Random Happenstance

I needed an easy one to wrap up the week, and this might be it: from 1989, Punisher #19, "The Spider" Written by Mike Baron, pencils by Larry Stroman, inks by Randy Emberlin.

This might seem a little low-stakes, but Frank was building up some cash by offering heroin at cut-rate prices to local dealers, to lure them out and murder them. A chance encounter spirals out of control: one of his neighbors nearly chokes to death, and Frank saves her with the Heimlich, but she comes back to thank him at an inopportune time, and is killed by Aussie dealer 'Spider' Roque, leaving an orphan. Frank isn't about to let that slide, and follows the fleeing Roque back to Sydney; where he makes contact with a local to pick up some guns, with them using the fake names "Eastman" and "Laird." I don't know if Sydney is (or was) as grotty as Stroman makes it look there, though.

Following Roque into the outback, even Frank appears to be skeeved out by the horrible, horrible wildlife in Australia; but it comes in handy in the end. Returning home, Frank pivots from attempting to save a veterans' home, to getting the orphan into a good one. This felt like a situation Frank would get into every so often, where he'd be looking down the barrel of a gun, but could still reliably count on greed getting him out of it, like "Wait! I've got cash" had saved his ass as often as a ballistic knife or hold-out pistol. OK, sometimes in conjunction with those, but still.