This was another of several prestige format Punisher books, on the tailend of his 80's heyday. On the trail of a mysterious arms auction, Frank goes undercover as a mercenary, to work with a pretty young reporter and a former Iron Man supporting character. (Security chief Vincent Martinelli, a deep cut, but nice use of continuity.) The weapon up for bids turns out to be an old Iron Man suit. Really old, a gray one: I wouldn't have thought there were that many of those to lose. There was still at least one floating around in Iron Man #300...
You don't see this very often anymore, but this was from a time when writers at least pretended that Frank might someday work past his loss and find his way to a normal life and wasn't completely dead inside. Looking back, that may have been a pretty brief time...Out of all those prestige format books Marvel did with the Punisher, offhand the only one I remember buying new was Punisher: G-Force, which was from 1992. That heyday lasted longer than I may have thought!
I know some storyline is coming up with Frank in the War Machine armor, which might be a good thing: it feels like his book may have had its moments over the last couple of years, but has overall lost some traction. Maybe a spell in the suit will do him some good.
Wow, that last page you scanned....damn.
ReplyDeleteYeah Frank's up to be War Machine 2.0. I know it won't last long, as these things tend not to, but it should be interesting to see the consequences, both by his targets and by Tony Stark once he finds out about this.