Showing posts with label Bill Reinhold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Reinhold. Show all posts

Wednesday, 5 December 2018

Punisher 29 - Acts of Vengeance

As might be guessed from the cover, this issue is one of the easiest to place in the overall order of the crossover since it features the same fight as in Avengers #312. However it also demonstrates some poor communication and editing across the crossover since the Avengers shown are the-then regular line-up of the east coast team and the venue shown inside is the exterior of the Guggenheim Museum, whereas the actual fight involves a team of mostly west coast Avengers in Avengers Park. More pertinently both Doctors Doom and the mysterious stranger are shown watching the events without the rest of the leading super-villains. It's moments like these that really undermine a crossover as the inconsistencies stand out so prominently. This becomes even more irritating when the Avengers' fight only appears in one panel despite also seizing the cover.

Punisher #29

Writer: Mike Baron
Penciler: Bill Reinhold
Inker: Mark Farmer
Letterer: Ken Lopez
Colourist: Gregory Wright
Editor: Carl Potts
Dr Doom: Tom DeFalco

At a baser level it's also something of a shock to come straight from the Avengers issue where Doctor Doom pointedly stayed aloof from the petty squabbles of the other villains whereas here his scene with the Kingpin shows a much more argumentative Doom who is openly contemptuous of his ally as a "cheap gangster" and much easier to manipulate. The story is entitled "Too many Dooms", which proves quite appropriate given the multiple portrayals of the deposed monarch. Curiously it's the other Doctor Doom, the boy Kristoff with Doom's implanted memories and personality, who comes closer to the more conventional portrayal than the real thing.

Or maybe, as the Punisher speculates, we haven't seen the real Doom at all and instead there are more impostors than a first glance would suggest?

The Punisher is left trying to navigate between the two rival Dooms, with one hoping he will destroy the other but Frank is canny enough to realise the futility of this given the number of Doombots around. Instead he opts to free himself and find a way to bargain out of the situation. This leads to him and Microchip making a dramatic escape from Latveria with even Shield as an obstacle to returning to the States. But his eventual solution proves quite logical.

As individual issues of Punisher this two-part storyline has been quite a good way of taking the crossover premise to produce a solid story with an unusual for. However as part of a wider crossover story the different presentation of a key scene in one of the core chapters and the different portrayal of Doctor Doom sticks out, making this corner rather less effective.

Punisher #29 has been reprinted in:

Wednesday, 21 November 2018

Punisher 28 - Acts of Vengeance

It's easy to forget that there was a time when the Kingpin was the Punisher's greatest living foe. Yet it makes perfect sense for a leading crime lord to not only repeatedly have his operations disrupted by a persistent vigilante but also that he would take action to try to neutralise that problem. However the relationship between the Kingpin and the Punisher is very different from the former's with both Spider-Man and Daredevil. It is much more a business arrangement with the Punisher an operating liability that proves difficult to remove, rather than the personalised struggles elsewhere. But not everyone realises this and so it results in the Punisher being targeted by Doctor Doom.

Punisher #28

Writer: Mike Baron
Penciler: Bill Reinhold
Inker: Mark Farmer
Letterer: Ken Lopez
Colourist: John Wellington
Editor: Carl Potts
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

Time and again throughout this crossover there's a real sense of hostility between at least some of the leading villains (others don't get much panel time together) to the point that they're trying not just to defeat the heroes but to demonstrate that they can succeed where others have failed. Doctor Doom has been used rather a lot in this crossover but most of the time he's been organising the lesser ranks of villains or operating from afar. It's a slightly shocking move to see him taking on a foe directly, even if he is doing it through Doombots.

The idea of the Punisher fighting Doctor Doom at first sounds about as silly as, well, Daredevil versus Ultron but that hasn't stopped this crossover from doing such things. This story features very much the scientific dictator side of Doom rather than the more fantastical, with the deposed monarch deploying a Doombot, mercenaries, a tank and even a pair of fighter planes. It does actually score damage in destroying both the Punisher's van and one of his warehouses but it's all ridiculous overkill, showing how arrogance and rivalry can drive a determined individual to go to extreme lengths.

The Punisher is also a determined man and a canny one. Rapidly realising he can't fight off all the resources of Doom and he can't easily kill someone who operates through an army of duplicate robots, he decides to instead steal something that Doom values and use it to force the doctor to back off. This results in him and Microchip going hiking through the mountains of Latveria in lederhosen, a sight rarely seen. However when he reaches Doom's castle he soon discovers there's more to his new foe than meets the eye.

There's a sense of absurdity to both the Punisher's adventures and to the "Acts of Vengeance" crossover as a whole so a story in which he's targeted by one of the biggest villains in the Marvel universe isn't actually that surprising, especially given the nature of the rivalries amongst the key villains. And Frank's response is perfectly logical. There's plenty of fun imagery in the story, from the hiking to the Punisher's rocket pack, making for a good action packed first parter that sets up a strong conflict on multiple levels.

Punisher #28 has been reprinted in:

Friday, 31 May 2013

Essential Punisher volume 4

Essential Punisher volume 4 contains issues #41-59 and annuals #4-5 from the Punisher's first ongoing series. Mike's Amazing World of Comics allocates a 1991 Summer Special to the series, but it's not included here. Annual #4 is part of "The von Strucker Gambit", a crossover with Daredevil Annual #7 and Captain America Annual #10. Annual #5 is part of "The System Bytes", crossing over with Daredevil Annual #8 (that's the fourth year in a row the Punisher and Daredevil annuals were part of the same crossover), Wonder Man Annual #1 and Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #2. Once again only the Punisher issues are included in this volume.

The bulk of the regular issues are written by Mike Baron, with Chuck Dixon doing two fill-ins. The main artist is Hugh Haynes, but other issues are drawn by Bill Reinhold, Mark Texeira, Neil Hansen, Tod Smith, Ron Wagner and Tom Morgan. A back-up strip in issue #50 is written by Marc McLaurin and drawn by Roderick Delgado. The stories in the annuals are written by variously Baron, Gregory Wright & Dan Chichester, George Caragonne, Peter David, Rob Tokar and Roger Salick, and drawn by Morgan, John Hebert, Mike Harris, Steven Butler, Vince Evans and Val Mayerik. Due to the large number of creators, I've created a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

The series in this period also run a number of pin-ups in the regular issues but usually at most two. The dates on some suggest they were drawn from inventory but it's unclear whether they had been used before or not. I don't know if this was a way of slightly cutting the regular artists' workloads, a chance for other artists to get some exposure or even royalties, or just a way to clear out some backlog material. In general the pin-ups add nothing to the narrative but are kept alongside their original issues so they're not really intrusive.

The only crossovers in this volume come in the two annuals, though one manages to stand on it own rather better than the other. Annual #4 comes without the rest of "The von Strucker Gambit". It might have been more use to present the entire storyline. Here we get a rather confusing middle parter where it's hard to tell what's going on - there's an ongoing conflict between the recently returned Baron von Strucker of Hydra and Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D., with the former testing genetically engineered assassins. There's some interaction with Nick Fury, but it would have been more interesting to give the Punisher another encounter with both Captain America and Daredevil, since the stories in volume 1 showed them to be the best heroes to contrast the Punisher against and it would be nice to see a later take given subsequent developments in all their careers. The back-up stories are far more interesting. Again Microchip gets a solo story and this time he goes to a weight loss health farm, only to discover a criminal operation being run in it. There's also two brief three page affairs, one retelling the Punisher's origin (I've seen a few others of these in other annuals from 1991 but I don't think they were in all of them) and the other featuring him escaping from being taken prisoner by a yuppie and demonstrating why car passengers should always wear seatbelts.

Annual #5 is an improvement on its predecessor and if it wasn't for the banner on the cover and first page proclaiming "The System Bytes" it would be easy to overlook that this is part of a bigger story at all. The main feature sees the Punisher taking on a business that's a front for drug smuggling, with the added complication of a rival smuggler trying to muscle in on the territory. The twist is that the rivals have infected the business's computer system with a virus which complicates the Punisher and Microchip's attempts to obtain information about shipment times. Today in 2013 this may seem like small stuff but back in 1992 computer viruses were very much a major real world concern. Modern readers will easily recognise Microchip's reaction to his system freezing up as he smashes his hand on the keyboard. I'm guessing that the rest of the crossover involves the other heroes dealing with the virus, named "Ultra Max" after its creator, but one can just read this annual and not come away feeling the story is incomplete. The annual's back up stories are a mix as well. Once again we get a Microchip solo tale as he demonstrates his abilities with disguises to infiltrate a hospital to obtain information on a criminal who was only wounded by the Punisher and then having discovered the criminal's contact is his doctor, Microchip uses his hacking skills to alter the criminal's prescription, killing him and setting up the doctor. Another story sees the Punisher take on a gang of vandals in an icehouse. But the feature that's common to just about every annual from 1992 is a three pager presenting the top ten villains of the series or character. Such features are often interesting as a statement of who are considered the biggest foes at any one point, and this one is presented as narrated by the Punisher. However he has the particular problem that most of his foes get killed on their first encounter. So his list consists of:

10. Jigsaw
9. Gregario
8. Sgt. Cleve Gorman
7. The Rev (Sammy Smith)
6. Spider-Man
5. Daredevil
4. The Reavers
3. Saracen
2. The Kingpin of Crime
1. Bruno Costa, Skinner, Kolsky

The inclusion of a couple of heroes on the list is justified by the Punisher on the basis that they get in his way, but indicates the problem in finding enough recurring and/or significant foes for a list of this sort. Most of the other eight have been seen in the Essential Punisher volumes so far, but Sgt. Cleve Gorman appeared in Punisher: Return to Big Nothing, a graphic novel from 1989 in which the Punisher ran into his former drill instructor who had turned crooked. The trio of Costa, Skinner and Kolsky were responsible for killing the Punisher's wife and children so it's understandable that they would be at the top of such a personal list, even though they, like Gorman, Smith and most of the Reavers (following events in Uncanny X-Men), were dead by this time. With Gregario based inside prison (actually called "Riker's Island" here rather than the usual Marvel spelling of "Ryker's Island") this leaves just three significant recurring foes on the loose - Jigsaw, Saracen and the Kingpin. All four appear in this volume.

Otherwise in the regular issues the Punisher faces another assortment of one-off foes in these issues including a group of women terrorists trying to destroy New York's water supply for a mixture of revenge and money, the head of a military academy who produces illegal porn on the side, another Latin American drug dealer and a dodgy doctor who helps with torture, amateur drug manufacturers in a small town facing rapid changes, a serial killer who murders taxi drivers, latter day Nazis, arms dealers, Middle Eastern dictatorships, high ransom kidnappers, an engineer who's built a huge substandard dam and retreated to a special biosphere to live detached from the world, Chinese gangs and ex-military and a woman who steals babies from the poor to be adopted by the rich. Interestingly on more one occasion a foe is motivated into revenge for rape, but rather than taking it out on the individual rapist or rapists in general, the first (actually a friend of the victim rather than the victim herself) focuses their hatred on the whole of New York City and the second on its cab drivers because none would stop to take her from the neighbourhood she found herself in that night and the tragedy occurred as she walked home. In the latter case the Punisher comments that had she instead targeted rapists his reaction to her would have been very different, offering advice on weapons and tactics.

Overall these single parters continue to put the Punisher through a huge variety of situations but as highlighted above there are some signs of repetition in both the types of foes and the motivations. However the series does take some steps towards a greater ongoing narrative with recurring foes. The lack of Essentials for Punisher War Journal really shows itself here when the regular Punisher #47-48 see the return of Saracen, who has become the Punisher's considered greatest enemy after events in Punisher War Journal #25 & #27, which would presumably be covered in a second Essential volume for that series. It's a similar mess to that in the Spider-Man Essentials where the Hobgoblin and alien costume sagas have had their epilogues or conclusions published before much of the previous story. Here's hoping it gets rectified soon, as currently Saracen's shift from one-off ally to recurring villain is left unexplored. The aforementioned issues #47-48 contain a two-part tale about arms in the Middle East. Originally published in February and March 1991, they show the dictatorship of "Trafia", led by President Jekohadeem, a mustachioed military dictator who shoots a subordinate in his own office. Trafia has built a giant supergun for attacks on neighbouring states. Trafia's traditional enemy is the neighbouring Islamic regime "Zukistan" and tensions build between the two, but Trafia is also threatening other states with weapons of mass destruction, most notably Israel. The covers to these issues are even more explicit, with #47 proclaiming "Caught in a Desert Storm!" and #48 shows the Punisher tied to the muzzle with the caption "Next stop: Baghdad!" (It's an odd caption when you consider the gun is located in the parody of Iraq rather than Iran.) It's surprising to see such a direct take on events in the real world from an early 1990s comic, though Jekohadeem has a different fate from Saddam Hussein - he is assassinated by a Mossad agent whereas Saddam did not fall in 1991, despite expectations and hopes.

The last seven issues in the volume feature another multi-part story that originally saw the title go biweekly for the season. "The Final Days" sees the Punisher undergo a marathon of endurance under pressure from the Kingpin. First Microchip is captured and has a finger chopped off to force the Punisher into removing one of the Kingpin's rivals. Then the Punisher gets captured and sent to Riker's Island where amongst the inside violence he once again encounters Gregario and Jigsaw, with the latter being presented rather more seriously than the comic element he sometimes became in previous encounters. Before the Punisher escapes his face is badly slashed, forcing him to seek medical help whilst also being pursued by the Kingpin's men. Meanwhile Microchip has been released, albeit in Thailand, and makes his way home to help the Punisher. By the end the Punisher had found a plastic surgeon and undergoes a startling transformation.

It's a very downbeat saga in which no one is left unscathed. Microchip has been developing a computer game on the side which proves quite successful; unfortunately thus leads to his capture at a toy fair and subsequent wounding then humiliating trek home from being dumped in rural Thailand. The Punisher is shown here to not trust his one friend completely, and maintains a private weapons store that even Microchip doesn't know about, guarded by a loyal dog called Max. Sadly when Microchip is sent to refill Max's feed the Kingpin's men follow him and Max is shot. It's a particularly sad moment when the Punisher finds the dog too wounded to save and has to put him down. Even the Kingpin's men come out badly, with anyone who survives and returns to report failure soon meeting finality at the hands of the crimelord. The Punisher himself endures the fate he's inflicted on Jigsaw when the latter cuts up his face. And the story (and the volume) ends on a shocking moment, though the impact is lessened in black & white as it lacks the most obvious give-away. The Punisher asked the doctor to make his face so that no-one will recognise him and she does just that - by making him black.

I have no idea just how scientifically plausible this scenario is, but there's dialogue about the doctor having conducted experiments with tissue regeneration and melanin, so it certainly sounds scientific enough to convince the lay reader as being realistically possible (and in 1991 the average reader wouldn't be able to just look this up on the internet), give or take the character of the doctor. Melinda Brewer trained in medicine and experimented on the side but found the pressure of hospital work drove her to drugs and was struck off for stealing them and now she works as a prostitute to feed her addiction. So the character is a little far fetched, although it's not as if the Punisher could go to a major stable plastic surgeon who might otherwise treat the likes of Michael Jackson. Melanin is a real word, being the pigment that determines skin colour, so it lends the situation an aura of credibility. But the real test is how the scenario is handled in practice, for which we'll have to await volume 5. If Marvel makes a go of Essentialising Punisher War Journal and bringing it up to speed then we may be waiting a while.

As well as the development of villains, we also see a little development with Microchip, who remains the sole supporting cast member in the title. As seen at the end of the previous volume he has spent some of his time developing a new computer game and some of the issues here show him in the process of refining it until it wins an award at a toy fair, though for Microchip personally this is a double edged sword. We also see his powers of disguise developed, not just in annual #5 but also in "The Final Days" storyline as he adopts a disguise that's notably thinner than his usual bulk and poses as the Punisher's lawyer. The pain and humiliation he undergoes in that storyline serve to underline just how loyal he is to his friend and willing to take almost anything for the greater mission. There's a bit of fleshing out of his background, with issue #46 revealing his father was forced to work for the Nazis in developing destructive weapons before escaping to the States, and issues #47-48 brings a clash from his strong Zionist opinions when the Punisher saves the engineer behind Trafia's supergun, when that state is committed to the destruction of Israel. In this story Microchip makes his own way to the Middle East to help Zukistan destroy its rivals' gun, and cuts a deal with that state to save the Punisher's life, even though it means letting the double-agent Saracen live, an arrangement the Punisher is none too happy with.

It's thanks to putting more development into both the Punisher's aide and his foes that overall this volume feels much more complete than earlier ones. The only story that stands out as a mess is the middle chapter of "The von Strucker Gambit" in annual #4, and that really reflects the wider problems of the annual crossovers in the early 1990s. It's easy to see why the tactic was generally abandoned after 1992. The rest of the series is reasonably high octane, putting the Punisher through some quite tense and gritty situations. In this period Marvel was still putting out its books with Comics Code Authority approval but it would appear that by this point either the Code was largely a rubber stamping formality or else Punisher was really pushing it right up to the permissible limits. The result is one of the more solid and consistent runs on the character and series so far. However the cliffhanger at the end is a sufficiently bizarre move that the next volume may test that...

Friday, 24 May 2013

Essential Punisher volume 3

Essential Punisher volume 3 continues the journey through the Punisher's first ongoing series, containing #21-40 & Annual #2-3, with the exception of one back-up feature from Annual #2. In addition it contains Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for the Shadowmasters and the Reavers. All the regular issues and main features in the annuals are written by Mike Baron, with some back-up features by Roger Salick and Gregory Wright. The regular issues are mostly drawn by Erik Larsen and Bill Reinhold, with others drawn by Mark Texeira, Russ Heath and Jack Slamn, and the annuals see contributions by Reinhold, Texeira, Tod Smith, Jim Lee, Neil Hansen, Eliot R. Brown and Lee Sullivan.

As noted we're already into the period when he had two titles a month, but we've yet to see an Essential Punisher War Journal, though there are occasional references to events there. Fortunately we're not yet faced with rampant crossovers between the two titles. That's not to say the series didn't take part in other crossovers though.

This volume contains the Punisher issues from three crossovers. Annual #2 is part of "Atlantis Attacks", which was a mega-crossover told in fourteen separate annuals in 1989. (The other thirteen annuals were Silver Surfer #2, Iron Man #10, X-Men #13, Amazing Spider-Man #23, Spectacular Spider-Man #9, Daredevil #4, Avengers #18, New Mutants #5, X-Factor #4, Web of Spider-Man #5, Avengers West Coast #4, Thor #14 & Fantastic Four #22, plus interludes in the regular Marvel Comics Presents #26, New Mutants #76 & Avengers West Coast #52. Due to an error the Daredevil annual is actually the second one numbered #4; the following year's annual saw the numbering restored to #6.) As well as the main event the annuals also included "The Saga of the Serpent Crown" which once again sought to reintroduce and tidy up the continuity of a key plot device; the relevant chapter is omitted but the whole crossover can be found in a Marvel Omnibus edition. The following year Marvel changed tact and switched to shorter storylines that ran in only a handful of annuals. Punisher Annual #3 was part of the "Lifeform" crossover (the other three parts were in Daredevil #6, Incredible Hulk #3 and Silver Surfer #3). Meanwhile issues #28 & #29 of the regular comic were part of the "Acts of Vengeance" crossover, a tale so long it encompassed no less than sixty-eight separate comics and takes up two separate Omnibuses (one has the core parts of the crossover, the other the tie-ins).

(Rather than fill up this post with a list of the other "Acts of Vengeance" issues, I'll do a special post to reproduce the best attempt at an order that I've yet seen.)

"Atlantis Attacks" is a convoluted saga involving plans to resurrect the serpent god Set. Punisher Annual #2 involves one phase of the plan, namely to convert the human race into serpent men using a special formula developed by the Viper and tested on drug addicts. The Punisher teams up with Moon Knight to take down a front for the operation, with the Punisher temporarily drugged up in the process. The story tries its best to marry the demands of the crossover with the tone of the Punisher's series but just doesn't really succeed. At US $2.00 an annual, the full set of "Atlantis Attacks" cost $28.00 in 1989, not counting the handful of additional tie-in issues. If a reader was only buying a couple of the regular series then they had to pay over an amount that was almost equal to 100% of their regular yearly comics expenditure on the rest of the storyline. And that was even before "Acts of Vengeance" loomed later that year. In such circumstances it's easy to see the switch to smaller crossovers in the 1990-1992 annuals as an improvement. But better still would have been stand alone annuals that presented a big standalone story that both regular and casual readers could enjoy. "Lifeform" is an attempt to cover both bases by portraying a creature steadily evolving in power levels, with a corresponding increase in the successive heroes' powers. Punisher Annual #3 is the opening portion of the story, concentrating on the son of a radical politician trying to obtain a biological weapon, only to be mutated into a monster who eventually turns on his father, with AIM along for the ride. Once again it's a rather fantastical step away from the more technical, non-powered world the Punisher's adventures normally take place in. The back-up features in both annuals are relatively similar, with both including features on the Punisher's fighting techniques and solo stories for Microchip that show how ruthless he can be when taking out those who hurt the people around him. I guess with no other supporting cast members there wasn't a lot of choice about what to include.

If the 1989 reader had some money to spare after buying Punisher, Punisher War Journal and all of "Atlantis Attacks", then for at least US $64.00 (probably more if some series had a higher price) they could get the entire "Acts of Vengeance" crossover. With sixty-eight issues in total, this was slightly excessive and it's not surprising that the following year's Avengers annual ran a summary of the key parts of the adventure. Both of the Punisher's titles contributed to the story but it seems the stories were kept separate and so only the original book's issues appear here. Issue #29's cover is reused for the volume as a whole but it's highly misleading as most of the superheroes and villains appear in just a single panel. The basic premise of the story involves an alliance of leading villains working together to bring down the superheroes by pitting them against foes they haven't fought before. As part of the rivalries amongst the top villains, Doctor Doom declares he will eliminate the Kingpin's most financially damaging foe, the Punisher. This proves harder than expected and the Punisher in turn opts to travel to Latveria to steal a vital possession of Doom's. This brings him into conflict with the other Doctor Doom (Kristoff, a boy who had Doom's memory and personality implanted into him when the real Doom was presumed dead), who rules Latveria. The overall premise of the crossover makes such an unusual match inevitable, but wisely Doom is kept to his scientific side and so apart from the two separate Dooms (part of a wider convoluted continuity in this era), the story fits in reasonably well with the general tone of the series. And although the basic set-up of the alliance between villains isn't really explained here, the story is sufficiently self-contained that one can get away with not knowing the details of the wider crossover.

Just in case a reader in 1990 had any money left over after all this, issues #35-40 represent yet another attack on their wallets. In the early 1990s several of the most popular titles had their frequency increased for a specific season (usually summer, occasionally autumn) and often used the increased frequency to tell longer stories that wouldn't take so many months to get through. Here we get a six part saga entitled "Jigsaw Puzzle", featuring the return of a couple of old foes. On the one hand it's nice that the additional expenditure required to get the whole story did at least go on some actual Punisher material this time, but on the other the story itself is stretched out more than necessary and the art suffers because of the need to bring in extra pencillers to handle the increased workload. Mark Texeira and Jack Slamn both have their own styles but they're different from each other and from Bill Reinhold, with the result that the visual look of the story can change significantly between chapters. The story is also let down by some elements that are rather at odds with the general scope of the series. For Jigsaw is working for the Rev. Sammy Smith, the evangelical preacher seen back in issues #4-5, who has now turned to the dark side and gained healing powers from a being called "Lucifer". The Punisher is sceptical, assuming Smith is in fact a mutant using conjuring tricks, but during the story Smith heals the faces of Jigsaw (though the Punisher subsequently "corrects" this), the Punisher and Joy Adams, a woman from a local hotel. "Lucifer" himself appears in the final part, and is presented as the genuine article. Otherwise the story is liberally ripped off from the Bond film Moonraker with a fanatic, aided by a deformed henchman, planning to destroy much of the human race through a special poison found only in a plant in a remote part of the South American jungle. The plan is to sterilise most of the human race by releasing the toxin into the water supply but the Punisher takes out the operation. Although some of the plot elements fit the norm for the series, there's a bit too much in the story that makes it too over the top and just not a natural Punisher tale for my liking. Yes the Punisher occupies a universe shared with everything from the Norse gods to a foul talking duck from another dimension, but normally he manages to keep away from all that and even when elements do cross his path they tend to be the more down to earth heroes or are else focused on their technological side. Encounters with the Devil just aren't the norm here.

Another out of the norm encounter comes in a two-parter when the Punisher and Microchip fight the Reavers, cyborgs more normally found in the X-Men titles. It's a fairly simple two parter as Microchip's hacking accidentally reveals the Punisher's warehouse to hostile forces and he and the Punisher have to face them off and escape, then have a showdown at a salvage yard run by Microchip's cousin. This battle allows for quite a focus on the high tech side of the Punisher, with the climax seeing him adopt an experimental exoskeleton armour to fight off the Reavers. Although the foes are on the fanciful side, the story itself feels more like a typical Punisher adventure. In the process Microchip's cousin is killed, a sign of the high mortality rate for those around the Punisher.

The same rate hits one of his allies in the mini-epic that opens the volume. What starts off as an investigation into match fixing in the boxing world soon transforms into the pursuit of a poisoner that leads first to a fake ninja training camp in the States and then to Japan to meet the genuine sensei and aid him and others (including the Shadowmasters, previously seen in Punisher War Journal although not fully until after the issues in Punisher War Journal Classic volume 1) in battling against a criminal political Japanese organisation, during which the sensei is killed. It's an interesting tale given the chain of events that leads the Punisher through successive situations, and also sees him being offered the legitimate American franchise for the ninja school; however he declines it preferring to continue his own war on crime.

The remaining stories continue the trend of pitching the Punisher against a wide variety of criminals, ranging from arms contractors working with corrupt military officials to a devout Catholic serial killer to a biker gang running drugs. Once again, the individual stories are generally well told, but overall there is no real sense of development. Microchip remains the only other recurring character in these stories and there are some tensions between the two over priorities and other pursuits, but these aren't really developed into an ongoing evolving relationship and once again it would be reasonably easy to rearrange the order of the stories without much trouble. There are a few signs of recurring foes but the impression given by the "Acts of Vengeance" story is that the Kingpin isn't really that bothered about the Punisher and there isn't a personal degree of enmity between the two, unlike the crime lord's relationships with both Daredevil and Spider-Man. This really leaves just Jigsaw, the Punisher foe who keeps on surviving and here he's left alive simply because the Punisher realises that to kill his foe will mean the end of the Rev. Smith's healing powers before they can be used on the Punisher's face. Jigsaw's history with the Punisher isn't properly recapped, despite his having not been seen since the Punisher's first (limited) series some four years earlier, and his recurrence making him the nearest the Punisher has to an ongoing archenemy. At times he's written almost for laughs, and more would be needed if he was to become a more credible threat in the future.

This remains the fundamental problem with the series - there is no sense of clear direction. The Punisher has declared war on all crime but moves between the many different types of offence without ever really stopping around long enough to focus on a particular type or source. The supporting cast remains confined to Microchip and one-off characters in individual stories, and so there's no prospect of really exploring why the Punisher does what he does and how his approach to life affects those around him. The move toward longer, multi-part epics suggests does at least offer the prospect of a greater exploration of individual situations, but the problem remains that this series tries to chart a middle course with the character and avoids both intense psychological examination and out and out over the top fun, and the result is that it continues to meander.