THE PUNISHER: WELCOME BACK, FRANK

A little of the old ultra-violence...!

Writer: Garth Ennis
Penciler: Steve Dillon
Inker: Jummy Palmiotti
Marvel Comics
$19.95

Reviewed by Matt Singer

Comics should approach things more like movies. At the top of these PUNISHER issues I want to see "From The Creators of PREACHER" in big bold letters; but, alas, no such luck. Of course, you'd never see such a credit on a comic, since PUNISHER is a Marvel book, and PREACHER comes from DC, but maybe in a more perfect, marketing savvy world, we would.

Anyway, this is the same team from PREACHER, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, and in WELCOME BACK, FRANK they turn their violent, darkly comic, well, comics, to that great, nutsy vigilante, The Punisher. This supposedly back-to-basics approach eliminates the avenging angel stuff from an earlier Marvel Knights story and sets him loose on a New York City full of mobsters, corrupt officials, and a squad of copycat vigilantes.

First off, kudos to this creative team, from Ennis and Dillon right down to the colorist, and even cover artist Tim Bradstreet for doing the full twelve issues without any breaks or fill-in artists. As fill-in artists seem more and more prevalent, it is exceedingly refreshing to get a story that is uninterrupted by creative changes.

Now, down to the material itself. I've never really cared one way or the other for The Punisher. I have probably four or five Punisher comics lying around somewhere from roughly ten years of comic book reading. So really, I had little invested in this stuff before WELCOME BACK, FRANK. That said, it's hard to resist the charm of this book. This Punisher, a remorseless killer, is nonetheless made likeable, thanks to the hilariously twisted writing of Garth Ennis. Under his perverse eye, Castle's become a bit like the killer in Scream - an incredibly driven psycho who is really good at killing people in weird circumstances. (Here I equate squishing someone in a moving garage door with squishing someone underneath an incredibly fat man, just for example.) There are plenty more similarities to be found if you read closely.

While the majority of the book is The Punisher offing sleazy guys in exciting ways, there are a couple of well-done subplots to boot. Orbiting around our combat shocked lunatic hero, we've got "The Punisher Task Force" --two loser cops who have the impossible task of capturing him. Then there are the Punisher's copycats: The Holy, Mr. Payback, and Elite; three loser killers who have the impossible task of finding The Punisher and trying to get him to work for them. Ennis manages to find highly satisfying conclusions to all of these threads. Throughout, Ennis does manage to get a little bit of "heavier" stuff in amongst the carnage even if he promises there won't be any of it in his text introduction to the first issue. In fact, things get rather complex, and it seems hard to pinpoint just why the Punisher is doing all this other than for reasons of extreme mental imbalance. In WBF, Ennis writes Frank as a man not seeking revenge for his dead family, but more just a complete psycho.

I can't quite say this is a must read. Behind the cool pictures and ultra-violence, it's a pretty empty read. Plus, the Tim Bradstreet covers which looked incredible for the first half of the series got less and less coherent as time went on. By the twelfth issue I was ready for a new cover artist, or at least a Bradstreet cover that wasn't just The Punisher staring straight ahead. Mix it up a little, Tim!

Otherwise, this is, as Garth calls it "all in good fun (except the bits that aren't)."

Well said.

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