COMICS: Frank Castle Heads Into Action In First Look At THE PUNISHER #5

Big dawg in action

great title,i think this & magneto are my favorite solo hero books & marvel are killing it with their solo heroes.

-the punisher
-magneto
-black widow
-daredevil
-hawkeye
-iron fist
-captain marvel
-moon knight

That art is awful but the Punisher's outfit is bad ass!

... Yeah, no.

Frank Castle is already a totally unrepentant, calculating, cold-blooded mass-murderer. He doesn't just go maskless because he doesn't care if the criminal element knows who he is, nor because his identity is already public knowledge (which is still an incredibly valid reason why putting a mask on him is ridiculous), but because if we, as readers, don't see a man standing there with a face we can read as human, there's literally nothing there to connect with.

Looking at these pages, I don't see a character I can relate to or root for anymore, even on the simplest, most detached levels. He's completely dehumanized at this point-- the guy might as well be Jason Voorhees with an Uzi.

They tried something like this already at DC Comics back in the eighties-- some crappy Punisher knock-off named Bulldog ran around with a hockey mask on his face. Does anyone remember him? No. Because when you take away the character's humanity (something the Punisher lost a long time ago), his morality, AND his face, you're left with nothing but a cipher. And no matter how cool the action, you can't enjoy a story starring a goddamn cipher.

Z

I second what @TheFox said

That cover is killer, but then the interior...

@TheFox The Punisher is mass-murderer but his humanity isn't fully gone. If he was everything you say he was he would've been killing everyone, Superheroes, Villains, anyone who crosses him. But he's not like that, he's a vigilante who hates criminals. Now does that make him special? No, but anyone who's tired of enemies coming back over and over again can relate to the Punisher. I have nothing against the mask, I think he wears it because he's in a new town and they probably don't know what the Punisher looks like.

@campblood did you learn all that playing call of duty ?

Cthulu Punisher is a good look.

SQUID FACE.....

I see MARVEL is still trying to ruin The Punisher. Bring Back Garth Ennis!

@TheFox : Go back and read Garth Ennis' Punisher run and come back here and lets see if you still think the same thing.

And...to further argue-

Punisher isn't a character you relate with. He is the angel of death. He isn't the star, or the hero. He is the exterminating angel. Stories like this have been told since ancient times. Think of stories like The Minotaur. The Punisher, is basically the minotaur. Or even Jason Vorhees, Alien, Jaws or any 80-s slasher films. Blake Snyder calls it 'The Monster in the House'. It is so simple, even a caveman can understand it. Basically these are important to 'Monster in the House' rules:
1. A sin must be committed. This is the reason for the Angel of Death. Usually this sin is Greed.
2. The sinners must be isolated in a remote location. This refers to the 'house' in Monster in the House. Basically you are trapped here with the big bad wolf. It must be a confined space. (think The Thing)
3. The sinners themselves. This could be the teens that do drugs and have sex in slasher films, the greedy corperation in alien, or the greedy mayor of Jaws. The one thing they all need to posses is a desperateness to kill the Angel of Death. Its primal. Its not about being smart. Its about not getting eaten.
4. the rest is just all 'run and hide'.

Frank Castle is not the hero to relate to. Youre a fool if you think so. Go back to reading your shitty 80s DC books starring guys no one has ever heard of. Frank Castle is someone to be afraid of. The Punisher is kind of like a Horror book. The Punisher is an Angel of Death. Like Jaws. Or Alien. Or the Minotaur. He is sent here to punish the wicked. You don't want to be guilty by association, yet your trapped in this isolated house with Frank Castle.

Just do yourself a facor and go read Garth Ennis' (Preacher) run on the Punisher title. Punisher MAX. No superheroes, no tights, no capes, no super powers. Just the Exterminating Angel.
3.

Thunderbolts is good too. No punisher mask either.

@TheFox

It was Wild Dog, not Bulldog, and it was a terrible Punisher knock off.

And when you say "we" do you mean the entire intended audience feels the same as you? Because there's obviously enough people who like Punisher for the title to have spawned three live action films and a continued publication for several decades.

@AgentEX: You mean to tell me that somehow the people living on the West Coast have NO WAY of looking up the identity of one of the East Coast's most prominent mass-murdering vigilantes? Does the Internet not exist in the Marvel universe?

Castle's identity is PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. He's been arrested, tried, convicted as the Punisher. It would have been one of the trials of the century. And since Marvel has a strict no-retcon policy, that information would still be public knowledge.

@Keldor: Wow. You take the Punisher WAY too seriously.

As it happens, I HAVE read Garth Ennis' run on the Punisher-- the Marvel Knights run, first of all. It was a satire. Castle was presented as the ultimate badass no-bullsh*t "grim-'n-gritty" hero in a world populated with grotesque buffoons, specifically to mock those kinds of comics.

And yes, I've also read Punisher MAX. It was a meditation on the nature of violence-- an ugly, brutal book that pulled no punches and cut to the bone. But Frank Castle wasn't the main character in that book-- his VICTIMS were. Ennis used Castle's uncompromising, hard-edged, very clearly psychotic view of the world to explore the effects of violence on the people who exact it, and to question the morality of a world that so often falls into shades of grey.

But Frank still never wore a mask in that series, because Ennis wasn't trying to DE-humanize violence-- he was trying to HUMANIZE it. We see the price of violence and death in Castle's cold, dead gaze-- a far more frightening visage than any half-assed skull mask.

Also, I've read plenty of OTHER Punisher books, from authors ranging from Chuck Dixon to Greg Rucka, that feature Castle as a solid main character that you CAN relate to, even if just as a badass action hero-type-- which it looks like this book is going for (after all, it's set in the Marvel Universe proper, not a grounded alternate reality that's devoid of all other superheroes).

Whether we're supposed to root for him or not, all putting a mask on him does is turn him into a blank slate-- it doesn't make him any more cool than it makes him relatable. And if he is the lead of the book, but we're not given any way to relate to him as a person, then all we're rooting for is the violence... Which is pretty juvenile, and not at all interesting.

(Also, I never read Wild Dog. No one did. THAT WAS MY POINT.)

Z

So you're upset about the mask only?

Well why does Steve Rogers wear a mask? I know he's Captain America but everyone knows who he is and that mask isn't a protective helmet like in the Ultimate Universe or the movies. Plus don't special ops wear mask when doing like recon missions or something? Frank was trained in the military and I may not know much about how their teachings work but don't they wear mask during certain missions?

The Fox -

I do agree with the fact the white skull is not practical during night ops.

I do disagree the mask will not disrupt the narrative or have any disconnect not matter what he wears deep down his still the Punisher and it's his actions that get the attention not the uniform.

Look at Spiderman or Deadpool both ear masks the whole time no one seems to mind or have any disconnect with these characters.