Review: Punisher #1
A new Punisher series hit the stands this week by fantastic crime-writer Greg Rucka, and it’s an awesome comic that’s light on actual Punisher, but great on atmosphere and future potential. The art is realistic and moody, the story is rich with wickedness and the Punisher comes off as the boogeyman – which is exactly the Punisher I want.
Punisher #1
Though nothing will ever compare to the glorious 11-volume Punisher masterpiece by Garth Ennis.
Still, let’s get to the new issue. We open with a military wedding (or the reception afterwards), with a happy couple and a beautiful bride. Then some violent men with guns interrupt the party, and those men have brought death and destruction with them. The wedding erupts in gunfire, shattered glass and chaos, and soon a lot of people are dead, including the groom. The bride is just hanging on, but only by a thread. The police arrive soon after to investigate.
And it’s here that we’re introduced to probably the true protagonists of this tale: NYPD detectives Walter Bolt and Oscar Clemons. The former is the young, white rookie detective, while the latter is the aged, wise black detective who just happens to look a lot like Morgan Freeman. This is an interesting tactic for the comic, to not focus on the Punisher. Frank Castle is by no means a shy guy. Plenty of comics in the past have had the Punisher at the forefront with internal monologue and everything. Perhaps we’ll still get that as the series continues, but for now we start with Bolt and Clemons. There is no internal monologue, just dialogue.
Clemons and Bolt
The two detectives do some cursory work at the crime scene and trade a little dialogue, establishing that Clemons may be getting too old for this sort of carnage, and that Bolt may still be more than a little wet behind the ears. We learn more than enough to get a handle of the two, so they will make suitable entry characters into the world of the Punisher. Because unlike other bright and colorful superheroes, Frank Castle, the Punisher, lives in the dark, grimy streets of New York City. He’s only a man (with a lot of guns), and he deals with bodies, cops, hard-boiled detectives and violent criminals. And that’s how the Punisher should be. I don’t want the Punisher fighting Doctor Doom or super-villains. He’s first and foremost a street-level vigilante, and that’s how I enjoy him.
A little background in case you’re not familiar with the Punisher. Frank Castle was a soldier in Vietnam who saw first hand the horrors of war, while receiving more than a little military and special ops training. When he returned stateside to his wife and two kids, he was looking forward to an idyllic family life – but that was not to be. While out on a picnic one day, his family was gunned down in a shootout between two rival mobs. Castle and his family had nothing to do with the mobsters, they were just collateral damage in the shootout. But Frank survived. From then on, he has used all of his military training and connections to wage a one-man-war on crime. He’s not out for revenge against those specific mobsters, he’s out to punish any and all criminals who break the law.
He’s the ghost story that mobsters tell their children.
Like this...He's almost spectral, but still human
Moving on, Det. Clemons is ready to interview some of the survivors, but Bolt gets a suspicious text message about a drop spot. We cut to a subway terminal, where a nervous Bolt is sitting on a bench next to an envelope. We catch a glimpse of a suspiciously shadowed man in a black trenchcoat passing through the crowd, and then we get a brief glimpse of an underground bunker armed to the teeth. That envelope contained crime scene photos of the wedding. Looks like Bolt is passing information on to the Punisher.
The next scene is at a bar, where violent men who invaded the wedding are kicking back with a celebratory drink. They’re having fun in the crowded bar. Then the lights go out. Then people start dying. The men pull out their own guns, but they dare not shoot because they’ll only hit each other. They group up, but it doesn’t help. More blood. More bodies. Like a wraith, the Punisher moves through the crowd taking them out one-by-one until only the leader is left. And that’s when we get our first real look at the Punisher in this comic.
Bad. Ass.
Punisher goes to shoot the leader in the head, but he’s out of bullets. So the Punisher lets him live and walks off. Ideally he has something else in mind for this guy.
And that’s it. That’s where the story ends. It’s tragically short. We do get a back-up feature told in the style of a police interrogation/interview. It’s a flashback to how Bolt met the Punisher back when he was a vice cop making drug busts. He and his undercover partner were at the scene of a drug deal, in some sort of courtyard. There were also kids around. Something at the bust goes belly up and it becomes obvious that the bullets are about to fly. Bolt, still young, is scared out of his mind. His partner is in the middle of it, as are the kids. What’s he going to do?
Bolt doesn’t have to decide. A gloved hand grabs his mouth while the other hand pulls the fire alarm to get the kids out. Then the bullets do start flying, and the Punisher steps out. He pushes Bolt back and draws his weapon, returning fire. The Punisher obliterates these drug dealers, killing them with military-like precision. Bolt’s partner dies, but all the bad guys are dead and the kids are safe. Back at the station, Bolt gets all the credit. It’s hard to tell if he’s willingly taking it, or if everyone just believes it did it all himself because the Punisher didn’t stick around to talk to the cops. Whatever happened, Bolt makes detective and is now in the pocket of the Punisher.
It’s a nice little back story setting up Bolt and the Punisher. Plus it’s much more of an action scene than the massacre in the bar. So we actually get to see the Punisher shooting and doing a damn good job of it. The Punisher is absolutely badass in this entire comic, and that’s important. A lot of superheroes seem to require a softer side, like Spider-Man. Part of the appeal of Spidey is that he’s a regular guy with foibles and problems that he has to balance alongside his superhero life. Not Frank Castle. The Punisher is at his absolute best when he doesn’t have any reservations, doesn’t have any doubt in himself or his mission. He his cold and hard and determined 100% of the way.
When Punisher isn’t the nitty, gritty hard-boiled vigilante, it can get kind of silly.
His classic costume is ludicrous. Even without the white booties.
So consider me sold on this new series. It’s got the perfect amounts of street-level violence and epic Punisher badassery, with a couple of cool detective characters to serve as foils. Greg Rucka is a fantastic author. I know him best from the DC series Gotham Central, which was about the Gotham City Police Department trying to do their jobs in a city where the criminals are homicidal clowns and Batman is expected to solve everything. That series is brilliant, and is a fine indicator that Rucka can handle the same level of characters in the Punisher. The art is by Marco Checchetto, who I’ve never heard of before. But it’s nicely realistic while also haunting. It should be a nice fit.
And one of these days I’ll tell you about the Garth Ennis run on the Punisher. It’s one of the most brilliant and amazing comic book sagas ever written, and I have all 11 volumes on my bookshelf. Here’s a taste of the Punisher’s dialogue and his badassness.
Click to enlarge
So…it’s Superman
Warner Bros. released the first teaser image of the new Superman for their upcoming 2013 movie Man of Steel. The actor is Henry Cavill.
Smashy! Smashy!
I’m in different. Mostly because I’ve never been a big Superman fan. The picture is cool, but at this point it’s nothing more than a tease for a movie two years away. A great tease, sure, but it’s little more than a Halloween costume really. I guess it gives us an early look at the Superman costume.
And it’s really dark. Really really dark. So much for the brightness of Superman. He’s also smashing a vault of some kind. That’s an improvement over not really smashing anything in Superman Returns. But all this picture screams is ‘DARK’. Warner Bros. really wants a dark and gritty Superman movie, so I guess they’ll get one.
But I’m not exactly opposed to that. As I said, I’ve never been a big Superman fan. I like the themes and what he stands for more than the actual character. Which is too bad, since both Clark Kent and I are mild-mannered reporters. So if DC and the WB want to make a dark and gritty Superman movie, I’m not about to complain. The original Superman films were alright. I saw them for the first time only a few years ago, and they were OK. Superman Returns was terrible because it was just a love letter to those original films.
Hopefully with Man of Steel they can try something new and actually exciting with Superman. If it has to be dark and gritty, so be it.
Requiem for a Comic Book; the End of Secret Six
A comic book died today.
Possibly the greatest comic book published by DC Comics in the past many years, and it has been cancelled with issue #36. Universally beloved, a critical darling and absolutely perfect page after page after page. There was no greater cast, no greater stories coming out of DC than those from the Secret Six.
Who?
These sons of bitches right here.
God speed, you sons of bitches
Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, Bane, Jeannette, King Shark, Parademon, Cheshire, Black Alice and Harley Quinn for an issue or two. Yes, that’s a lot more than six, but they changed a few characters here and there. And again, you’re probably asking, ‘Who the Hell are these characters?’ It’s a reasonable question.
Read on, and I will tell you about these warrior poets, these losers among gods.
The concept of the Secret Six is very simple. Writer Gail Simone (who has written nearly every single issue this team has appeared in) created a super-villain team starring some of the lamest, most obscure characters in the DC Universe. She also made up a few, just for kicks. The first team was Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, Cheshire and Parademon, and they debuted in the mini-series Villains United. That 6-issue story is the single greatest team story I have ever read. There is more heart, character and inter-team camaraderie between these six obscure nobodies than in the entire history of the Justice League, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four or anybody else. We’re talking Firefly levels of character dynamic.
And that is what makes the core of the Secret Six: heart.
The story begins with an Event Comic called Infinite Crisis, and Villains United was one of four separate mini-series that told a prologue to the main Event. Villains United focused on the massive super-villain army that Lex Luthor was building. He already had his power players, like Black Adam, Deathstroke and Talia al Ghul, and he was going about recruiting all the minor villains too. The bigger the army, the better.
Something like this...
The Secret Six are the people who turned Lex Luthor down. They all had their various reasons for doing so, with a strong focus on Catman in the beginning. Up until then, Catman had been a joke villain. Just look at his name. He’d become a punching bag for all the heroes out there. Well in Villains United we learn that Catman put the world behind him and retired to Africa, where he became a lean, mean fighting machine living among the lions on the African Savannah. And he just didn’t want to give that up for Lex Luthor.
Meanwhile, a mysterious figure named Mockingbird recruits these Six to help him disrupt Lex Luthor’s plans. He has leverage on all six of them to get them to work for him, so they do so grudgingly. Catman is the lion-like power fighter with the noble spirit and vicious dark side; Scandal is the daughter of the immortal Vandal Savage and is trying hard to make a name for herself; Ragdoll is the insane and comically loopy son of the original Ragdoll; Deadshot is the expert marksman with a nonchalant and aloof manner; Parademon is a refugee from the extradimensional nightmare planet Apokolips and Cheshire is one of the world’s deadliest assassins with her own secret agenda. The book was a long shot, and I can’t imagine anyone expected it to really work.
But the magic pen of Ms. Simone made it happen.
Famous for her work on Birds of Prey, especially with Barbara Gordon, Gail Simone is probably the most famous female writer in the comic book industry. She’s got a fantastic wit and a sense of character, and she brought it all to bear with the Secret Six. Villains United was an instant hit, though I didn’t read it until after it came out as a trade paperback. I’d heard great things on the Interwebs, so I gave it a look. I haven’t turned away since.
Going their way
Villains United made way for a second mini-series, and eventually an ongoing series launched in September 2008 to much applause. I’m serious when I say that Secret Six is universally beloved. I imagine every comic fan out there will agree that this comic, this cast of characters, is and always has been pure gold. The new series lost none of the heart but upped the adventures. Now they could have more and more stories, with new team members coming and going. Bane joined the team, breathing new life into the villain that was famous in the mid-90s for breaking Batman’s back but never did anything else. Jeanette, a new character, joined the team to add some feminine whiles and more characters came and went. The core was always Catman, Deadshot, Scandal and Ragdoll. They became a pseudo family, characters so obscure that they had no one else but came to cling to one another.
Like the various times they just went out clubbing with each other. Or when the Deadshot, Scandal and Ragdoll broke off from Bane and Jeanette to tag after Catman after he broke into a psychotic rage to track down the men who had kidnapped his infant son. And they were also at each others’ throats more often than not, but rarely was it vicious. It was just business. They were used to pointing knives at each other, they didn’t take it personally. The Secret Six existed in a world of gray mortality. Some were outright villains, some were heroic in nature and they were always sort of wondering where they fit in the great spectrum from superhero to super-villain.
The most recent stories had them going to Hell to both make peace with themselves and to recover some lost teammates.
Merchandising!
But all good things must come to an end. As I’ve written about before, DC is relaunching their entire comic book line in September. For some reason, they decided not to just bring Secret Six over into the relaunch. Hence it has been cancelled with today’s issue, #36. I don’t know what’s going to happen to most of the characters. Since Bane is going to be in The Dark Knight Returns, chances are he’s going to be getting a big push over the next year. Some of them, specifically Deadshot and King Shark, will be appearing in the new Suicide Squad book. I’ll be picking it up because it seems like it might be the spiritual successor of Secret Six.
We shall see.
Fortunately, Gail Simone will still be writing for DC, so hopefully someday she’ll be able to bring everyone back.
So how does the final issue stack up? It’s alright overall, with a couple of great moments. It’s the second half a 2-part story to finish off the series. The team recently returned from Hell, where Bane learned that his soul would go to Hell for his various crimes. However, Bane had always thought himself a noble and honorable person. He lived by a solid moral code.
Batman's back was not as solid
But now that he knows he is going to Hell no matter what he does, Bane has decided that he must truly break Batman to make his life mean anything. He has since learned about emotions and teamwork while with the Six, and he’s decided that breaking Batman’s back was just a physical set-back. To truly break the Batman, one must take out his heart, meaning his sidekicks and allies. So he recruits the Six to help him kill Red Robin, Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon and others. They go along with it because they support Bane.
The issue is littered with flashbacks, giving each character one last moment to shine. Catman and Deadshot have a chance to reflect on the friendship they just can’t acknowledge. Ragdoll just comes out and tells them to suck it up and admit they like hanging out together. Scandal gets one last romantic moment to be with the women she loves, and Jeanette gets to witness that brief happy ending. King Shark gets to eat a guy. Then they all come together for Bane’s plan, ready to support one another one last time.
However, they are double-crossed by the Penguin, who has called in enough favors that the Justice League, Teen Titans and dozens of other superheroes have converged on the Secret Six’s warehouse hideout. There’s a homeless family living in the abandoned warehouse, so the Six have not only a bargaining chip, but one last moral quandary for them to overcome. Is it OK to just kill those hostages in cold blood? Are they heroic and moral enough to let them go?
What about surrender? Batman, Superman and every other hero worth a damn has gathered against them. Why not just give up and go to prison? They’re bad guys, right? Why fight?
That's why. Honestly, this one panel is just so beautiful. It comes from the same scene in Villains United as that giant army of super-villains I posted up above. Catman, this former joke, reaches deep down within himself in this one breath of a moment and comes out fighting. Poetry, people.
So the Secret Six go out in a blaze of glory! They juice up on Bane’s Venom serum (which Bane has made a point to not use in the entirety of the run. It’s a drug, after all). They fight and hold their own against the superheroes, for a little bit at least. The Huntess gets to narrate the final fight, as all the heroes sort of recognize that this isn’t some ordinary super-villain brawl. The heroes recognize the depth, humanity and family that they’re fighting, but they don’t stop fighting. The Six are quickly defeated to be shipped off to whatever future awaits.
A final epilogue reveals that this was Bane’s plan all along. He needed to free himself from this family unit so that he could become hardcore again – but he couldn’t do it himself. He couldn’t just leave them. So he set up this plan to kill Batman’s allies, got everyone involved and he knew that the Penguin would betray them to the superheroes. He knew they would have to make a final stand.
They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And they won their honor, if not their comic book.
Aquaman’s Lament
This is just a fun sort of song that Alyssa found and showed me. It’s adorable and actually kind of catchy. I’ve always been a fan of Aquaman, and I love it when he gets his dues.
I Want to Be a Panda
Or more specifically, a Pandaren.
Blizzard, the company that makes World of Warcraft, has registered the trademark for the name ‘Mists of Pandaria’. Thank you, MMO Champion, for this bit of exciting, squee-worthy news.
I’m not going to get into all the glorious details of World of Warcraft. Hopefully most of you readers already know what the game is. I’ve had two periods in my life where I played, both for a few months at a time. And both times I stopped playing because nobody was around to play with, and because the more complicated, time-consuming quests were stacking up. I haven’t played for probably two years now, unless you count that brief week in early 2010 when I got a free week of playtime.
Basically, I love World of Warcraft. It is everything I could ever want in a video game. Maybe I’ll explain why in a post someday. But as of right now, I’m a recovering addict. I don’t want to pay the $15 a month to play, and I know if I did start playing again, it would consume all of my free time. I’ve avoided the siren call of all the new expansions and playable races (goblins!). It’s just not for me right now.
But I will rejoin World of Warcraft in a heartbeat if they expand into the world of Pandarens.
Artist's Rendering
The primary ‘war’ in World of Warcraft is between humans and orcs, but there are dozens of mythical races in the game like elves, zombies, dwarves, gnomes, centaurs, dragons, etc. A lot of these races are just anthropomorphic animals, like the bovine Tauren, the walrus-people and the werewolves. Tops among these are the Pandarens, essentially sentient, walking, talking pandas who love alcohol. They are utterly brilliant! Not only do they look adorable, but they’re lovable, drunken samurai warriors! That could have been a cartoon show in the 80s! They just look like so much fun, especially in the larger World of Warcraft. But for the longest time they have only ever been something of an urban legend.
Pandarens first appeared in the expansion pack to Warcraft III. You could hire a Pandaren mercenary during the Versus games, and the Pandaren Brewmaster Chen Stormstout would join your group of adventurers if you played the orc campaign. He was a blast. I even own the Chen Stormstout action figure!
In-game rendering of Chen Stormstout
But then when World of Warcraft came out, there were no signs of the Pandarens in the entire game world. Chen got mentioned a tiny little bit, but no Pandarens to talk to, to get quests from and certainly not to play. They were utterly absent. There were rumors flying around that since the Pandarens combined Japanese samurai with Chinese panda bears, that the Asian countries were upset. And they’re a huge market for World of Warcraft. Maybe it’s true, but who knows for sure.
World of Warcraft has had several expansions since it first came out. They’ve added at least two new playable races to reach side, as well as three whole new islands/continents.
If the next expansion brings about Pandaria, their home island, or playable Pandarens, I will gladly fall off the World of Warcraft wagon.
Also, here’s everything you could ever want to know about Pandarens.
