Thursday, December 21, 2023

Mods are asleep, post Cringe.

From 1995, Punisher #99, "Bury Me Deep" Written by Chuck Dixon, pencils by Rod Whigham, inks by Rudy Nebres and L-Man (Elman Brown).
Frank has been forced to do some detective work, which really isn't his forte even if he had been at the top of his game. Even though he was seemingly running on fumes and a refusal to sleep, he was still determined to find Cringe, a mystery-figure that had been taunting him over video messages. Frank blows up a snitch and a bunch of biker types, when they have no leads; but his hacker-hostages Mouse and Pony may have found something: an old factory, for something called Cringelli Industries.
Meanwhile, Microchip was preparing his new Punisher, Carlos "C.C." Cruz; who had previously said no to the offer but then saw a kid gunned down and changed his mind. Newly kitted out with a masked uniform, C.C. listens to his first mission, going after Rosalie Carbone. Frank finds "Here Lies the Punisher R.I.P." spray-painted on the wall at the Cringelli factory, and knows it's a trap but goes in anyway: he knows better, but the sound of a child crying lures him further in...to find his house: a reconstruction of the house he lived in with his family, before becoming the Punisher. Furious, Frank smashes several family photos, before a message kicks in, from 'Cringe.' Which was a computer-generated disguise, it was really Microchip, and this was an intervention. Frank was locked in a soundproof room, with plenty of food and water, but no one around for miles. Micro wanted Frank to stop being the Punisher, before it killed him...
I don't know if the cancellation of all the Punisher's books was on the radar at this point--I kinda think not, because there was also a full page ad for Lynn Michaels taking over Punisher War Journal. It's also weird that Micro seems adamant that the Punisher was needed, but maybe wanted someone more easy to work with than Frank. And for Frank, getting killed as the Punisher was hardly a bug, it was definitely a feature.

1 comment:

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

Isn't simply amazing how ahead of their time certain writers were back then? At least as far as the concept of cringe goes nowadays.
I may not like his politics, especially now, but Dixon was definitely a solid choice as writer for characters like the Punisher, Batman, etc.
Just don't ask him about Moon Knight, because he'll just call 'em a Batman knock-off, and that's just the polite version of how he feels, or felt about him, circa the 90's, according to an interview w/ Wizard Magazine. Maybe he's changed his mind since, idk.

What number of betrayals by Microchip are we on btw by this point? I'm sure it's way more than Frank typically would've ever allowed, thus why he eventually killed him. I think....

Speaking of, how many replacement Punishers has Microchip gone through over the years?

Had to look up Cruz, and he was killed by some random baddie named Stone Cold, and I automatically thought, Stone Cold Steve Austin killed him? lol.