It’s almost the end of the month and I’ve only posted once in October, not because I haven’t been writing, but because nothing has seemed pressing/exciting enough to spur me to post.* Until today, when I read the most pathetic excuse for a Marvel comic since the original Clone Saga dragged on and on for months and months. In this book, a top-tier Marvel character, The Punisher, is put through a ridiculous plot twist that is so ill-conceived that it is likely to destroy his popularity.
Let’s be clear; I’m a Marvel guy before a DC guy, and I’ve been pretty happy with Marvel in the Joey Q era. I’m really happy that Marvel has recognized their latest event is interminable, and they’ve decided to shorten their events in the future, as well as confining them to fewer books. It’s a very good sign, because as strong as some of these event premises have been, they’re spread so thin on the ground that issues are designed to be nothing more than placeholders reiterating statements that all readers already have accepted as gospel (“Norman Osborn is bad” being the main one).
Bendis has been running loose over this editorial for a while and I’m a tired of the self-congratulatory tone he’s been taking lately, but in his defense, his books are largely above average and his predilection for praising BMB, while unflattering, isn’t entirely undeserved.
One of the failures of the current Dark Reign storyline is the breakdown of the overarching story into smaller arcs, like the current one “The List”. The premise here is that now Norman is firmly in charge, he’s made a list of things to do to super people.
Really?
He’s a few months into taking over Marvel Universe and NOW he’s making a list? Everything up to now was just winging it? I have a list of things to do every day and I’m no evil genius planning to take over the Marvel U. Of course I’m not a homicidal lunatic either, and maybe homicidal lunatics don’t make lists unless they get really, really crazy. Let’s be frank, the conceptual glue that’s holding this “List” arc together is ill-conceived at best, and a shining example of dragging a storyline out too long by creating & labeling arcs within arcs.
The List arc started a few weeks back with a typically strong Daredevil issue and since then a few more have come out, including this week’s “Wolverine: The List”, which, while nicely drawn, feels exactly like the kind of placeholder one-shot that adds nothing to the overall story, but meets some sales threshold requirement.
I referred earlier to the 90’s Clone saga in the Spider-man books, widely regarded as the most ridiculous, sprawling and pointless story in modern memory. Fanboys were so upset about its diabolical length and incoherence that they made a stink that hasn’t been rivaled since. The only thing close has been the hubbub over “One More Day”, which seemed to me like the best way to resolve a lot of plot incoherence that had built up in the Spider-man books over the prior ten-plus years. If we all had to take a spoonful of nasty tasting cod liver oil to purge our system and improve our overall health moving forward, the result was worth the cure.
Like the Clone Saga, this is a bad idea that is completely out of control. If this had happened during the aforementioned 90’s Punisher tailspin, we all could’ve written it off as a fitting end to a well-conceived but horribly mishandled character whose time had seemingly come and gone.
In the wake of an amazing (and long) Garth Ennis run that returned the character to his roots AND made him a major player in the MU, followed by the completely unexpected (and almost unheard of) successful handoff of Frank Castle to new writers who respected the core material and maintained the quality readers had come to expect, it was inevitable that Punisher fans were living on borrowed time. Since what had come before was so well-done, this issue is even more of a travesty.
Rick Remender has been a fine writer in my book and his Punisher writing to date has been fine stuff, if not quite up to Ennis standards. But here he has completely lost the plot.
You may have seen the ads for an upcoming Punisher arc called “Frankencastle”, which depict a sewn together and presumably reanimated Punisher. It looks intriguing, but I assumed the image was a non literal “shock” image designed to portray a psychological state rather than a physical one.
Nope.
In this miserable trainwreck of a comic, Daken, the ridiculously overused “son of Wolverine who is posing as Wolverine”, is sent to get Castle (presumably so Norman can check an item off of his list) and in the ensuing battle the Punisher is literally cut to pieces. Not in the “I literally shit my pants” use of literally that drunk college kids use, but in the “holy shit I can’t believe they cut the Punisher into chunks of flesh & bone (including decapitation), so they can do this stupid Frankencastle story”. Yes, they are going to take the pieces of the Punisher and sew them back together, resurrecting him as a reanimated corpse, complete with stitches and tubes, etc, etc.
How do I know the Frankencastle story will be stupid? Besides the obvious, there’s a preview of a good chunk of the first issue of the Shelley-inspired arc. It’s even worse than this one-shot story would indicate.
The art is by John Romita Jr., whose typical clear, blocky style is compromised here by an uncertain and perhaps disinterested Gene Colan-esque whispy-ness. The styles don’t mesh well, leaving the colorist to hold the art together.
I am baffled as to how this story got approved by editors. It’s unimaginable to me. This is the first sign that the second wave of Punisher popularity is over, a real tragedy for Marvel considering he’s one of the few post- Stan & Jack era characters that has resonated with the general public (and is something of a licensing powerhouse as well).
The Punisher is not a superhero in the traditional sense; he has no powers, he doesn’t really wear a stereotypical superhero costume. He isn’t designed to be rebuilt as a monster anymore than he is to join the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Yes, he has died & returned before - Ennis brought Frank back from the dead with fitting gruffness and brevity, forsaking a drawn out multi-issue storyline that teases and depicts the method of his return, opting instead to explain it all with a couple of deft, in-character lines of dialogue. From there the Punisher dove headlong into action against lowlife mobsters, drug dealers, rapists, slavers, etc. It was if years of headbands, Marvel Edge issues and angelic/demonic (re)incarnations had been washed away in just a few panels.
Jason Aaron & Steve Dillon have another Punisher series in the works. No doubt it will be fine and (I assume) will consist of more traditional Punisher stories, but how can it avoid being tainted by this storyline, the resolution of which is destined to be a cop-out? I don’t want to hear about the different iterations of the Punisher on various Marvel Earths – that’s fine for an FF story or a DC continuity reboot, but it doesn’t work for a dark and gritty character that is best rooted in reality.
I’m not sure how this vile Punisher One-Shot will be rationalized away in the future, but if I were the editorial and creative teams, I’d get working on something yesterday, because this is far and away the worst Punisher book ever published, and that’s saying something in the wake of some really evil shit cranked out during his slide into overexposure back in the 90’s.
* I’ve been working on a long piece about how Mattel, DC Direct and Hasbro are killing American Superhero toys that will go up sometime soon, I promise/hope.
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