Thursday, August 03, 2017

Usually, the body horror in the Punisher is the piles of bodies.


I had to take a quick glance, since for some reason I thought I had issue one of this; and I may have been thinking of Punisher: the Ghosts of Innocents. I have the first of that, but today we've got from 1991, Punisher: P.O.V. #3-4, written by Jim Starlin, art by Bernie Wrightson, colors by Bill Wray.

The Punisher catches you up pretty quickly on this one: he's been after one Deke Wainscroft, a former revolutionary turned murderer, now genetically engineered by his scientist father to be virtually unkillable. S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Kingpin were both after Deke, in the hopes of exploiting his secret enhancement; but the Punisher just wants him dead. If he can die...

For good measure, there's also a series of women attacked by Deke, now being killed off by an insane "monster hunter." The hunter is deluded, but actually on to something, surprisingly effective, and not a good person. Neither is the senior Wainscroft, although since the U.S. government wants his super-soldiers, Nick Fury has to work with him. Fury's not thrilled about that, and both lets Frank do a lot of the heavy lifting, then leaves him with the cops; yet still gets in a pretty good last word. (Fury knows damn well the cops there had less than no chance of bringing Frank in, but figured it might slow him down for a minute.) There is some pretty visceral horror, especially in the fourth issue, but also some scenes that underline the amount of humanity the Punisher still had left, and it might be more than you might think.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

If nothing else, that Bernie Wrightson art though! My god it looks good!