First of all I would like to congratulate Matt Hawkins, Bryan Hill and the rest of the creative team for their recent announcement that “Postal” is now being developed as a television show! They sold the option to Legendary TV about a year ago and got picked up by Hulu TV. This book started off as a television show pitch that ended up as a comic book and now will fulfill its original goal of becoming a television show. The characters in this book have been developed so well thanks to the amazing writing by Bryan Hill and visually they could not have found a more talented individual than Isaac Goodhart. Early this month I had a fantastic interview with Bryan Hill where we cover all things “Postal”, I will link it at the bottom of this review. To be honest that conversation could have gone on for hours as I had a ton of questions not only about the book in general but a lot of questions about each individual character, if you have some time check it out. For now let’s focus on the issue at hand.

   In the last issue of Postal we saw that Laura was calling in a favor to try and cripple Abner’s organization. The first few pages of this issue depict in a very graphic way a strike team stealing about 1.3 million dollars in heroin, which Abner owes to several groups. Meanwhile, Laura is being checked by Eden’s doctor who is trying to reason with her about finding a strong successor, telling her that Mark does not strike fear in anyone like she does and that

“Every kingdom needs a line of succession. And your subjects don’t have faith in the prince”

Laura quickly disregards his comments, and states that she never plans to retire. That her current condition is dude to fatigue now weakness, but I think there is something more that we aren’t being told yet. Obviously Aber is pissed about losing all his drugs and he soon gets a call from Mark, who very calm and collectively lets him know how to retrieve his drugs. My favorite line of this book is in these panels as Abner yells at Mark “Who do you work for?” and Mark very calmly responds “The Post Office”. The next set of panels has a very interesting conversation between Rowan and Curtis, who is questioning him about his past especially the gruesome way he killed the young black kid dragging him behind his truck. Here not only to I find their conversation to be intense but Isaac Goodhart does such a great job with the facial expressions that it adds to that tension. By the end of the conversation, it seems that Curtis understands that Rowan is sorry for his actions, but that does not mean that he should be let off the hook at all. He decides to help the group fight Abner only because he feels that death would be too easyfor Rowan and I find that very interesting. The last few pages of this book are spent showing us the human side of Abner as he interacts with his daughter, although for me his disfigured nose always reminded me of what a true monster he really was on the inside, not sure if that even makes sense. This is where things get interesting as his hitman calls him and warns him about showing fear in his voice as they talk about the trap that is being set on him, going as far as telling him that he should be ashamed on himself. We then see him as well as Mark and his group prep for the impending war. Issue #16 can’t come soon enough

   Another solid issue by the Postal team. They have created so much tension throughout this book that you understand that when this is all set and done there are going to be major consequences for both sides win or lose. I particularly like that emergence of Mark as a leader. Even with his disabilities we see his ability to be so cold and calculated. I think that the town of Eden is about to learn what Mark is really capable of and it will install that missing fear. I feel that this event will even get Mark’s fathers attention as to make him return to Eden to recruit or claim Mark. This was a very good set up issue for the confrontation between Abner and Rowan, we’ll see who or what is left in the next issue.  

Publisher: Top Cow Productions Inc.

Creator: Matt Hawkins

Writer: Bryan Hill

Artwork: Isaac Goodhart

Colorist: K. Michael Russell