A few weeks ago, we ran a piece entitled The Strange (Yet Unsurprising) Truth of Marvel’s “Trial of the Punisher” in September, in which I posited that the revelation of a long lost Punisher story from 2006 would be published this year was a strange case of Marvel shelving and then arbitrarily reviving an old project for random monetary gains. The article used some general logic that is popular amongst skeptics and cynics and used only sources found over old articles online.
And it was wrong.
In order to get clarification on what the book was and what happened, I chatted with the writer of the story, Marc Guggenheim, to clear up the mysteries of what took so long and why the book is coming out now. Read on for a rather candid and open discussion of the actual truth behind Marvel’s upcoming “Trial of the Punisher” two-issue mini-series by Guggenheim and Francis Leinil Yu. Strange or not is up to you!
So, Marc — before we get into what is happening now, can you tell me about how this Punisher story originally came to be?
Marc Guggenheim: Yes. But we have to go all the way back to 2006. At the time, I was writing on CSI: Miami. About a year earlier, I’d had my first comic book work published, an Aquaman two-parter that was well received by the three people who read it. And that gig so set the comic book world on fire that… absolutely nothing happened for me in comics for about a year.
Meanwhile, however, Joe Straczynski and Kevin Smith were really opening up doors at Marvel for so-called “Hollywood writers,” so my manager reached out to Ruwan Jayatilleke, who was working for Marvel at the time. Ruwan read those Aquaman issues and was familiar with my work on Law & Order. Given the latter, he thought starting me off on the more “street-level” Marvel characters was a good idea and I agreed.
At the time, Marvel was developing “over-sized” one-issue stories of about 36 pages each. These were, I think, going to be called “longshots” — not because they guest-starred Longshot, but rather because they were, well, longer than the then-standard 22-pages. They were going to do ones with Punisher and Wolverine. Axel Alonso was in charge of them at the time and I was THRILLED to be paired up with him as my first editor because I was a huge fan of his taste and sensibilities given his work over at Vertigo.
Long story short, I pitched Axel a couple of Punisher stories and a couple of Wolverines and he liked on particular Punisher story the most. That’s what ultimately became Trial of the Punisher.
So what happened since then? Why didn’t the comic out?
MG: The short version is that Lenil got busy. Very, very busy. He’d started the book and got very deep into it, finishing half, but then got pulled away on a variety of other projects. We all kept waiting for him to free back up, but that, unfortunately, never happened. This is the downside of working with someone as talented as Lenil. If I had a hack drawing it, the book would’ve been published eight years ago. The good news, however, is that it will be worth the wait. Lenil’s work on this book is absolutely stunning and we’re shooting straight from his pencils, which is the best way to see his work, in my opinion.
Oh, so this isn’t an instance of the book getting shelved — it was just never completed?
MG: Exactly. Believe it or not, I’ve had a few comic projects over the years that haven’t been completed for a variety of reasons. My personal favorite is a Wolverine/Blade one-shot that has been beautifully rendered by Dave Wilkins. He’s 96% done with it. One day, maybe…
Has the book then changed since its original iteration 7 years ago?
MG: A bit. The book hasn’t been completely dormant. It would get a new breath of life each time it landed on a new editor’s desk. The biggest change was to modify the script so that it would effectively work as a two-parter rather than a one-shot. Because this was my first comic script, the latter pages were a bit cramped in the original draft, so this afforded me the opportunity to let the climax breathe. I’d also made a few changes over the years to reflect continuity at the time. For example, Matt Murdock testifies against Frank and there was one iteration of the script that reflected the fact that Matt was in prison — this was back when Ed Brubaker was writing Daredevil and had Matt imprisoned.
Continued belowSo given this, does the “new” Trial of the Punisher reflect what is happening in comics today at Marvel, or is it a bit more loose in terms of its place in continuity (not necessarily a what-if, but just no directly reflective of current goings-on)?
MG: No. After the Matt in and out of a prison jumpsuit thing, I revised the script to make it more of an evergreen story. The truth is, Matt’s status quo was pretty much the only continuity-dependent element of my story — and not even all that dependent, at the end of the day. Obviously, there’s no mention of Frank’s membership in the Thunderbolts. I’ll leave it to readers to determine where, exactly, this story falls within Frank’s biography.
This is a pretty unique experience, I think, in terms of the creation of comics given the production time — at least in the seven-year length to put together and finalize. Seeing your work as a writer evolve over time and the changes from the original script to where it is now, how do you view this particular book in terms of your career?
MG: I’m very proud of it. It was my first gig for Marvel, so it will always have a special place in my heart. It’s also the script that gave Axel Alonso the confidence in me to have me write the Civil War tie-in for Wolverine, which kickstarted my career at Marvel, so it’s special for that reason, as well. It’s a fun and rare thing for me to exercise my super-hero and legal writing chops on the same project and I really enjoyed doing so with the Punisher. He’s an extraordinarily fun character to write. His inner voice is so specific — thanks to the work of Garth Ennis, Chuck Dixon and Mike Baron — and it’s a great instrument to get to play. I’m relieved that in the intervening years since I wrote it, no one has thought to put the Punisher on trial. I’m kinda glad to be telling a story that, to me, seems like low-hanging fruit that no other writer has yet picked.
So my assumption — which I think was perhaps slightly fair, albeit definitely me jumping the gun — was that the book had been shelved. Given the period of time, was this happening to the title something you were worried about at all?
MG: No, I really wasn’t. Marvel’s been really great about this story for almost a decade now. I never felt any lack of support or enthusiasm. Plus, we’ve got all these gorgeous Lenil Yu pages. I knew they’d see the light of day eventually.
And now that it’s coming out so much later, has this experienced changed how you view any aspect of this type of creative relationship or comic-related situation?
MG: No. To be honest, I don’t know how it would. I dunno, maybe I have this attitude because of my Hollywood experience, where some projects take years and years to come to fruition. I’m working on a top secret project right now — not a comic — that I started even before writing the Punisher story and it probably won’t see the light of day for at least another six months. Some babies just take longer to bring into the world than others.
“The Trial of the Punisher” #1 comes out in September.
