Re: Punisher MAX Series Discussion *Spoilers*
My newest review...
The Punisher
By Moonmaster
Consistency is a very hard thing to achieve nowadays, especially in the comic book industry. Modern comics have been hampered by constant delays and hit or miss writing. During a long tenure on a series, even the best of writers can falter. Yes, consistency is very hard to achieve, but Garth Ennis makes it look easy.
The Irish-born writer got his start writing his ultra-violent magnum opus about religion in America, "Preacher". "Preacher" was a colossal success, and Ennis has been working steadily ever since. He's developed a distinct style, marked by extreme violence, gritty realism, and dark-as-dark-can-get humor. Essentially, Ennis was born to write The Punisher. He got his first crack at the character along side his "Preacher" partner, artist Steve Dillon. But it wasn't until "Marvel Knights Punisher" was cancelled and the series was transitioned to Marvel's mature readers imprint (Marvel MAX) that things really took off.
For those of you who don't know, The Punisher is Frank Castle: A Vietnam vet whose family was gunned down in a mob shoot out in 1976. Ever since then, Castle has waged a one-man war against crime, becoming one of the most feared and hated men on the planet. I must admit, I had very little interest in The Punisher before I began reading Ennis's work. I thought of The Punisher as nothing more than a pointless, one-dimensional anti-hero from an archaic age of gun toting psychopaths and gratuitous violence. "Punisher MAX" changed all that.
The series is good. Very good. Each tightly written arc is a hard boiled tale of crime and violence, populated by an array of some of the most original characters you're going to see anywhere.
Ennis has a particular talent for writing villains, villains that you just love to hate. He goes all out to show you exactly how justified The Punisher is in getting rid of these people. There's Nicky Cavella, a twisted mobster who killed his parents as a child and is willing to go to unspeakable extremes to destroy Frank Castle. There are the human traffickers from Eastern Europe who sell teenage girls into prostitution and murder children. There's Barracuda, a seven-foot-tall monster of a man with an affinity for offensive orthodontia and watching people be eaten alive by tiger sharks. They're all awful people who receive equally awful "punishments".
But of all the cast members, none is more complexly written than the star of the series. Garth Ennis took a simple, revenge-driven killer into something much, much more fascinating. "Punisher MAX" was preceded by a mini-series called "Born", billed as "the real origin of The Punisher". This mini-series focused on the one factor that so many writers seem to have overlooked. Frank Castle is a Vietnam vet.
Ennis has shown his love for war stories, especially those set in Vietnam, many times before. "Born" brings Ennis's talent for writing real, hard-edged war stories to Captain Frank Castle's last days at war. And in this story, we find out the true nature of the man that would be The Punisher, the real drive behind his war. In the jungles of Vietnam, Frank Castle discovered that he enjoyed killing, and that he was very good at it. By the time the war was nearing it's end, he found himself dreading the return to normalcy and peace. For these reasons, he made a deal. He made a deal with something dark, and much bigger than he or any man. He would be able to continue to do what he does best, but he would have to pay a price. That price was his family. The Punisher is not who he is by necessity, but by choice.
This kind of brilliant writing and characterization is only hampered by the art, which has always been a sore point when it comes to the series. The artists have generally ranged from decent, to near-intolerable. What makes the art even more painful are the brilliant covers by Tim Bradstreet, which sport some of the most magnificently photo-realistic detail that you're ever bound to see. One can only hope that the rumors of Bradstreet doing an entire story in the future turn out to be true.
Despite the ugly visuals, "Punisher MAX" is one of the most consistently excellent books being published today, and arguably the best thing Marvel Comics is publishing as of now. The current arc, "Man of Stone" is wrapping up right now and Volume 6: "Barracuda" was released earlier this month. This book is addictive, and if you start reading you won't be able to stop. But be warned: This book is rough with a capital R. You'd be hard pressed to find a more gruesomely violent or expletive-filled book (And if you did, it would probably be something else written by Garth Ennis). It's a great read though, and if you can stomach it, it's well worth picking up.
