. This tiny character is relentless in their pursuit of delivering their last package, sacrificing much over something so inconsequential. They are often dogged by characters who urge them to quit, to give up, to join the party, but they are bound and determined. Their stubbornness in the face of all evidence to the contrary is part of what drives the horror of the novel forward, as readers will surely be able to identify with the drudgery and insanity of trying to complete a basic task and having every insane thing that can possibly go wrong stand in the way.
The Last Delivery is a surreal torment for the protagonist, a small delivery person simply trying to finish their last job. Their tribulations are violent, scary, even nihilistic, so readers will thrill as they doggedly attempt to complete their final delivery. Echoes of Kafka and Nietzsche abound in this graphic novel, an existential tour de force that should be on the shelf of every horror reader.
