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Review: Punisher #1

By | August 5th, 2011
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Written by Greg Rucka
Illustrated by Marco Checcheto

TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK. For Frank Castle death comes easy…life is where things gets complicated. Fully loaded with the Eisner winning writer Greg Rucka (Batwoman, Queen and Country, WOLVERINE) and neo-superstar artist Marco Checchetto (Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil), the BIGGEST GUN of all returns with blood on his hands and vengeance in his eyes. As New York City’s body counts continue to rise, the city’s streets are teeming with more methodical criminals than ever and a police force doing it’s best to keep its head above water. The Punisher has returned to serve his own brand of justice with everything’s he’s got… but can he survive the darkness stored in his own arsenal? Plus bonus pages exploring some of the new personalities in Frank’s life…and how closely intertwined living is with dying.

I’ll admit right away that I am not a fan of the Punisher – especially in the mainstream Marvel universe. Never have been, and probably never will be. Still, I am a fan of Greg Rucka, and I’ve always believed that it’s the creator that matters, not the character. Does that ring true with this series? The answer lies beyond the cut.

To use one of my favorite ways to start reviews, I’m going to be honest: I think I got myself too excited for this issue. Maybe general Greg Rucka withdrawal made me temporarily forget that #1s tend to not impress me that much – it’s usually by issue two or three where I start feeling “okay, I like this” or “…yeah, this isn’t worth continuing.” And, no, I wasn’t impressed with the main feature of this issue. Not that it was bad, of course, it just wasn’t terribly interesting. The majority of the issue was dedicated for setting the stage with what Frank will be going up against in the first arc, and while that’s all fine and dandy it doesn’t there isn’t much of a big “hook” just yet. Following this, we have a pretty neat sequence of the Punisher killing some thugs, which isn’t anything new and exciting, even if it was very well scripted – at least, as far as I can tell, but more on that later. It’s not that a story needs to be groundbreaking in terms of what it does in order to be great – I’ve said this time and time again, but what matters is how you tell the story – but if the run doesn’t have a crazy hook like, oh, turning Frank into an angel, then the first issue is just not going to be that great nine times out of ten, due to the necessity of basic exposition. It’s the first issue curse, and not even Greg Rucka is immune to it.

The “back-matter,” on the other hand, is great. One of the cardinal rules of prose is to show and not tell. While this rule applies to comics in a sense, one of the great things about the medium is that you can tell one thing while showing something completely different. You can tell that Rucka put a lot of thought into what image would serve as the best counterpoint to the dialogue, and it really builds up a great cadence that demonstrates Rucka’s technical brilliance. Plus, it was enough to keep me interested in the title. At the end of the first part, I didn’t have much reason to come back for more (besides my prior familiarity with Rucka). By finishing the “interview” at the end, though, I finally got that “hook” that I wanted. What is Walter Bolt’s relationship with Frank? How is this going to affect how the “main” story plays out? How should I feel about Bolt? Why does Rucka feel the need to give Walters a bad name? And so on and so forth. Now Rucka has established a reason for me – and, more importantly, someone that isn’t already a fan of Rucka’s – to come back.

I’m not sure how to feel about artist Marco Checcheto. His larger images – for example, the “I returned fire” page of the interview – are excellent, and his style fits the tone of this book to the letter. The busier his pages get, though, the more his quality deteriorates. Obviously, this is true of any artist. The more panels, the less space each panel has. The less space, the harder it is to make the panel look particularly outstanding. It’s more pronounced with Checcheto’s work, though. The action scenes are particularly noteworthy in this regard. It’s not so much a matter of technical drawing ability, but of storytelling. While I can understand that maybe the scene with Frank was supposed to be vague and hard to follow visually, the
punch
shoot-up at the wedding took a lot of scrutinizing to really figure out what was going on. I want to give Checcheto some accolades for his style, but I need to see him get a little bit better at storytelling before I do that.

This isn’t a bad issue. It isn’t great, either. Is it worth buying? Well… I’m not sure just yet. Sometimes you just have to wait until issue two to make your decision. I don’t want my bias toward Rucka to affect my decision making too much, but I’m willing to bet that things will start picking up with the next issue. Until then, though, I’m not so sure.

Final Verdict: 6.0 – Browse for now.


Walt Richardson

Walt is a former editor for Multiversity Comics and current podcaster/ne'er-do-well. Follow him on Twitter @goodbyetoashoe... if you dare!

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