Punisher: Frank Castle MAX #75 review

I’m not sure if Marvel just doesn’t give a shit about The Punisher anymore, or if they are purposely trying to destroy the character’s legacy.  This MAX title is reseting under the helm of red-hot writer Jason Aaron and issue #75 seems like a mistake.

I have no inside information, but I figure the issue may lay with Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada. In the theatre of my mind, I imagine a phone-call that went something like this:

Joe Quesada: Yo, Vic…Goran-my-man, how’s it going?
Victor Gischler: Uh, great Joe. What can we help you with?
Joe Quesada: It’s Friday afternoon…deadline is on Monday. When are you going to send over Welcome to the Bayou part 5?
Victor Gischler: Uh, sir…it was only a 4-part arc.
Goran Parlov: Do you even read Punisher?
Joe Quesada: Hey – do you know how many books Marvel publishes each month? I can’t read them all.
Victor Gischler: …
Goran Parlov: …
Joe Quesada: Just messing with you guys, gotta go!

Five minutes later…Joe Quesada addresses a con-call with every contracted writer and artist that could be found.

Joe Quesada: I have a great opportunity for one lucky team. Who wants to put together a one-shot for one of our flagship titles?
<cricket cricket>
Joe Quesada: Punisher: Frank Castle MAX #75….huh? Huh? And it needs to be done by Monday.
<cricket cricket>
Joe Quesada: Fine! You guys want to be that way, you can ALL write it. Yeah, that’s it. I want eight pages from all five teams and now the deadline is Sunday morning – because I’m going to read them!

So, either through that scenario, or possibly by design, the final issue of the run includes five stories by five separate teams.  It can be difficult to put together a strong stand-alone issue due to the limited options for story build-up, so how much should be expected from only eight pages?

Story number one, Dolls, from the team of Tom Piccirilli, Laurence Campbell and Lee Loughridge tackles the never explored (sarcasm) softer side of Frank when it comes to family matters, especially children.  A lost young girl interrupts Frank just as he’s about to snipe some scumbag through a window in a nearby building.  Of course, Frank can’t resist helping reuinite the child with her father.  If it isn’t clear to the reader how this might affect The Punisher, having lost his family and that his daughter was about the same age as this girl, we are smacked in the head with a flashback frame from happier days.  Campbell and Loughridge capture the competing themes of a man who must stay in the shadows, even when in the open, and the shoppers just out for a stroll in the snow.  The highlight is a three-quarter page frame of a larger-than-life Punisher from the viewpoint of the little girl’s father as he looks up to thank the man who found his daughter.

.5 out of 1

Gateway brings us just what every comicbook fan wants and needs – another twist to The Punisher origin story.  The first two pages are actually pretty interesting.  We’re introduced to a “middle man” who, among other things, sets up hits for the mob.  He justifies that he is just a businessman that provides a service, but who never actually performs the illegal act.  The story faulters as the hit in question, traps the Castle family in the middle.  We’re shown how Frank is dealing with his loss, sitting at a kitchen table with place settings for the whole family.  Strangely, the Castle family has a hidden pegboard loaded with firearms in the hallway outside the kitchen.  Very convenient for a man looking for revenge.  The artwork by Das Pastoras is interesting, albeit not necessarily good.  The frames are drawn from differing and somewhat unconventional angles.  Gregg Hurwitz was on to something with this story.  The ”middle man” living a good life with a clear conscience is just the type of guy that needs punished.  Pull out the ’origin’ angle, expand the story and this could have been a great Punisher Annual.  It just doesn’t work here in any manner.

0 out of 1

The only ray of sunshine is this issue Ghoul by Duane Swierczynski and Tomm Coker.  As such, I don’t want to give much away, because it may be the only joy you get from reading this issue.  The plot is original and it is made for eight pages.  There isn’t any more to tell.  Stretching it out to a full issue would have ruined the effect.  The story is really told through the changing facial expressions of the antagonist.

1 out of 1

If you get a feeling of deja vu from Father’s Day, it’s because you have seen these panels before.  The pages take us through a slideshow of highlight scenes from the MAX series.  I’m still trying to figure out why I’m really being shown this when I flip to the last two pages only to see the Castle family in Central Park played out yet again.

0 out of 1

Ken Ashley and Rob Stull get the accolades for the second best art of the issue.  The colors are bold and contrasting flying us through a lot of action via thin slices of panels.  There isn’t much story to The Smallest Bit of This, but then again, what can I expect in such few pages?

.5 out of 1

If you’ve been keeping score, then you already know that Punish: Frank Castle MAX #75 is awarded:

2 out of 5

The God of Thunder in Hiding?!?

Before I get into the Annual, I want to say that the Thor monthly title is one of the best Marvel books currently being published.  If you are not reading it, I highly recommend that you do!  It has been constantly entertaining, with great stories and art to match.  Now with that in mind, I was highly looking forward to Thor Annual #1 coming out so that I could get some extra Thor action this month.  Now that that’s out of the way, what do I think about the Annual?  To put it nicely, it is a pale shadow of the current monthly title.

First up, I don’t try to think I could do a better job than the writer could. I might write reviews, but I don’t harbor any ideas that I could be a comic book writer.  I try to keep a fairly open mind when I’m reading books.  This is especially true of ones that I plan to review.  If I read a book and I find that I don’t care for it, I just set it aside for awhile.  I don’t just jump on the computer and trash it.  Then sometime in the future, I take the time to read it at least another time to see if something had biased my opinion of the work.  Maybe I just had a bad day.  Or, maybe I had something else on my mind and I only half read the story.  Or, maybe I was more in the mood to read a different type of story than the one I read.

To be honest, I always hope that it was me and not the creative team that caused the problems with the issue.  In this case, I read it three times.  I’m sorry to say that this was not a good issue.

This is a book with some good ideas, but with very poor execution.  The story itself has some serious pacing issues and seems at times as if there are some pages missing from the script.  It almost comes across as a several issue story arc that is jammed into the annual format.  The villains could be truly threatening for Thor, but you never feel that way.  They come off, especially Seth and Grog, as very two-dimensional.  You never feel that Thor was ever really in trouble.  It does nothing to positively effect the monthly book or even add to the history of Thor as a good stand alone story.

There are two other things that stick out in my mind that I didn’t care for.  One is Thor being referred to by Blake as a coward.  Thor has never been and will never be one.  Blake would never call him that either!  That is poor characterization.  Secondly, when you’re drawing characters, especially major ones, please pay attention.  Seth is shown at the beginning as missing his right hand (which is correct - it was cut-off by Odin).  Now take a look at page 36,38, and 40 and you will see Seth has both of his hands!  That is sloppy work folks!  It sums up my review of this sloppy book!

1 out of 5

Living outside of the mainstream DC continuity (if there is such a thing), Batman Confidential provides classic Bruce Wayne stories.  There is no battling for cowls, no Robin troubles, and no Final Crisis fallout – just good old fashioned Batman.  Beginning a brand-new story arc titled “The Bat and the Beast,” writer Peter Milligan sets up an interesting case for the Caped Crusader.

The Russian mafia has its organized crime eyes set on Gotham.  In their back pocket is a nasty creature whose mysterious back-story we get only glimpses of in this issue.  Peter Milligan delivers a good opening chapter.   I especially enjoyed the banter between Batman and Commissioner Gordon.

 Andy Clarke’s art is beautiful.  Terse, thin lines show forth a depth of detail from action sequences to still frames.  Down to the hair on knuckles, his attention to smaller nuances is spectacular.

Batman Confidential is a refreshing read for those of us just waiting for Bruce Wayne to return.  Until then, we can enjoy these tales of a simpler time in Gotham City, when Batman was Batman and Robins knew their place in the world.

 3.5 out of 5