By Jo Duffy, Jorge Zaffino & Julie Michel (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-87135-460-8
Frank Castle saw his family gunned down in Central Park after witnessing a mob hit, and thereafter dedicated his life to destroying criminals. His methods are violent and permanent.
Debuting as a villain in Amazing Spider-Man #129 (February 1974), the Punisher was created by Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru, a reaction to such popular prose anti-heroes as Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan: the Executioner and other returning Viet Nam vets who all turned their training and talents to wiping out organised crime. It’s intriguing to note that unlike most heroes who debuted as villains (Wolverine comes to mind) the Punisher actually became more immoral, anti-social and murderous, not less: the buying public shifted its communal perspective – Castle never toned down or cleaned up his act…
After bouncing around the Marvel universe for many years a 1986 miniseries by Steven Grant and Mike Zeck swiftly led to overnight stardom and a plethora of “shoot-’em-all and let God sort it out†antics that quickly boiled over into tedious overkill, but along the way a few pure gems were cranked out, such as this clever, darkly funny graphic novel from the hugely underrated Jo Duffy and much missed Argentinean artist Jorge Zaffino.
Zaffino died of a heart attack in 2002, aged 43, having been “discovered†in the late 1980s by Eclipse Comics who published the dystopian science fiction thriller Winter World he created with writer Chuck Dixon.
Zaffino’s style of dark, oppressive, macho illustration was seen in America in Batman: Black and White, Savage Sword of Conan, Shadowline: Critical Mass, Terror, Inc., Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, The ‘Nam and Punisher: Kingdom Gone as well as my personal favourite, the crime/horror one-shot Seven Block. Throughout this period he was maintaining a full-time career in his homeland, particularly on the adventure series Wolf, and as a gallery painter.
Frank Castle is pursuing his favourite occupation wiping out scum when he accidentally crosses paths with a rather unique band of paid killers working out of a Japanese restaurant. These assassins are skilled, imaginative, highly professional and mostly kids. Investigating with a view to permanently stopping them he discovers that their motives and ethics aren’t so far removed from his own and moreover that they all have their eyes on the same target…
Sardonic, brutal and powerfully effective this is a top-notch yarn that moves effortlessly from Noir to adventure-caper to tragedy and back again, a genuinely accessible thriller for all genre fans – especially Yakuza gangster movies. Still readily available in the so-satisfying oversized European format (284m x 215m) this hard, fast and deliciously sharp extravaganza has everything that made the Punisher so popular, without any of the charmless excesses that scuppered the first, over-exploited run. This is an unreconstructed guilty pleasure and you know you want it…
© 1988 Marvel Entertainment Group, Ltd. All rights reserved.