Punisher #10

[Cable]

Has anyone else made it this far without dropping this title? I unfortunately am still reading on.

Full Spoilers:

Spoiler: show

There are various news reports: everyone on sex trafficker August Smythe's plane chopped to pieces, same with a yacht off the coast of Madripoor with various global drug kingpins onboard, same with a bunker in Transia housing Symkarian war criminal Ilya Voxx. The Punisher and his Hand ninja have been busy going down the list of criminals to kill. When he returns to the base his wife Maria asks if he is finished yet and he says 'almost.' When she begins to object that he has said this before, he blows her off by saying he needs to rest. Maria later receives her injection from the archpriestess while they stand before the image of The Beast. Maria relates again that she can't remember her past or where her children are. She becomes angry with the archpriestess, wanting Frank to turn away from the Hand and be with the family he has left. The archpriestess says Maria has no idea what Frank has done for his family, but will not elaborate and tells Maria to figure it out for herself. We see a flashback to when Frank and Maria were a young couple. She describes their relationship as involving touch more than words. When she said she wanted to have children he decided to get a second job. Later when she asks him about this second job he won't talk about it. She makes some phone calls to other wives and eventually finds a former marine buddy of Frank's is a prison guard and lets Frank in to witness execution of prisoners. This is what he actually does instead of going to work and she says when he gets home he goes straight to sleep so he doesn't have to touch his wife so soon after being with his real love. Back to the present. Frank tells Maria that after today he will be done with his work. He goes on a mass-murdering rampage across the terrorist safe haven of Bagalia. We see him another morning suiting up and she says "Let me guess...after today." He says he must complete a list of labors before he can be who she wants him to be. She tells him not to come home until he is really coming home. As he goes to his Hand ninja his eyes glow red and he tells them to add more names to the list. She goes to one of the ninja and demands to be shown every room. We see another flashback where she decided to confront Frank about what he did instead of going to his nightjob. She followed him to a bar where there was a former mercenary bragging about how he loves the violence of war. Frank savagely beats the man and then goes home and sleeps more peacefully than he has in months. She is frightened and doesn't mention the executions...yet she liked what she saw. Back in the present, Maria finds the tombstones of her children. The multiple tombstones for her children over and over. The archpriestess meanwhile is listening to the news reports of Castle rampaging inside a secret compound of supremacists. She knows he used the Eyes of the Beast to find the hidden base and rejoices that he is ready for the final step: he sees his fellow men as the Beast does, pieces of meat made up of the sins they have committed and the sins yet to be. We see images of Castle slaughtering what he sees as monsters but are really people. One of them is a boy who hesitates to pull the trigger on his gun. Castle lets the kid flee and says to his ninja to send a message to his wife that he is finished. He snaps his sword in half and says he is going home. Then a bunch of superheroes (Captain America, Black Widow, Wolverine, Dr Strange, Moon Knight) show up and say otherwise!

It feels like they gave the Punisher book to a writer who doesn't like the Punisher. As a fan, it has been painful to read this volume as Aaron goes about dismantling much of what is good about the character. Frank Castle went from a grieving father and husband who dispenses justice for those whom the system has failed, to a sociopath whose only real love has been murder ever since he started brutally killing people as a young child. Awesome. #$* you too Jason Aaron. He has done good work in the past, his Thor and his Dr Strange for example, but with how terrible his Avengers and Punisher has been lately I really wish DC would make a bid for his services and we Marvel fans wouldn't have to suffer any more dreck from his pen.

[grief]

I’m just chiming in to say I’ve really enjoyed Aaron’s take on the Punisher. The character was made as a villain, originally, and has murdered people for decades at this point. This exploration of Frank’s haunted backstory has been great, imo, rounding out a period of his life that was a blank slate to me. His relationship with Maria feels nuanced, layered, and fraught with the tragedies of life.

Previous volumes of Punisher have left me feeling like the character isn’t a character at all, he is a cipher, so the audience can engage in the killings and enjoy it and glorify it, where this feels like a well-rounded character. A tragic one, for sure, but he should be. He is.

I also love the use of two artists for the two different time periods, they fit their stories so well.

[Cable]

Previous volumes of Punisher have left me feeling like the character isn’t a character at all, he is a cipher, so the audience can engage in the killings and enjoy it and glorify it, where this feels like a well-rounded character.

With you describing him as not even a character, it is clear you also did not like the Punisher and thus makes sense why you would like a volume in which I say it seems like Aaron doesn't like the character lol. But framing the character this way seems like a bias that often exists against the Punisher: that because he is violent then the violence must be the point. It is like saying what Captain America comics are about is confronting your political foes, those fascists, and imagining with peak human abilities you could hurl a metal slab into their skulls; Cap comics are actually about glorifying the solving of political disputes with violence! I don't think either of these conceptions is true.

I don't know what volumes you have read, but take for example a more universal take on the character like Daredevil Season 2 and I don't know how you can watch that and the grief over losing his family and think that isn't a compelling character. And yes he was originally a villain (like many X-Men characters) and is somewhat of an antagonist to Daredevil in that, but the point is to examine superhero vigilantism and the question of what is right and wrong on that spectrum. Fleshed out with his military background, Punisher has also been used to examine the nature of war and trauma through PTSD (see also his own Punisher tv show). Aaron chooses to toss all that in the garbage because there is no moral question or war trauma: Frank Castle has been a prophesied superkiller by the Hand since he first started burning people to death as a kid and was never motivated by his wife dying because he didn't love her nearly as much as he loves jerking off in the backrow of state executions. This bastardization throws out much of the previous nuanced arguments around the character for the safer conclusion that he is a crazed, possibly even supernatural, anomaly.

[grief]

I don't know what volumes you have read, but take for example a more universal take on the character like Daredevil Season 2 and I don't know how you can watch that and the grief over losing his family and think that isn't a compelling character.

I’ve read Remender’s run, the follow up by Rucka, and the A Man Named Frank graphic novel (where he’s a cowboy).

The problem I have with describing Frank as “well written” because of his grief is that Frank’s grief is over 40 years old at this point. It’s one thing to watch Bernthal act that life in two seasons of a tv show, when his family just died and the loss is fresh. But in the comics, Frank has been killing people for decades. Those deaths are so far away. Frank has spent time isolated, in jail, he’s been coached by other super-heroes who have suffered loss - and he still CHOOSES to kill people. Every day. That isn’t compelling anymore, for me, that’s madness.

Fleshed out with his military background, Punisher has also been used to examine the nature of war and trauma through PTSD (see also his own Punisher tv show). Aaron chooses to toss all that in the garbage because there is no moral question or war trauma: Frank Castle has been a prophesied superkiller by the Hand since he first started burning people to death as a kid and was never motivated by his wife dying because he didn't love her nearly as much as he loves jerking off in the backrow of state executions. This bastardization throws out much of the previous nuanced arguments around the character for the safer conclusion that he is a crazed, possibly even supernatural, anomaly.

But this is WHERE the nuance comes in! When you have 40 years of murder under your belt, my perception of Frank as a wounded warrior and father fades to him being a psychopath. Frank plans his murders with a cold, calculating mind not because it is right, but because “doing right” is an excuse to murder. This is absolutely my personal view on the Punisher is - and it feels like where Aaron is starting from.

But this run is demonstrating that Frank has fought AGAINST the need to murder since he was a child. He didn’t HAVE to return to the woman he got pregnant, but he did. He didn’t have to try and be a family man, but he did. This most recent issue saw Frank spare that teenager, who had been trained in sin, who he saw as just a monster thanks to his supernatural abilities - and he spared them. If the Punisher is meant to comment on where the line of violence stops, then he’s choosing to stop it at killing people who haven’t done any wrong.

This story opens with Frank allied with the Hand so that he will eventually turn on them, be stripped of his powers, probably Maria, and with none of that - he’ll still choose to fight the evil that they are. The evil that he could have easily been - because that’s the route the Hand has put him on. That Aaron has put him on. Frank will demonstrate his heroism because he COULD be a monster - but he chooses to limit that monster every day and channel its power and fury in a way that’s helpful.

Compared to other super-heroes, which he is regularly, Frank is a monster. But compared to the Hand, Frank is an angel.

[Cable]

I don't know what volumes you have read, but take for example a more universal take on the character like Daredevil Season 2 and I don't know how you can watch that and the grief over losing his family and think that isn't a compelling character.

I’ve read Remender’s run, the follow up by Rucka, and the A Man Named Frank graphic novel (where he’s a cowboy).

The problem I have with describing Frank as “well written” because of his grief is that Frank’s grief is over 40 years old at this point. It’s one thing to watch Bernthal act that life in two seasons of a tv show, when his family just died and the loss is fresh. But in the comics, Frank has been killing people for decades. Those deaths are so far away. Frank has spent time isolated, in jail, he’s been coached by other super-heroes who have suffered loss - and he still CHOOSES to kill people. Every day. That isn’t compelling anymore, for me, that’s madness.

That's partially the problem of the sliding timescale. Frank has not really been murdering people for decades, that is just the experience of the reader (although ironically with Aaron's run he now HAS been murdering people for decades...). But ultimately it doesn't really matter because Castle doesn't just seek retributive justice for himself. He has the understanding that what happened to him happens to other people. It is the same as anyone who in real life experiences a traumatic event and then dedicates their life to advocacy around that issue. You expect them to get over it and move on? Though in the next argument you make clear the real problem is the way he goes about it:

[ Frank plans his murders with a cold, calculating mind not because it is right, but because “doing right” is an excuse to murder. This is absolutely my personal view on the Punisher is - and it feels like where Aaron is starting from.

I agree it feels like where Aaron is coming from and again it is a starting point of dislike for the character. No such person should write a Punisher book, because there is no reason to view the Punisher in that way. It is a negative bias. I wouldn't give a Wolverine title to a writer who thinks Wolverine kills so often because he gets off on it, that isn't what the character really is to his fans. It is totally reasonable to not like these kinds of characters who engage in extreme fantasy violence. Don't watch movies like Taken or John Wick, or quite frankly probably a majority of action movies, where the protagonist chooses extrajudicial killing of the bad guys as a solution. But certainly don't write for properties like this lol

You say this

If the Punisher is meant to comment on where the line of violence stops, then he’s choosing to stop it at killing people who haven’t done any wrong.

as if it is introduced in this run, but Punisher only killing bad guys has been an integral part of his character from literally the first issue. In Amazing Spider-Man #129 where he debuts "as a villain", he only is after Spider-Man because the Jackal has convinced him that Spider-Man killed Gwen Stacy. In fact after the Jackal hits Spider-Man from behind the Punisher scolds him for winning in a "dishonorable" way! The Punisher later realizes Jackal is in fact the villain and no longer is interested in Spider-Man (why not kill Spider-Man anyway if Punisher just likes killing? Because that isn't really what it is about for him and never has been).

You can say that the Punisher is a psychopath for coldly planning these operations in which he murders the villains, but what he would say is Batman is crazy for putting the Joker in jail and he gets out again and again and kills innocent people again and again and again and all THOSE deaths are what is insane. Obviously vigilantism is not something we want in society, but ALL superheroes take the law in their own hands, so it is an inherent part of this setting and the character is valuable in bringing up questions about it. Personally I believe the more relatable Punisher is then the more powerful the questions about justice are that can be mused about in regards to what he does; he is a normal person, the most normal 'superhero' there is, not some kind of special exception that could conveniently be explained away as an aberration. If I recall correctly I think I remember you commenting before that you liked the Remender run, so you prefer the more metaphorical 'monster' type story, which is understandable from your point of view as the more fantastical it is then the more the violence is at a distance from reality, but we will have to agree to disagree on that preference.

[grief]

I didn’t expect either of us to win the other over, I just wanted to put forth my argument why this run is good and worth exploring. After all, it’s gotten Marvel a new regular buyer if the Punisher - me - who wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Plus, when this volume ends, it’s very likely that everything will be returned to status quo - Maria dead, the Hand decimated, and Frank restored to a normal guy hunting bad guys. So for now, I’m down to enjoy it, knowing full well that it won’t last.

I have enjoyed the discussion though and I love your passionate defense of Classic Punisher.

[Cable]

I didn’t expect either of us to win the other over, I just wanted to put forth my argument why this run is good and worth exploring. After all, it’s gotten Marvel a new regular buyer if the Punisher - me - who wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Plus, when this volume ends, it’s very likely that everything will be returned to status quo - Maria dead, the Hand decimated, and Frank restored to a normal guy hunting bad guys. So for now, I’m down to enjoy it, knowing full well that it won’t last.

I have enjoyed the discussion though and I love your passionate defense of Classic Punisher.

I would agree that for better or worse it is more fun as a fan to have runs that drive discussion rather than by-the-numbers portrayals. Sometimes you will be on the pro side and sometimes on the con though lol.