Punisher #1

Reviewed: The Punisher Vol. 3 #1 by Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon and Jimmy Palmiotti

The Plot: Frank Castle returns to his roots and kills a whole lot of people.

Garth Ennis asks in the text page that ends this issue to have this comic book considered on its own terms. He offers up a murderous, gun-toting Punisher that is not looking for redemption, merely vengeance. It is, I suppose, a return to form. I imagine some people will even enjoy it.

I liked the Punisher as a character the first time I ever encountered him, fresh off the racks in his first appearance decades ago in Amazing Spider-Man. That comic was my favourite title then, and Ross Andru was my favourite penciler. Times, of course, have changed.

Ross Andru is dead. I still have fond memories of his work, especially on Spider-Man, but I have since matured and found other pencilers whose work touches me in ways Andru, a great craftsman, never did.

The Punisher has been through a lot, going from occasional villain to anti-hero to, I guess, a hero (although I think the term protagonist is more accurate). Then he died and went to heaven and came back and I don't know how anyone who really loves this character must have felt over the past ten years or so. It must have been quite a ride.

It's a ride I wasn't on, because I simply don't accept the Punisher as anything other than a villain. Sure, he kills other bad guys, but he isn't looking to help or protect anyone. He simply wants to kill, early and often. When contrasted with Spider-Man's idealistic heroism, the Punisher's appearances were something to look forward to.

Marvel lost me with the Punisher when they gave him his own title years ago. I guess it was successful, as it spawned many spin-offs, but I cannot relate to the type of mentality that would see Frank Castle's actions as anything other than tragic and horrific. Is anyone comforted by the thought that there really could be someone out there doing these things?

The recent Marvel Knight's relaunch, which saw Frank as some sort of otherworldly character now looking for redemption, struck me as a really, really bad idea, and I never picked it up. This new first issue made me curious based almost solely on the reputation and talent of Garth Ennis, whose work I have enjoyed in the past.

The story, for what it is, is okay. There's really not a lot of depth to the plot, the Punisher just goes back to kickin' ass and takin' names. We see enough of Frank's private life to see how empty it is, and his disregard of that fact shows what a hollow, haunted, sad little murderer he is. Sure, it would be awful to have experienced the death of his family in the manner Frank Castle did. But anyone who would react to that event by doing what Frank then goes on to do is not someone I want to know, or even someone I really want to read about.

If Ennis plans to examine any of the ethical issues surrounding the Punisher's activities, it is not apparent in the story, and it certainly is denied vehemently in the text piece. I don't ask for a whole lot from comic books, I'm willing to take them for what they intend to be for the most part. But now having seen what this comic book intends to be, a sly, well-drawn celebration of the murder of distasteful, deserving-of-death criminals, I've seen enough.

I know there's violence in the world. I am very fond of the idea of justice, and I can understand how it might sometimes require breaking the law to get it.

But that doesn't mean it should be fun, and it doesn't logically follow that it would be fun to read about. For me, it wasn't.

John Woo, a director of elegantly violent movies, is invoked more than once in this book, and if that is the effect Ennis and company are shooting for, they've forgotten something.

My favourite Woo movie was Face/Off, with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage. I think it was a brilliant action movie, and I enjoyed it immensely.

The reason the movie was so enjoyable, though, was because Woo took the time to show us Travolta's family, and what he could lose if he wasn't able to defeat Cage. There were sympathetic characters in the film, giving it a humanity amidst all the chaos.

There wasn't one sympathetic character in Punisher #1, just the mindless chaos and violence without the humanity. If Frank Castle's demented, angry, bitter hatred, which has completely consumed him, is anybody's idea of a hero, or even a protagonist, they're welcome to him. I'll pass.