Comic Book Review | PunisherMAX Vol. I: Kingpin and Vol. II: Bullseye

The Punisher is Frank Castle, a Vietnam vet who witnessed the brutal slaying of his wife and children in Central Park... collateral damage in the mob's war on law. Haunted by his horrific history, and reeling from this latest, greatest loss, Frank Castle grieved as only a born killer could: he got himself a long leather trenchcoat, a shirt with a sweet skull on, some guns, and murdered his family's murderers.

Since then, I suppose he's mostly been keeping up appearances. Killing, kidnapping, torturing and extorting his way to the top of the food chain, such as it is in the hive of scum and villainy that is New York City... as per The Punisher, at least.

Now it's not a bad origin story, that - there are certainly many, many worse ones - but it's hardly tailor-made for a medium in which codes of conduct and content have historically restricted creativity. No surprise, then, that The Punisher has been badly mishandled in the years since its inception in the 70s. 

Which isn't to say I've steered clear of it, as perhaps I should have. Oh no. In my younger years, during my first fling with comic books, I read rather a lot of The Punisher. What can I say? In those halcyon days, bargain bins everywhere overflowed with coffee-stained copies of War Journal -- perfectly price to match my dinner money, it seemed to me. And I didn't want dinner. I wanted comics! And by god, I got comics.

Obviously not the ones I should have, because I lost my a lot of my love for the medium thereafter, and perhaps that was in part because of The Punisher. Now that I've been pulled back in, it made a certain amount of sense to see whether it had changed, or simply stayed the same. And I can hardly say how glad I am to have given this character another chance.

Not coincidentally, PunisherMAX concluded just last month, after a 22-issue run -- a fact that makes my heart abstractly glad. I like to be sure the things I begin will end eventually, and in comics that's rarely the case. To know that this story has been told on its own terms from one end to the other, to great critical acclaim to boot, thus without any obvious intrusions either... I'll admit it: starting in on the first collected volume of the series, I had - of all things - hope.

Well I've no hope now, but not because PunisherMAX disappointed me in any sense. I've no hope because this is a truly hopeless story: bleak as the inner city and black as long knives at night. But for all that... brilliant. PunisherMAX is a whiplash-fast, smartly characterised comic book, finely toned and heroically honed: Jason Aaron's scripts are tight but not terse, explicit without seeming attention-seeking, and paced perfectly.

Each of PunisherMAX's four story arcs runs for five or six issues, and chronicles, in effect, an origin. In the first, collected in Kingpin, we learn of the rise and rise of the fabled boss of mob bosses. Wilson Fisk means to make the mantle his own, and as he goes from convict to henchman to criminal mastermind, he leaves a bloody trail in his whale's wake that The Punisher cannot bring himself to believe. Fisk's rapid ascension is not without its own cost, of course, and initially Aaron is as interested in this - in the tragedy of the Kingpin - as he is in his creaky old anti-hero, which gives the narrative an excellent sense of balance.

This impression persists in PunisherMAX Vol. II: Bullseye, which brings the master assassin into the fold, under the Kingpin's wing. But Bullseye, being a bit of a lunatic - and that's putting it politely - doesn't just want to kill Frank Castle: first, he has to understand him. Before putting finger to trigger, Bullseye intends to get inside his head, the better to see what makes this vigilante tick. Meantime, The Punisher has a whole lot of catching up to do. His skepticism about the existence of a kingpin of crime has meant he's late late late to a very important date, and now that there's no doubting it, it's practically impossible to get near Fisk.

Among the most admirable aspects of this eminently accessible series is its structure. Kingpin is a tale unto itself - as is Bullseye - but one lays the foundations for the other, and the other builds atop the last chapter's narrative in readiness for the next. The only sensible place to jump on board is with the first  collected volume, but from there on out PunisherMAX doesn't stop, and to my point: you won't want it to.

All these letters later, it occurs to me that I haven't even mentioned the art of PunisherMAX. That's my bad entirely, because it's anything but. Assisting Jason Aaron through these two trades - and indeed the two concluding volumes to come - is Garth Ennis co-conspirator Steve Dillon, whose clear and present pencils took me back to the good old days. Of Preacher, I mean. More meaningfully, Dillon has a preexisting history with The Punisher, and it's evidenced in every panel he and the other iconic characters that figure into this series appear in. Dillon's layouts are plain yet perfectly poised, whilst his Frank Castle is grizzled and relentlessly grim. Exactly what you'd want, in short.

The shocking conclusion of Bullseye falls exactly halfway through the whole run of Jason Aaron's PunisherMAX, and much as I can get behind a good ending at the right time rather than a sudden conclusion well after the fact, at the moment I don't want this series to be over ever. But there's no going back now, and that's probably for the best, because without the worry that this series will have to sustain itself indefinitely, the creators can truly let loose. Thus, the first half of PunisherMAX is incredible - powerful, exhilarating and ambitious from the offing - and I can't imagine it going out with anything less than an almighty bang.

Film Review | Captain America: The First Avenger, dir. Joe Johnston

Do I love my country?

I don't know that I do. Maybe that's because I'm Scottish. Maybe that's because Scotland isn't from the inside - or the outside - a very loveable country; we highlanders are a violent and violently unhealthly people. Some of the sights hereabouts sure are pretty to look at, but wherever there are large numbers of people? If you can possibly avoid it, you probably don't want to go there. I know I don't.

In a larger sense, though, I think a country, and all the concept of country entails, is a difficult thing to feel for with such intensity... such unquestioning acceptance.

But Steve Rogers? Boy oh boy does he love his country! The Second World War is in full swing, and Steve wants nothing more than to take to the front-lines with his best buddy Bucky. But the military won't have him, no matter how often he applies - and he applies often. Alas, he's a lanky young man, physically a complete and total weakling with a long and sordid history of chronic conditions to boot.

So on the eve of his best friend's departure, when a doctor in charge of a top secret research project offers Steve another way to play some part in the ongoing war effort, the little fella - God bless him - jumps at the chance. Several vials of super-serum later, Captain America is born. All too soon, sadly, the doctor dies, and when it transpires that his super-serum can't be reproduced, Steve's only option is to help sell war bonds. In a year he has becomes an icon of purity and patriotism to the people at home, but abroad, where it actually matters a damn, he remains an object of ridicule: a man in tights, if he's any sort of man at all.

Oddly, Joe Johnston - the director who gave us Jumanji, The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park III amongst many other fondly-remembered Hollywood movies, not least Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! - Joe Johnston takes, I'm afraid, an awfully long time to tell this origin story that needn't (truth be told) have been told at all, given how intimately familiar it is... even to me, and I haven't read a Captain America comic book in my life.

Thus the first hour of Captain America: The First Avenger is an at-times excruciatingly slow build-up to a second hour that seems relentless by comparison. Indeed it is: one elaborate set-piece picks up where the last left off, and the next is always hot on its overheated heels. By the end you're basically dazed, if not confused, for this is after all an exceedingly simple film.

Simplicity is no slight in itself, of course. Often the best stories can be reduced down to one of a few boilerplate premises; it is in how a story is told that it can become exceptional, or else. But there's not a lot of nuance in Captain America: The First Avenger either. At one point, as the worm turns, Hugo Weaving as the only other person besides Steve Rogers to have survived the super-serum - so it should come as no surprise that Johann Schmidt is the bad nasty apple to Steve Rogers' delicious and nutritious orange - anyway, Hugo Weaving, somewhere around the halfway mark of the movie, actually tears off his face, to reveal the evil red skull beneath!

If you can swallow that - that, and swear an oath that you won't take anything in this film in the least seriously, up to and including a few objectionable moments - there's actually a fair bit of fun to be had with Captain America: The First Avenger. It's compromised in almost every sense, yet there's a certain purity to it. It's dated already, but right down to some horrendous special effects, it looks the part. Needless to say, none of the characters are anything resembling interesting, but an impressive cast put forth some solid performances in any event: Hugo Weaving hams it up marvelously, mostly, I expect Billie Piper fans will watch to watch the charming Hayley Atwell closely, and there is just enough humility to Chris Evans' performance that his Steve Rogers is every bit as credible as his Captain America is incredible.

So. Patriotic shenanigans, decently done if you can overlook the vast imbalance between the first half and the last, and some dodginess here and there. Fun for the whole family; that is, assuming the whole family is doing something else at the time.

I'd recommend a comic book!