Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Marco Checchetto
The Punisher is a very simple character. He kills bad people. That's it. He's not trying to affect social change, he's not trying to win or gain anything, he's not even really trying to save lives. He wants bad people to die and he kills them, over and over again. He's like a shark, a single-minded killing machine. And there's nothing wrong with that. The best Punisher plots are almost like heist movies: an ingenious plan to kill a whole mess of bad people in the most badass way imaginable.
As such, he should be a man of few words. He denies any human luxuries that might get in the way of his mission, so he doesn't have any real supporting cast to talk to. When it comes to his fellow superheroes, he doesn't care what they think and likely has no strong opinion about what they do. What does he have to talk with Spider-Man about? He's going to leave that party as soon as he can. Though he hates violent criminals fiercely, any talking with them should be strictly utilitarian, such as sending a message or interrogation. Outside of that, I don't see him as having much to say. Even one-liners, fun as they are, ring false. It feels a bit too much like an ego thing, and Frank couldn't care less about his rep save for how it affects his ability to kill more people. He's mostly lost touch with his humanity on that front.
Barring that, you get a lot of internal monologuing. Not that that doesn't have value, but most of it can be divided into one of four categories:
- Explaining what he's doing
- War flashbacks
- Black comedy
- Righteous disgust
It can wear thin if not done well, it really can. I suppose it's because he's talking about the same thing over and over. He doesn't have anything going for him except fighting the mob, and that's all he thinks about, all the time. It makes sense, but we don't necessarily need to be subjected to it.
Anyhow, that's what's interesting about Greg Rucka and Marco Checchetto's The Punisher #1. The Punisher doesn't speak or think a word, he just does what he does. We see him through the eyes of the three important factions of Frank's life: victims, cops, and criminals.
The story begins with a shootout at a wedding, conveyed with no sound whatsoever. It's a really horrifying scene, with dozens of people getting riddled with bullets in a monstrously violent way. Stop me if you've heard this one, though: a combat veteran returns home only to have his family gunned down in a random act of violence. Besides the fact that the bride is the vet in this version (two tours in Afghanistan), this wedding massacre is a very deliberate call-back to The Punisher's own origin.
I think this is very cleverly done. We know The Punisher's origin. This comic isn't trying to get into his head, it's all external to him. He's the shark in the tank. This sequence sets up the issue (and the arc, I'm assuming), illustrates the horror of Frank's own tragedy without deliberately dredging it up, and demonstrates that Frank is still hunting monstrous people just like the ones that hurt him in the first place.
Then we have the cops, detectives Oscar Clemons and Walter Bolt. It's revealed in flashback that Bolt froze and generally fucked up during a previous shoot-out and the Punisher picked up the ball. Now Bolt's forwarding police information to Frank, though he seems pretty broken up about it. The Punisher's always had a strange relationship with the police; it's been implied that they like him and don't actually try too hard on the whole to track him. After all, in the wonderfully cut-and-dry fictional way, all the people he kills really deserve what they get and he always plans his massacres so that innocent people are never harmed. His partner, Clemons, seems to be more on the straight-and-narrow.
Finally, the thugs. The main story ends with The Punisher gunning down a whole bar full of them in a really beautiful splash page, again in total silence. His face is never shown and he never talks; he's just an angel of death, punishing the wicked swiftly, brutally, efficiently. That's all criminals know him as. And, after picking up the last surviving gang member and putting a gun to his head... he let's him go and walks away. Why's that? We'll find out, but as for now, his reasons are inscrutable.
So, this is cool. The Punisher does what we expect him to, we just don't hear him talking about it. It's all been said before. We instead see the effect he has on the people around him. It's a really interesting start, and I'll keep buying it to see where it goes.
And seriously, him gunning down those thugs from behind the bar is really, really fucking cool.
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