By Mike Baron, Bill Reinhold & Linda Lessman (Marvel)
ISBN: 0-87135-544-2
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, in response to increasingly popular prose anti-heroes like 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 worth noting that unlike most heroes who debuted as villains (such as Wolverine) the Punisher actually became more anti-social and murderous, not less as the buying public shifted its communal perspective: Castle never toned down or cleaned up his act…
After stalking the Marvel universe for 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 joyously gratuitous graphic novel.
Intruder also takes another sneaky peak into Castle’s life prior to that fateful walk in the Park, and begins when his stake-out of a Medellin cartel boss goes horribly wrong. Whilst watching the drug-lord’s home he sees a team of armed raiders burst into the house next door. Realising the assassins have attacked the wrong home, he moves in but is far too late. The only survivor is seven year old Maggie Pulowski…
Knowing that whoever the raiders were, they’ll return once they realise there is a witness left, Castle takes her under his wing, eventually leaving her in the seminary where he once trained to be a priest.
Meanwhile partner and Intel man Micro has found the mystery raiders. An ex-Navy colonel with dubious links to both the American and Korean CIA, and backed by ultra-right wing, anti-communist religious leaders, Ross Whittaker now runs his own private army and air force from a rocky desert citadel in Utah. Tasked with assassinating drug-runners, left-wingers and anybody his money-men don’t like, nobody realises that Whittaker has plans of his own and is covertly carving out a private narcotics empire.
With Whittaker’s ruthless forces now closing in on Maggie, the rogue Colonel instantly advances to the top of the Punisher’s “to do listâ€â€¦
This intriguing hardback in the so-satisfying oversized European format (284m x 215m) is not as readily available as many other Punisher tales but is still a spectacular, all-action, blockbuster romp stuffed with the usual cathartic gun-play, loads of martial arts mayhem in the best Mike Baron tradition with the added zest of seeing our one-man-army take on an actual military force. Whilst the climactic duel in flashing jet-fighters is utterly breathtaking, and a credit to the vastly underrated Bill Reinhold, some of the most interesting moments are the trenchant flashbacks to Frank Castle; cleric-in-training – particularly funny and painfully insightful…
Hard, fast and enticingly brutal, this non-stop, top-gun rocket-ride has everything that made the series so popular, stripped down and converted to a form of cinema blockbuster that is absolutely irresistible. This is another unrepentant guilty pleasure and you know you want it…
© 1989 Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.