Punisher  

Vol 3  Issue 12    

"Go Frank Go"

Storytellers: Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon

              Here it is, the end of the Ennis & Dillon 12-part take on Frank Castle, the Punisher.  The team that brought us Preacher opted for a series where they could more or less cut loose with the violence and not worry about messages.

             In rapid order the series has been turned around into a trade paperback due out in... April, I believe. While I enjoyed the series I doubt I'll be picking it up as a trade. Those of you who skipped the series might consider it, though, since at $24.95 it's far less expensive than the $35.88 the original 12 issues would have run when new.

              So... tell you what: Since the trade edition is in the current Previews I'll talk about the series as a whole instead of this issue in particular. By looking at my other reviews you should get a sense of where our tastes coincide and so see if this one is for you.

              Ennis set out to write a 12-part violent cartoon, not to make any Statement about guns and violence. He treats Frank Castle as a man who is totally committed to his task of killing off the worst of organized crime and routing the rest, and who also realizes the task is an endless one. This is a man whose happiness and thoughts of a normal life were buried in the gangland crossfire that buried his family long ago. Up against the hardest, harshest and lowest of humanity, he has to outdo them and so win the shield their respect sometimes affords. Still, somewhere down inside, he holds his own sense of humanity. By the end of the series this is all very clear. I give Ennis credit for not getting sloppy about any of it, and for sparing us the attempts at emotionally-charged origin replays and maudlin sentimentality nearly any other writer would have poured out somewhere along the way.

               This series, as with anything, isn't for everyone. However, of all the Marvel characters of more than marginal renown the Punisher strikes me as a Best Fit choice for Ennis. The amoral, anti-hero status makes him someone who fits in with Ennis' view (at least the one I've seen in all of his writing to date) that nice people do finish last unless someone who at least has a mean streak in them takes up their cause. Noble, principled heroes don't fit in Ennis world, and whenever they do appear it's only so that Ennis can demonstrate their fatal flaws, moral contradictions or otherwise simply ridicule them. This would make Ennis a singularly poor choice to write a superhero series, as was demonstrated in the third or fourth issue when he tried his hand at Daredevil.

                Either whoever gave Ennis the run-down on DD didn't know what he was talking about or Ennis decided not to listen. Still, however distasteful that section was to anyone who knew better it was still roughly just half of an issue,  so less than 5% of the story in terms of pages, and obviously just a sidelight. I maintain that letting it into the story was a mistake a competent editor would have tossed out, but, well... that's why you don't let a graphic artist play story editor. It was little more than an annoying distraction, though, and Ennis otherwise populated the story with a cast of fresh faces.

                Is this an important series?  Not from my perspective, though it's probably going to be the reference-point for any future Punisher series, if that's important to you..

                Is this a ground-breaking series? A cautious No. Nothing really new was explored here, though slipping in towards and by the end we do get a glimpse of his buried humanity and some measure of what Castle sees his own mission as... or at least what he doesn't see it as.

                 Was this an enjoyable series? Keeping in mind the caveats above...  Yes.
              

                                                                             MJN

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