Welcome to Postal Notes, a critical read through of the series “Postal.” This series of columns will be done in a mixture of essays and observations of various lengths. I will be using the seven core trade paperbacks that collect issues #1-25 and the various one shots for a total of 27 issues overall. In this column we’ll be working through the fourth trade, issues #13-16. The first four issues of “Postal” are on Comixology Unlimited.
“A Town Full of Fugitives Trying on the Skin of Living New Lives.”
In the fourth volume of “Postal,” collecting issues #13-16, the series goes down a different path. Bryan Hill shifts the spotlight away from Mark and uses these four issues to tell a different kind of story about another resident of Eden. The series of one shots in the second volume highlighted other residents but Mark was always the focus. The story for these four issues rests on the shoulders of Rowan with Mark shifts to a supporting role as they deal with threats from the Aryan Brotherhood. Rowan’s story isn’t like previous ones that were presented as something of a puzzle to solve. Rowan’s puzzle is solved very quickly, the Aryan Brotherhood want his head for leaving them. On an emotional level it asks completely different questions about what moving on from a history of racist action looks like, redemption (if such a thing exists), and if Rowan even wants some kind of absolution.
Published in the backmatter of this collection is a Facebook post by Bryan Hill discussing this arc.
“Social issues in comic books can be a mixed bag. Often they’re presented in a myopic way, usually just preaching to the choir of people on one side of the issue. The work is well intentioned, but usually shallow. The naming of monsters. The scorning of monsters. The pride of being righteous.
That’s easy. I’ve never been interested in what’s easy.
[This arc] features a member of the fictional town of Eden, a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood, the cold patience of karma and the price of redemption.It’s NOT a diatribe or an oversimplification of cultural conflict in America. It’s an examination of the roots of anger and fear that sprout into these movements. AS we see the rise of populism and nativism in the world around us, my hope is it’s a unflinching exploration of these issues, framed in a DAMN COOL CRIME STORY about a town full of fugitives trying on the skin of living new lives.”
Overall, Hill and the creative team succeed in the mandate his post puts forward.
The types of stories Hill alludes to in his post reminds me of the latest Best Picture winner, Green Book, a movie, that besides confirming Mahershala Ali’s status as one of our great working actors, is a formulaic and shallow film lacking depth and nuance, powered by sentimentality derived from Speilbergian visual language. The arc Hill puts Rowan on hits similar beats to that kind of story, but changes in presentation and setting alter their fundamental areas of interest. The biggest change Hill provides is an attempt to dramatize a “why” to it all. Why did Rowan take up white supremacists views in the first place and eventually disavow them. Racism tends to be treated as a naturally occurring phenomena, it is not. It is an ideology that is supported by various rhetorical devices and “Postal” unpacks them a little bit through Rowan.
Rowan’s origin is shown through a combination of a flashback set in 90’s Texas and a mantra like internal monologue. As Rowan drifts back in thought, he remembers how his carmate gives him racialized reasoning for his declining economic security from a lack of jobs, and the sense of cultural domination. This argument echoes David Savran’s historical-psycho analysis for what he defines as white male reflexive sadomasochism. Rowan is driven by a sense of helplessness that is quickly followed by destructive, aggressive, action that disavow that feeling of helplessness. In the case of Rowan this aggressive disavowal is the murder of a teenaged black man, by dragging him behind his truck until dead. That person’s only crime being his skin color, an interracial relationship, and the lack of Rowan’s anxieties. (Somehow he was only charged with manslaughter, receiving 5 years and a fine for that.)
Continued belowThe creative team do not represent the murder, it is represented only by its mantra like repetition of his inner thoughts as Rowan awaits the Brotherhood in the books first action sequence. What they focus on is what led him to make that choice.
The creative team follow a similar route in dramatizing his disavowal of the Brotherhood and their views by only partially representing it. The act itself, the letters that boy’s Mother writes him letting him know she forgave him is left off the page, it is mentioned by Rowan to Mayor Schiffron once. The cumulative effect of that, however, is graphically represented on the page as he pummels Abner’s face into the shower wall, providing him with free plastic surgery. Within this violent shower sequence is among the most powerful single images in this series as Rowan answers Abner’s gurgled, bewildered, “why?”
“Because she forgave me.” He replies in a tight close up.
The cast of “Postal” isn’t the most emotive type, to some degree everyone is wearing as mask or “new skin.” As such Goodhart’s realistic with a slight cartoon style has become fairly developed through 16 issue at showing the reader something deeper when the time is right. Rowan’s declaration lacks such pretense, it is raw emotion right in the middle of the page staring the reader in the face.
In an interesting note, colorist K. Michael Russel shades Rowan in a purple tone, which is interesting given the history of depicting Africans and people of African descent in visual media and the context of the scene. The choice of color also fits within the analogous palette created in the panel.
Bryan Hill, Isaac Goodhart, and K. Michael Russel, come together to create a complex character who has self-awareness and humanity that allows for a nuanced exploration of a complex and nasty issue. Rowan is never forgetting what he did, he isn’t some cuddly teddy bear either and continues to act like a loner hard ass. There is a note of triumph as Rowan and Curtis’ hands meet in the final pages, that note feels earned as the creative team have done their job in showing how he is a different person compared to before. It doesn’t erase or change what he did, that is a constant hanging over everything, but it shows the promise of Eden, WY as well as the difficulty of donning the “skin of living new lives.”
K. Michael Russel on Colors
The final major staffing change for “Postal” occurred with the departure of Betsy Gonia as colorist and being replaced by K. Michael Russel. Aesthetically Russel’s approach to coloring is more complementary too Goodhart’s line art. The palette Russell constructs is plainly bolder and helps give “Postal” something of an Archie Comics look. Gonia’s palette was muted and tried to create a sense of dimensionality through color blends that didn’t quite come together for me.
Russel runs a YouTube channel that features various tutorials and time lapse videos, and acts as advertisement for his packages of digital coloring education courses. For now though enjoy this interview he did in an old episode of Strip Panel Naked with Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou discussing his process.
Moments of violence are not uncommon in “Postal,” but action sequences are. This volume is bookended by them, Rowan’s showdown with the Brotherhood and the return bout with Carpenter, highlighting how presentation shapes two sequences that are effectively the same. Unlike the Barn Brawl from volume 2 issue #7, was a collage of violence and bodily punishment, lacking in clean reading lines the page was used as a macro panel to send a simple message: pain. In the fourth volume of “Postal” Hill, Goodhart, and Russel, show action as a tactical exercise or in the words of Batman “operating table.”
Rowan’s initial showdown with the Aryan Brotherhood has a brawling sensibility, as the large former member of the Brotherhood maneuvers around his attackers before charging them like a bull. With the home invasion setting, you could say he channels his inner John Wick – a statement that is ever the more fitting given events of Chapter 3. These elements create a spectacular 5 page sequence that highlights what separates these sequences from the pages of Barn Brawl: clear perspective. While the Brotherhoods initial entry into the house is surreally composed by Goodhart, by transforming the walls into panels for a cut out perspective, these pages are not a collage of violence with each page featuring some combination of 5 panels. Restraining the panel count constrains the action to a simple and effective rhythm of action-reaction. IN one panel two men enter the kitchen, Rowan is hiding behind the door. In the next panel Roawn is shown reacting by kicking the door close. And finally in the last panel introducing his Desert Eagle to a man’s face.
Continued belowThis basic action is accentuated by the coloring of K. Michael Russel as well as some addition work in panel by Goodhart. The firing of a gun is enhanced through the use of copious action lines that dynamically emanate from the gun, it’s a surprising and effective manga-esque choice. Russel further intensifies the sequence by stripping it down to two primary colors: a cold blue and warm orange. The blue is cold and dark but isn’t lost in the black ink of the run down house and creates an idea of stillness. The warm orange is a gradient that is used in the backgrounds whenever a gun goes off. These chromatic choices help to highlight and juxtapose the violence against the ramshackle manner everything takes place in.
The final showdown with the Brotherhood, personified in Carpenter, is the inverse of the previous sequence in nearly every regard. With Mark’s planning this is less a Wickian display of indestructibility through action-insanity and more a cold game of chess. Action in this sequence is more procedural and process oriented as pages are dedicated to just showing Carpenter break doors and stalk through the abandoned post office. Rowan and Curtis are mirrored when they are both stabbed by Carpenter. In a break from the action-reaction rhythm, Goodhart presents a simultaneous perspective of Carpenter’s knee being eviscerated by buckshot. With its emphasis on process and explaining the battle plan ahead of time, Goodhart’s presentation turns it into an exercise in planning and dread. This allows Carpenter to be continuously figured as a Myers like Shape, causing legitimate terror as he lunges at Maggie with his bloody knife.
By emphasizing a process, Goodhart continues and twists the action-reaction rhythm he’d previously established. The page where Carpenter finally meets our heroes is this sequence in a nutshell. Their meeting first is a reaction to the previous panel from the last page, Carpenter busting down a door and being flooded by light. The first panel unites everyone in a clever meeting of the gaze through the reflection of Carpenter’s helmet, it draws the readers eye to the center of the panel (in a dizzying meeting of gaze) that you don’t immediately notice Mark’s command to fire in the upper left corner. Combing perspective in this way allows for a more impactful 180 degree cut to a side perspective in the following panel as everyone pumps him full of lead. The page ends with the physical reaction to that hail of bullets, Carpenter flying backwards.
One of the elements that gives this sequence a more thrilling aspect is how quiet it is, both visually and orally. By giving us the battle plan ahead of time and not hiding anything visually the sequence has a suspenseful quality as the reader follows along and watches the plan succeed or fail. Over the course of the showdown with Carpenter there are 12 instances of lettering by Troy Peteri, 10 spoken word balloons and 2 echoes of Mayor Schiffrons advice. The first sequence had just over twice as many instances. The lack of spoken word is complemented by a lack in onomatapia. For all the gunfire there isn’t much muzzle flash or action lines as was the case in the previous sequence. That relative silence is why the phrase “Olly, Olly, oxen free,” a catchphrase for children’s games, can read as so freighting. All of this reduces the visual noise and leaves clean and clear action on the pages and panels. For all the violence in this sequence the lack of a visceral element creates a detached cold perspective.
This pair of action sequences fit together like a yin-yang symbol as each sequence takes the same base scenario and creates two wildly different, yet similar, sequences out of them. It’s a nice example of how to do good action and fight sequencing in comics that isn’t just bombastic imagery but has flow within the medium.
