Marvel Universe vs. The Punisher

[Iambaytor]

So here's the story, for those wondering, this is NOT another Marvel Zombies story (though Marvel Zombies 6 is not inevitable but frankly required given the shitty final issue they gave to the otherwise brilliant part 5). This is I Am Legend with The Punisher. Basically the world is all fucked up because of a pathogen that was released and it's all Frank's fault. Of course thanks to him being at ground zero of the pathogen he's immune, so now he goes around killing all the heroes (who are not dead, just wild). So it's like that awesome issue of What If where Wolverine became king of the vampires and The Punisher was the only human left on Earth killing them all. Between this and inexplicably good FrankeCastle I'm liking how Marvel is De-Ennising the Punisher.

[The NZA]

sure feels like a marvel zombie-ish tale, though, gotta admit.

 

i agree, if Frank's gonna be reintroduced to the Marvel U, this is a cool way of doing it, fun issue. I'm not reading Frankencastle passed the bits in Dark Wolverine (kinda dont care about him or Daken...) but i hope this goes down as well as Punisher: The End did.

[Iambaytor]

It's got the infection angle covered but this is straight up I Am Legend/The Omega Man and I support that wholeheartedly. You should read Frankencastle as well, in fact pick up the current Punisher from issue 1 and read through it, it's not last Ghost Rider series good, but it's still a lot better than most of the other stuff out there and it ignores the Marvel Knights and MAX versions which is the only way the Punisher will ever be able to strive in the Marvel Universe. Not to mention it's bloody as hell and actually finds a valid use for Michael Morbius and The Bloodstone.

[The NZA]

yeah, you're absolutely right: this feels like Frank's I Am Legend book. good call.

 

i read one issue into FrankenCastle and lost interest with the subterranean monsters...did it pick up right after that, or wha?

[Iambaytor]

Not right after, but it went somewhere interesting and it's only getting better (Frank now has the means to be a real boy again so his return to true humanity is inevitable)

[Jables]

Wait, remind me of when Ennis Punisher stopped being cool?

[The NZA]

depends...the last year of his Marvel Knights run was phoned-in/very not good; i was a fan of most of his MAX work, last arc was a solid closing for me. baytor & i have differed on the specifics, id argue it was a fine series but i can agree there's use for Frank in regular Marvel U stuff...but right now, my best examples of that are things like Shadowland and this book...just caught up on issue # 3...its just a great use of this character, you can't really tell this kinda story with anyone else in the marvel U.

[Jables]

Idunno, I just forever <3 the Welcome Back Frank Arc, and the first six issues of Knights. I agree with you on the rest of Knights, and having read most of Max wasn't completely impressed, but did these lukewarm submissions serve to run WBF completely into the ground? I'll take a look @ the new series at Baytor's behest, but have trouble believing Frankencastle would be appealing to anyone who's dial isn't set to the unique frequency Baytor tends to operate on.

[The NZA]

i tend to agree with you on frankencastle (ive only read his interactions with daken, didnt light my world on fire), and no, the shitty last few arcs of MK don't take from WBF, but they do take from the latter half of the series.

as for MAX - what's not to like about Man of Stone, Mother Russia etc - i loved that shit, and Ennis was on his War Story tip (one of his best remaining angles as a writer, my opinion) in the last arc, Valley Forge, Valley Forge. Slavers, Up is down & black is white etc weren't bad, i only shit on Kitchen Irish, personally. It gets fuzzy around Widowmaker and the Barracuda stuff, which i was recall enjoying more than ryan, but it was revisited way, way more than a dimestore blaxploitation character should've been. im not sure why i compulsively read it all, i blame my love of Ennis' heyday.

this series, though, is like a marvel elseworlds, so you don't have to like much else to dig it - baytor nailed it being I am Legend of Frank books, we'll see how it ends though.

[Visitant]

I'm on the fence of I am absolutely going to love this or I am absolutely going to want to wipe my ass with this. I will state here that I haven't had much exposure to the Punisher, sans Civil War since the 90s. I'll assume that by the way some of you are talking that he actually got a bit of a personality over the years.

[The NZA]

...yes and no?

 

Ennis kinda embraced the two-dimensional driven sociopath thing, and really made him work more as a stoic badass with cool/interesting plot events around him (did this with Fury to an extent, to, but the latter's got more a personal philosophy that's being fleshed out by guys like Hickman these days).

I Am Legend is a good comparison here, i think, as Frank's mostly talking through a journal or inner monologue and showcasing just how bad shit got, how it got there, and how he's surviving. thing is, stories like these, i tend to not wanna know more about him than what's there...the closest i can think of where i felt i got some character from Frank was oddly the Ultimate Team-Up years back that (i think) introduced him in a story with spidey & daredevil.

 

dont wanna speak for him, i wanna say ryan felt about the same - there was character-building in Born (Frank's origin book by Ennis) but it was just there to reinforce the same 2D sociopath i mentioned, i thought. worked, though.

[Jables]

Are we all at least still agreeing that WBF was the best thing to happen to Castle in the last decade or so?

[Iambaytor]

It was, but by the end of Ennis' run on Max, and especially in all the side-books he wrote, 2D Frank had overstayed his welcome (Born was the stupidest bullshit I've ever read and all 3 instances of Barracuda absolutely infuriate me), but what's worse is when Ennis left and everybody tried to emulate him and we got shit like Punisher War Journal and Frank Castle: The Punisher. The guy who's writing Punisher Max nailed it perfectly (He's also the guy who managed to launch a successful franchise from Ennis' Ghost Rider book) but the people at Marvel have wisely moved the non-MAX Frank from the Ennis version to a version of the character that's actually like-able. For what it's worth Frankencastle starts slow but the lead-up to it was good and the 12 issues that followed were good, the Dakken shit was lukewarm but that's because Dakken is the new Sabretooth (the Wolverine villain that nobody likes, but always manages to show up and be annoying). Anyway, Frankencastle is almost over and this book is great. (For what it's worth, I thought the Punisher War Zone mini was a welcome return to a version of Ennis' Frank that I like)

[The NZA]

he guy who's writing Punisher Max nailed it perfectly (He's also the guy who managed to launch a successful franchise from Ennis' Ghost Rider book) but the people at Marvel have wisely moved the non-MAX Frank from the Ennis version to a version of the character that's actually like-able.

 

this i can get behind, i dropped punisher books in the last few non-ennis Max arcs (screw the haters, valley forge was fun), but the current arc with Dillon's enjoyable,

even if it's gotta be some pocket universe where the kingpin and bullseye are brand new...?

 

 

 

Born was the stupidest bullshit I've ever read

 

mad as a fucking hatter.

Born was a good read, you're just wearing your conductor hat on the hyperbole express right now. concept of frank as being unhinged before the mob incident was overdue, and the execution wasnt bad either, even if it lacked Fury beating generals with his belt.