In this week’s installment of “A Beautiful Gory Display”, Beanworld Returns, the Punisher gets turned into a Frankenstein, and bad Batman comics make EJ sad.
Punisher and Punisher: MAX (Marvel) – In general, I’m not really a fan of the Punisher. Even
when I was young and dumb and his books were the most popular around (the late 80’s were a weird time…), I just couldn’t stand the guy. I mean, the idea that a damaged Vietnam vet spends his life seeking revenge for the murder of his family is a decent enough premise. Of course, it’s been 30 years now. As somebody said in an issue a while back. “The guys who killed your family are dead. The guys who they worked for are dead, and they guys that those guys who worked for are dead, too.” Frankly, the character lends himself to unpleasant revenge fantasies, which isn’t that interesting to me.
when I was young and dumb and his books were the most popular around (the late 80’s were a weird time…), I just couldn’t stand the guy. I mean, the idea that a damaged Vietnam vet spends his life seeking revenge for the murder of his family is a decent enough premise. Of course, it’s been 30 years now. As somebody said in an issue a while back. “The guys who killed your family are dead. The guys who they worked for are dead, and they guys that those guys who worked for are dead, too.” Frankly, the character lends himself to unpleasant revenge fantasies, which isn’t that interesting to me.But when Garth Ennis brought Frank Castle back after a break, ten years or so back, he injected the Punisher’s world with a dark humor that made the whole thing more palatable. Suddenly he wasn’t just a gun-toting vigilante – he was a gun-toting vigilante who punched out polar bears or suffocated an adversary with a fat guy. Any attempt to make him sympathetic was thrown out the window – he was a bad person who fought even worse people. That’s an approach to the Punisher that works for me.
