Superhero comic books, especially those from the Big Two, have largely dealt with very black and white morality. You have your heroes and you have your villains and, most of the time, the hero punches the villain enough times that the day is saved. However, one of the characters that rather nicely subverts that idea is The Punisher who is, at best, a gun-toting anti-hero and, at worst, a psychopathic mass-murdered. Here, Marc Guggenheim and Leinil Yu asks the question: What happens when the Punisher goes to court?
Written by Marc Guggenheim
Illustrated by Leinil Yu
The unthinkable happens when the Punisher surrenders himself to police!
The trial of the century begins as Frank Castle admits to murdering a district attorney!
Is this the end of the Punisher’s war on crime?
Something to get out of the way first: this book has no ties to the conclusion of the Greg Rucka penned “Punisher: War Zone”, which left Frank imprisoned by the Avengers at the bottom of the ocean. As a fan of The Punisher as a character, that’s somewhat disappointing, but it’s no reflection on the book at hand. In fact, the book at hand largely operates disconnected from most other stories about the Punisher. It’s a completely stand alone story with no prior reading of the character required. Most everything you would need to know about the Punisher as a character is presented on the page here, actually, making this is a very good introductory comic for the Punisher in Marvel NOW!
Marc Guggenheim’s story, according to his letter printed in the back of the issue, started mostly as a ‘What If?’ scenario. What if Frank Castle went to court? It’s a very simple idea for a Punisher story and, surprisingly, not one that’s been done before and Guggenheim pulls it off well. Tonally, he nails ambiguous morality of the Punisher character and nicely juxtaposes that against a courtroom environment that he’s never encountered before. It allows for some really interesting scenarios already, like a scene involving a psychological evaluation of Frank. However, for the first in a two-issue series, there is a lot of story being told here. This means that some scenes, like the aforementioned psych eval scene, don’t have that much space to breathe. A scene like that could last for page, but here is confined to a one page splash and is mostly conveyed through Frank’s narration of the issue. This is less a complaint about Guggenheim’s writing, which is incredibly well suited to writing the Punisher, and more a complaint that his writing deserved more space. Even from the story presented in this issue alone it’s clear that this series could easily be extended by an issue or two. My main complaint about the writing, then, is that I just want more.
To compliment Marc Guggenheim’s morally ambiguous examination of Frank Castle is Leinil Yu, who brings some of his grittiest pencils yet. Yu’s work here is nothing like what we’ve seen from him in other Marvel NOW! titles, bringing back the harsh edge to his pencils. Leinil Yu at his grittiest becomes almost the perfect Punisher artist as he channels the likes of gangster and crime films to create an aesthetic that is just as dark and hard-edged as the character himself. There is no praise high enough for Yu here as he continues to out-do himself, making even the simplest dialogue scene tense thanks to the weight he gives to Castle. It feels like the Hannibal film that never was as he presents the Punisher like a caged animal, all wrapped up in a nice suit, spending the court scenes mostly silent. It’s simply, but it is very effective and it really elevates the book even more.
As mentioned, there’s only really one thing bringing this book down and it’s how little space Guggenheim really has to work with story-wise. While the issue isn’t exactly as action-packed as you might think from a Punisher story, it does play nicely into a slow-burn legal drama that paints The Punisher more in the vein of Hannibal Lecter than a gun-totting anti-hero. However, the lack of space in just this first issue to tell all of the story Guggenheim seems to want to tell means that he has to rely heavily on the use of Castle’s narration. This unfortunately leads to a lot of breaking the rule of ‘show, don’t tell’ which is a rule especially true for a visual medium like comics. Which means that sometimes Leinil Yu’s art feels underused and subservient to the narration, which is really telling the story. This doesn’t necessarily lead to a bad issue, it just feels like it could have been so much more if only they’d had more room to work with.
Overall, this is a very simple Punisher story idea turned into a very good Punisher story, despite limitations. Guggenheim really understands Frank Castle as a character and manages to show him in a light that he’s never really been shown before. Yet, thanks to Leinil Yu, Castle feels just as dangerous unarmed and in a courtroom than he does in the streets with an M60. For what it is, this is a very good Punisher story.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – Buy, especially if you’re a fan of the Punisher.
