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The Punisher: UNCENSORED

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The Punisher: UNCENSORED
By: Zachary Smith, Bakotopia.com contributor
Description: Graphic novel series gets extreme. Warning: disturbing imagery ahead!

Topics: Punisher, Bakotopia, comics, Graphic Novel, MAX, Frank Castle, Violence, Garth Enniz
Posted by zsmith Mon Jan 7, 2008 13:43:28 PST
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0 responses 1 comment
The Punisher: UNCENSORED
Graphic novel series gets extreme. Warning: disturbing imagery ahead!



By Zachary Smith, Bakotopia.com contributor

“Payback is a mother******…”

If you think payback’s bad, you haven’t met Frank Castle aka Punisher. These words define Garth Ennis’ removal of Punisher from the standard Marvel Universe into a darker, more realistic world.

There are currently two Punisher titles out right now, one is Punisher: War Journal, which keeps Frank Castle tied into the regular Marvel U. Then there is what this article is about, “Punisher: MAX.” Under the MAX imprint, writers and artists are allowed to take familiar characters into uncensored territory. The MAX flagship title is “Punisher” (other titles you can check out are “FURY,” “Rawhide Kid,” “The Hood” and “CAGE”).

Garth Ennis is one of my favorite writers, and he took over writing “The Punisher” at the turn of the millennium, rescuing Frank Castle from a bad decision to make Punisher a vehicle of vengeance for the lord. Ennis brought Punisher back to familiar territory: killing criminals and doing it with efficiency.

The problem Ennis encountered was that this book was still restricted and could not break boundaries of censorship, so he decided to make the book humorous as well as violent. He also had Punisher interact with his fellow Marvel properties: using Spider-Man as a shield during a beating, blasting off Wolverine’s face and testicles, beating up Daredevil and letting the Hulk loose upon all three of them.

After a few years of very entertaining work, Marvel allowed Ennis to take “The Punisher” to the next level.

The first work yielded was “Punisher: BORN.” This explored Frank Castle’s experience in Vietnam and how he was formed and shaped into the mass murdering machine he would eventually become.

Favorite moment: A man in Castle’s unit attempts to rape a Viet-Cong woman, but as he does Castle kills her to prevent it. When the soldier goes to the river to wash the brain matter from his face, Frank drowns the rapist soldier in the river. When asked why, Castle replies, “I wanted to punish him.”

During the “In the Beginning” series Ennis eventually received an ongoing storyline, and he let loose the beast that is Punisher.

Crashing the birthday party of a mob don by walking into the party and shooting the crime boss in the head, Castle walks back outside and waits for the henchmen and soldiers to react.

“It’s Omaha Beach, Wounded Knee, Rorke’s Drift - the killing fields … The first day on the Somme, World War Three in North Jersey. Only now, pouring automatic fire into a human wall - do I feel something like peace,” Castle tells himself.

Castle’s next move is to attack the funeral of the crime boss he murdered and kill a few dozen more criminals - all while being observed by a Special Ops team wanting to recruit him for America’s “War on Terror.” On the Special Ops team is Castle’s old partner Microchip who must recruit him or the team will kill Castle, which Micro doesn’t want.

Favorite moment: Frank’s time in Vietnam taught him more than the ability to kill, it also taught him about people in power.

“Fighting for the people who run the world gets you stabbed in the back,” he said. “You fight the wars they start and feed. You kill the monsters they create.

You die from handling depleted uranium while they get rich on oil. I’m not going back to war so colt can sell another million M-16s. I had enough of that in Vietnam.”

“Kitchen Irish,” the next arc of the book, brings Ennis closer to home. Garth Ennis is an Irishman, and “Kitchen Irish” deals with Irish hoodlums in New York City and members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) hiding there. Castle is drawn into the mess as the diner he’s eating in is caught in the blast of a bomb set off across the street, in an Irish pub.  As he watches an armless woman vomit up blood and glass, Castle knows he can't do anything about it. Frank

Castle is mad, and wants to know why this is happening?  A mate of Castle's from M.I.6. (British special ops) is on the trail of the man who set the bomb, and he takes advantage of Castle's involvement, and uses the killing machine at his disposal.

Favorite moment: A man with a hole in his chest after the bomb went off asks Frank for help.

“So I do,” Castle says. “For no reason I can pin down it becomes very important that this guy makes it. Maybe he has a wife and kids. Maybe he wants to see them again like nothing else on earth. I find a rip in the pulsing wall and seal it with my thumb, the torn heart doing its best to pump itself to destruction. Snapped ribs gouge my wrist and I remember doing this before - under fire, in Vietnam. If a medic doesn’t show, I know what happens next.”

Good news, the man lives.

In “Mother Russia” Castle is recruited by Nick Fury to retrieve a girl who is host to a virus that the U.S. military wants. The problem: she’s stuck in a nuclear silo in Russia. Fury’s reason for picking Castle for the job?

“There’s no one left who can do the ... job anymore,” says Fury in the book.

Castle arrives in Russia on a H.A.L.O. drop. Castle encounters some trouble at the silo and gets stuck. He staves off wave after wave of Russian troops, all by himself in true Punisher fashion - all the while playing a deadly game with a Russian general.

How does he get out of the silo? He holds Russia hostage with the nukes at his disposal.

Favorite moment: Trying to comfort the little girl is a foreign experience to Frank, as his thoughts reveal: “Not feeling good about this. Don’t know if my Russian’s up to it. And the last kid I spoke to was my daughter, pushing her guts back into her belly - telling her she was going to make it.”

In the “Up is Down and Black is White” series, Ennis starts bringing characters back from previous arcs - a mobster named Nicky Cavella who was brought in to deal with Punisher after he laid waste to the group of mobsters from the first book; Rawlins, a government operative who was involved in the “Mother Russia” story arc; and O’Brien, an incarcerated CIA operative who was involved with the team from the first book who tried to capture Frank and use him.

(The book includes a sex scene between O’Brien and Castle, which I found much more disturbing than the violence.)

In the book Cavella finds a way to upset Punisher: Digging up the bodies of his family, urinating on them and releasing a tape of the act on TV so that Frank will see it - and he does.

What ensues is a killing spree never before seen by the people of New York City. Punisher murders criminal after criminal, leaving one man alive at every massacre with one message for the city: “Bury his family.”

Favorite moment: Castle reminisces about a dream he has. “There’s a dream I have from time to time ... I hold the trigger down until they’re all gone - but I don’t stop. The innocents are watching, just like always, the slack-jawed thousands, gazing at the beast. My family lay red and shredded in the grass. I face the crowd and bring the weapon to my shoulder. If my world ends, I tell them, so does yours. The recoil starts and I wake up. It’s just a dream, I always tell myself. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.”

“The Slavers” story arc is by far my favorite, and also the most disturbing. It’s about the real-world crime of sex slavery, girls abducted off the streets of their towns who are beaten, raped and forced into prostitution.

Frank is drawn into this world by a girl named Viorica who tells Castle of her journey and abuse. Through the book I found Castle’s character to be portrayed in the most violent and horrific manner ever.  And though I want to talk about this book so much, I feel I would be doing this great work a disservice by giving something away.

“Later on she told me the whole story,” says Castle about the day Viorica left her village. “All about the old man, Cristu and Vera, about the thing her father said and about her baby. When she was done, I knew a lot of men would have to die.”

Favorite moment: Frank finds the madam who helped strip girls of their will to fight, in her office in a high rise building. The office is made of shatter-proof glass and Frank takes advantage of it by repeatedly throwing the woman against the glass - horrifically hurting her each time - until the frame of the glass bends and she falls to her death.

“It was in that moment that I realized something.  A dull, blurred feeling that I’d had since this whole mess began, all of a sudden crystal clear. It had been a long, long time since I hated anyone the way I hated them,” says Castle as he gruesomely “punishes” the criminals.


If you have the stomach and are interested in reading more “Punisher: Max”

• “Vol 6. Barracuda” - Castle meets his match, taking a beating I’'ve never seen him take before.
• “Vol 7. Man of Stone” - the general from Mother Russia returns, as does O'Brien and Rawlins.
• “Vol. 8. The Widow Maker” - a group of women plot to take down the man who killed their husbands: Punisher - but a past mistake has come back to haunt them.

MISSED PART-ONE & TWO OF OUR COMIC SERIES?
(CLICK PIC BELOW AND GET CAUGHT UP!)


*Originally printed in Bakotopia Magazine, Issue 19, 1 - 10 - 08
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Comment From: matt

Mon Jan 7, 2008 13:50:03 PST
Man, these books get crazy! I doubt some of these could ever get made into films...ya think? Thanks Z! Matt
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