The Punisher Annual 1 - The Evolutionary War

The Punisher encounters an Evolutionary War on Drugs.

(Due to the large number of creators the labels for some have been put in a separate post.)

The Punisher Annual #1

1st story: Evolutionary Jihad
Script: Mike Baron
Pencils: Mark Texeira
Inks: Scott Williams
Letters: Jim Novak
Colors: Janet Jackson
Edits: Carl Potts
Eliminator in Chief: Tom DeFalco

The problem with a line wide crossover, or at least one encompassing all the series with annuals, is that it's going to take in some extremely different series with very different power levels and perspectives. Both this annual and the next one demonstrate the extremities of this as they take in what were in 1988 Marvel's hottest new series.

The Punisher had been running for less than a year when this first annual came along and so it's very likely The Evolutionary War was approved before it was realised there would be an encounter on such a scale. The nature  of this crossover overall is such that individual events can be easily added or dropped from the overall plan but the different power levels can result in some very strange aspects to the plan.

The solution here is to tell a relatively straightforward typical Punisher story in which one faction is armed with high tech weaponry. The High Evolutionary's Eliminators aren't that much more advanced than some of the other more technological foes the Punisher and so don't feel out of place here whilst the Evolutionary himself is never seen, only mentioned. However the goal in this annual is ridiculous.

Here the High Evolutionary has launched a war on drugs and comments by his Eliminators imply that they're going after the whole chain from producers all the way through to users. It just feels absurd that such a broad target would be selected for such physical resources. It would be easy to refine the target to some particular drug variant only grown in the vicinity but as it stands it's an unbelievable goal. Still the practical result is that the Punisher gets to fight some hi-tech guys in Colombia.

This is yet another tale of a fight with a  Latin American drug baron, a cliche even at the time. However Mike Baron's script gives some good development to "El Caiman", presenting him as also a devoted father and popular philanthropist who has done far more for the local people than their own government. He and the Punisher end up in an alliance of convenience against the Eliminators and there's a real sense that they've come to respect one another enough that they'll let each go when the threat is removed. However both know that this cannot be and so when they find themselves in El Caiman's aquarium at the end the Punisher has no option but to fire a bullet to break the glass and feed the drug lord to his own pet from whom he takes his nickname.

As a Punisher story this is a good one-off tale that doesn't require an in-depth knowledge of the character and his continuity to understand it. But as a chapter in The Evolutionary War it's struggling to disguise just how difficult it is to fit that event into this series. The Evolutionary's goals are just too unrealistic to make sense.


2nd story: 3 Hearts
Writer: Roger Salick
Artist: Mike Bosburg
Letterer: Ken Bruzenak
Colorist: Max Scheele

This solo tale for Microchip is named after a Japanese proverb that a person has three hearts - the one they show to the world, the one they keep to themselves and the one they don't even know about. Microchip finds out what he is capable of when he goes to the help of the widow of an old friend whose new husband has become an assassin for hire and is even trying to kill his wife lest she report him. Although Microchip has developed many weapons for others, here we see his private nervousness over whether he himself can pull the trigger when he tracks down the assassin reporting back. We also get the comedy as he smuggles an anti-tank gun into a hotel. And then the story ends with showing his deviousness and ruthlessness as he confronts the assassin and seemingly makes a deal.

It's a good exploration of Microchip's character and capabilities when he doesn't have the Punisher around him but the story's title is rather over laboured with excess dialogue seeking to justify it. But otherwise this is just the sort of piece that super-size annuals should have.


3rd story: The High Evolutionary: Pet Project
Story: Mark Gruenwald
Pencils: Paris Cullins
Inks: Tony DeZuniga
Letters: Ken Lopez
Colors: Gregory Wright
Editor: Ralph Macchio
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

Herbert Edgar Wyndham was expelled from Oxford after losing his temper with key professors and then he found his home was insufficiently isolated to carry out his experiments. Salvation came when he met again with Jonathan Drew whose wife had inherited land in the Balkans and so they set up a laboratory there.

It's a relatively straightforward chapter that continues the themes of Wyndham being in a hurry, impatient with the conventional speed of science and being detached from conventional society. But it also exposes a problem with the character's name and aims. Evolution is the development of a species as it adapts to conditions with beneficial mutations coming to dominate as best able to survive. By definition it is not possible to stick an organism in a machine and flick a switch to turn it into what a later evolved descendant will be. Yet that is precisely what Wyndham is shown attempting. At best he can accelerate the individual organism's development to deal with the rays of his machine but nothing more.

This flaw goes back to the character's original appearance and suggests that his creators did not have the strongest understanding of evolutionary science when they named him. It raises the question as to what is the character's actual goal.

Also included is a guide to the Punisher's Battle Van and a diagram of his New Jersey warehouse.

Overall this is a good Punisher annual but a disappointing The Evolutionary War one. The Punisher was always going to be one of the hardest characters to fit into the overall event but even so the draw here just doesn't stand up well. It is unfortunate that both the first two annuals in this event have been disappointing.

The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger 9 - Acts of Vengeance

It's not hard to guess which of the leaders' alliance is most used in "Acts of Vengeance". And once again Doctor Doom is shown to have carried out at least the initial commissioning of the villains (though he subcontracts the details to the Jester). But it's astonishing to see that the lesser villain used more than any other is Hydro Man. Never one of the big-name Spider-Man villains, he somehow keeps getting picked for inclusion in groups across the event, even though he gets captured each time.

The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger #9

Script: Terry Austin
Art: Mike Vosburg
Backgrounds: Don Cameron
Letters: James Novak
Colours: Glynis Oliver
Pin-Up Art: Mark Texiera, Howard Chaykin, Charles Vess, John Byrne and Walt Simonson
Editor: Carl Potts
Chief: Tom DeFalco

This is an extra-large issue that sees a team-up with the Avengers with a twist. For some reason, perhaps because they've been seen fighting Spider-Man a few times, Cloak and Dagger have turned up not on the central alliance's list of heroes to dispose of but instead on a list of potential villains to recruit. And thus the Jester has come to add them to a team that will attack an Avengers public meeting.

This is a new Jester, who has taken on the role after the original retired to become an actor. Using a new version of a villain, especially in such a key role, feels so detached from the principles of "Acts of Vengeance" that it seems most likely the Jester was picked for use and drawn into at least the previous issue before someone realised the character was no longer available and so an explanation was hurriedly worked into the script to work around the mistake. The rest of the team assembled are pretty obscure foes of limited powers, including the Rock, the Fenris twins and a robot of the Hulk. The "Assembly of Evil" isn't a complete walkover but ultimately proves not much more than a nuisance. Either Cloak and Dagger and/or the villains who declined to join, such as Typhoid Mary and the Leader, were critical missing elements or else the real target was not the Avengers themselves but rather their reputation. One of the underused themes of the crossover is the public debate about whether the super-heroes make sure safer or more dangerous for their ordinary public and a crossover in which numerous villains are attacking the heroes should provide plenty of fuel for the debate. But instead this aspect has not been used so much outside the Fantastic Four issues and so the wider backdrop is lacking here.

Going for a team-up also means a trick has been missed. Cloak and Dagger normally have gritty street level adventures against non-costumed foes and are generally isolated from much of the wider Marvel universe, so this crossover could have provided an opportunity to face them off against some bigger name established villains. But unfortunately that opportunity has not been taken and so instead we have a team-up that somewhat crowds out the stars of the book, with a somewhat lightweight fight that at times has elements of slapstick, particularly in the scenes with She-Hulk and both the Hulk robot and the Jester.

Overall this is a rather disappointing issue. It doesn't feel worthy of either a double-sized issue or of being Cloak and Dagger's sole participation in the crossover. All round it feels like a set of wasted opportunities.

The Mutant Misadventures of Cloak and Dagger #9 has been reprinted in:

• Acts of Vengeance Crossovers Omnibus (2011)

Psi-Force Classic volume 1

Psi-Force Classic volume 1 contains issues #1 to #9 of the title. Although created by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson, the series itself is written initially by Steve Perry then Danny Fingeroth with individual issues by David Michelinie and Fabian Nicieza. The art is mainly by Mark Texeira with some issues by Mike Vosburg and Bob Hall.

The basic premise is the series is one of psychic powers, with the White Event having enhanced and adapted the abilities of a number of people who already have Extra Sensory Perception. This use of ESP is another example of the supposed rules of the New Universe being broken from the outset, as is the handling of the reaction to having such powers. Although the main characters themselves at times struggle with the consequences, there's a rather all too easy acceptance that they have these powers when in reality many would likely freak out and the wider population panic. The only other significant sign of a more realistic approach is that injuries happen far more easily than in the regular superhero comics, but as the injuries are usually rapidly healed the effect is much the same.

At the start of the series Emmett Proudhawk, a CIA agent gone rogue with ESP powers of his own, assembles five teenagers who have recently found themselves with powers and brings them to San Francisco. In an early encounter with KGB agents "Hawk" is killed but the five teenagers find they are able to combine their powers to create a silent manifestation called "Psi-Hawk". Over the course of this volume they learn, sometimes the hard way, that the Psi-Hawk won't let them go their own way and they have to stay in hiding as runaways to protect both themselves and their families.

Hiding out in "Sanctuary", a home for runaways under the protection of Hawk's old friend Colby Shaw, the five struggle to adapt to their new lives with the problems of keeping their powers a secret, getting on with each other which is not always an easy task, dealing with other kids in Sanctuary, facing off against various government agencies and coming to terms with the Psi-Hawk. The concept is somewhat generic and it's easy to see elements of other teams of youths in this, particularly the X-Men. However setting this in a different fictional universe at least removes the obvious escape routes of turning to existing heroes for help, and instead the teenagers are left to fend for themselves.

The teenagers themselves are an unfortunate collection of stock archetypes that try to tick all the boxes. We have a moody loner, a pampered rich kid who finds themselves out of their comfort zone, a sporty kid rebelling against parental expectations, an annoying boy genius nerd and a foreigner. The four American teenagers cover multiple ethnicities, with Hawk's Native American heritage initially covering another, and the whole group looks as though it was assembled to order. This series may have debuted four years before the cartoon series Captain Planet and the Planeteers but it's hard to avoid noticing the similarities between the two as they both use the same structure.

The five themselves are a mixed bunch with several not terribly likeable. Wayne Tucker appears to be the eldest. A hot head from Chicago, he has telepathic powers to read minds and make people carry out actions. He resents being stuck with the others the most and is the first to try to break away on his own only to learn the Psi-Hawk exerts a control even when not formed. Wayne's powers are often used to get out of trouble and to wipe other's memories but he resents having to do this all the time. At one point he worries he's inadvertently used his powers to make another kid at Sanctuary commit suicide. His attempts at redemption are well meaning but forcing a businessman to not use loan sharks for money and instead "Get it from a bank!!", leading to a broad daylight hold-up. Kathy Ling is the archetypal "Valley girl", literally coming from the San Fernando valley near Los Angeles. A rich kid with telekinetic powers, she especially resents the way she's been dragged into all this and makes the most concerted effort to escape. Often she is resentful of the others' activities and just wants to go to the shops. Tyrone Jessup is initially the sporty kid, right down to the shirt he wears on the cover, hailing from Scarsdale, a small town outside New York. It soon becomes clear he's resentful of his parents pushing first him and then his brother down this route, believing it to be the only way black kids can get university scholarships. He has the power of astral projection, allowing him to become an intangible spirit form that can travel anywhere whilst his body remains in a vulnerable coma. Michael Crawley comes from Vermont and is both the youngest and geekiest of the five. He has the power to project destructive waves at objects with devastating results. Often the most optimistic of the five, his naive innocence is at times a crucial anchor. Finally Anastasia "Stasi" Inyushin is from the Soviet Union, having been extracted at great risk by Hawk. The back cover of the volume describes her power as "psychic empathy", presumably to make it fit the overarching theme, but it's really a miracle healing power that can heal just about any injury or illness. At times she wonders what she's let herself in for but perseveres.

The team has some limited support from Colby Shaw who runs Sanctuary, but her patience with their use of their powers and frequent fights with other residents. Otherwise their only ally is "Skipper", a colleague of Hawk's at the CIA who keeps tabs on them.

The group get caught in a succession of mundane problems and small time threats from criminals and thugs, plus the interest of various state agencies. In the first issue they are attacked by "Mindwolf", a KGB agent with his own destructive psychic powers who kills Hawk. It's clear over subsequent issues that at least one agency is keeping tabs on the kids and a mysterious figure has hidden another empowered kid, Thomas Boyd, from Hawk. Thomas is given the nickname "Stalker" and has the power to drain energy and life force from others. He thinks he's only capturing them, but rebels when he learns his master wants them dead and presumably him next. Much of the rest of the series is focused on the kids' attempts to grasp their powers and roles, find a way to escape from the power of the Psi-Hawk and cope with life around them. There are a few trips back to one hometown or another and a brief departure from San Francisco to Seattle but it's quickly reversed.

Overall this series shows an awkward hybrid of the arching vision of the New Universe and more conventional superhero norms. It may take advantage of the fact that this is a world without established heroes and that the powers have come in a single instance, but otherwise this book doesn't feel like it's set in an ordinary universe with a few science fiction but no fantasy elements. Instead it feels like a rehash of many of the themes of the X-Men, with the Psi-Hawk never really pulling things forward in a different way. Overall the series is rather pedestrian.

Essential Wolverine volume 3

Essential Wolverine volume 3 contains issues #48-69. Nearly all the issues are written by Larry Hama bar a couple by D.G. Chichester and another by Fabian Nicieza. The early art is mainly by Marc Silvestri and the later by Mark Texeira. Other issues are drawn by Andy Kubert, Darick Robertson, Dave Hoover, Mark Pacella and Dwayne Turner. Bonus material nestling at the back of at least the first edition consists of a two-page pin-up and a one-page gag strip by Chris Giarrusso.

Curiously the second cover for the volume reuses the art originally used for the first cover of volume 2. It's a surprising choice, even though Wolverine does briefly reuse his brown costume in this volume, as by this stage it was more common to reuse the cover of one of the issues in a given volume. Although a lot of the issues have over specific covers that may not have been suitable, either issue #64 or #67 would have done the job, both depicting sufficiently generic scenes.

One of the slightly irritating features is that, in the first edition at least, the covers sometimes appear at the end of an issues instead of at the start. The cause is the widespread use of double page splashes that was a popular trend in the early 1990s, even though printing was often prone to misaligning the pages so the two halves didn't always sync up and/or dialogue could get lost at the page fold. (Fortunately the double page spreads here manage to keep the dialogue in places where it can be read.) The approach here may be a necessity to avoid blank pages and squeeze one further issue in, although as discussed below there would have been good reasons to leave #69 out. But one consequence is that it is sometimes easy to miss the change between issues (and the title page isn't always the first one) and it's also harder to locate an individual one. Another, minor, problem of the era was the tendency to occasionally use colour for some words in speech bubbles; the early editions simply display a few blank spaces as a consequence.

This volume builds heavily upon the revelations in the "Weapon X" storyline in Marvel Comics Presents to the point that I feel that that should have been included in the run (and may well have been if the Essentials hadn't got to Wolverine until about a decade later but then they needed the most popular series to establish themselves with). However even without direct experience of the storyline or characters such as "the Professor" or Carol Hines, both of whom reappear here, it's fairly easy to follow the flow of events. Almost all of this volume covers a period in which Wolverine is struggling with implants in his mind that have created false memories. His searches bring him to the sets on which these memories were acted out and he's left wondering just what, if anything, actually did happen with his relationship with Silver Fox by far the most uncertain and painful of the memories. Several other Weapon X participants - Sabretooth, Maverick, Silver Fox, Mastodon, and Kestrel/John Wraith - appear throughout the run and they've all had similar implants, which are ultimately traced to Psi-Borg. At one stage an attempt to undo the blocks leads to Wolverine believing it's 1968 and going to a former Soviet republic in order to carry out a mission once more and it's hard to tell when it's the present day and when it's 1968 until he puts on his costume. Although the implants are ultimately removed from Wolverine's mind, a major consequence is that a lot of the small revelations about his past are now suspect, thus restoring mystery to the character.

This brings up the basic problem with keeping characters enigmatic in the long run. Either their past is kept an overall mystery forever, resulting in confusion and contradiction as little pieces slip through without due regard for one another, or else big revelations have to be undone to throw the past back into the melting pot. Whilst the basics of how he acquired the adamantium and claws or his work for the CIA are retained, enough question marks are opened up to make most of his previous specific memories now questionable. And it's not just Wolverine alone who is put through this - Sabretooth also has his past challenged and so now it's even more open to question whether or not he is Wolverine's father. Silver Fox also finds some of her memories have been constructed and it adds to the tension as we slowly discover just how much of her and Wolverine's remembered past actually happened.

The Weapon X project and his time as a government agent aren't the only parts of Wolverine's past to be touched on. We get a return visit to Japan which brings conflict with both the Hand ninjas and Cylla, one of the Reavers' cyborgs, as well as old friends such as Yukio and Mariko. There's a moving end to the story of Mariko as she agrees to a deal to end the illegal operations of the Yashida clan but one of the terms is that she cut off one of her fingers. She agrees only to discover the knife is poisoned and in order to avoid a painful death she begs Wolverine to use his claws to kill her quickly. Silver Fox also comes to a nasty end as Psi-Borg makes Sabretooth recreate the murder Logan remembers, only this time it is for real. On a more general X-Men level there's an encounter with Mojo who is once again trying to exploit events to generate profitable entertainment, this time trying to tamper with the Big Crunch at the end of the universe. The last issue begins a storyline in the Savage Land where Sauron has taken the leadership of the Mutates but the volume ends after only the first issue.

The volume introduces a number of new foes, some of whom offer greater staying power than others. Shiva is a robot controlled by a computer program and sent to dispose of Wolverine and other products of the Weapon X project. Every time the robot is destroyed a new one is dispatched with knowledge of past defeats. The robots the program is limited but we don't see a definite ending to the supply. Also coming from the project is Psi-Borg aka Aldo Ferro, the crime boss who invested in the Weapon X project in the hope of prolonging his life and who has the power to manipulate minds and memories. From Wolverine's past missions comes Epsilon Red, a Soviet super soldier very similar in appearance to Omega Red (the main difference is in their colouring which is lost here) who was meant to be the first man on the moon but the project was abandoned and he was left unable to fulfil his dreams of the stars. Some more mundane foes have been lifted from contemporary trends, such as the Vidkids, a gang of youths who are murdering the Morlocks merely for kicks, or the Nature Defense League, a team of radical eco-terrorists. The most significant member is their leader Monkeywrench with his explosive spikes; curiously he debuts in an issue by D.G. Chichester when the reuse of a name from G.I. Joe suggests Larry Hama's hand in his creation.

This may be one of the most recent runs to have appeared in the Essentials but there are still moments when it shows its age. In issue #50 Logan obtains a file on him from the National Security Agency which Professor X estimates to have over 50,000 pages of words and just as many visual pages. It has had to be stored on no less than two shoeboxes worth of floppy disks. Even by the time the volume was first printed in 1998 this was almost ancient computing history as larger memory formats such as writeable CDs and Zip disks were already around, although neither drive was standard issue with computers available on the high street (though you could usually read a writeable CD on a standard CD-ROM drive) and there was a bit of a format battle amongst industry and niche users. What's even more amazing is that this file has been sent over a modem, which makes me suspect that Larry Hama was not terribly familiar with either the terminology or the contemporary capacity as Logan has the full file by the next day but in reality this would have taken a bit longer. Elsewhere Wolverine's 1968 mission revisited takes him to the country of "Kazakh" - I'm not sure if this was a thin attempt to disguise a real country or an alternate name proposed for Kazakhstan in the early post-Communist years that never caught on.

On a more general level the volume shows the era's predilection for long running storylines in which individual issues can be read quite quickly instead of intense one-off storylines. And often the comics are exceptionally art heavy, most obviously seen with the heavy use of double-page spreads, stemming from an obsession with art over plot that infected part of the comics industry in the period. This makes for a fast read in collected form but originally these issues came out over a space of nineteen months (with a couple of periods when the series went semi-monthly) and it must have been maddening to readers to have such a detailed storyline drag out for so long, made worse by the occasional fill-in issues.

I don't normally comment on pin-ups included in these volumes but the one here is an awful example of how comics in this era sometimes let the art take priority over basic reading. In order to appreciate it one has to turn the book on its side for an excessive two pages when the same could have been achieved in one. Luckily none of the issues in this volume fell for this reader unfriendly practice. The gag strip is an early example of the Mini Marvels feature (though it's branded only as "An Untold Tale of Wolverine") that rips into the "Patch" disguise of just an eyepatch, especially compared to other such paper thin disguises. It's okay for what it is but the target of the joke is dated as Wolverine hasn't used the "Patch" identity since midway through the previous volume.

Issue #69 is the first issue of a multi-part storyline and the result is that this volume ends on a cliffhanger. It took only eight years before volume 4 came out, a rather longer wait than that for the same numbered Spider-Man and X-Men volumes which also deployed this approach (at least in the first editions). Thankfully the Essentials subsequently adopted more flexible lengths to ensure the volumes end at neater points (though it's also a relief that they didn't start putting out new editions of the Wolverine volumes with the contents shifted about).

Overall this collected edition has been to the issues' benefit. Individually the main storyline may have run on for rather too long and also suffered from a perceived need to spotlight the art above all else, but when brought together the whole thing makes for a strong coherent read. It's almost a pity that issue #69 was included, not just because of the cliffhanger but also because issues #48 to #68 make for a broadly complete package with only a few side-shows and interventions (issues #58 & #59 not only feel like fill-ins but explicitly interrupt the ongoing narrative and say so) and this would have been one of the rare times when an Essential volume maps exactly to a major epic storyline.

Essential Punisher volume 4 - creator labels

Once again we have a volume with a lot of creators, so here's a separate post to carry the labels for some of them.

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.

Essential Punisher volume 2

Essential Punisher volume 2 contains the early issues from the Punisher's first ever ongoing series, carrying #1-20 & Annual #1 and also Daredevil #257 which carried a crossover with the series. Annual #1 was part of the "Evolutionary War" crossover that ran through eleven Marvel annuals (or twelve if one includes Alf) but the others aren't included here. (The only missing material that I can spot is the chapter of the history of the High Evolutionary that ran in all the annuals that year and which sought to clarify a rather convoluted continuity.) The Punisher issues are all written by Mike Baron, bar a back-up in the annual by Roger Salick, and drawn by Whilce Portacio, Klaus Janson, David Ross, Larry Stroman and Shea Anton Pensa, with Mark Texeira and Mike Vosburg handling the annual. The Daredevil issue is written by Ann Nocenti and drawn by John Romita Jr.

Looking back it seems amazing that it took so long for the Punisher to gain his own ongoing series. The most likely explanation is that Marvel were cautious about having a series with a violent protagonist who set out to kill his adversaries. (A similar concern presumably hit Wolverine.) But over time tastes change, as do censors, and this series was launched in an era that saw the rise of heroes who were either loners or had very few allies and who were willing to adopt violent methods to get the job done. In an era with the likes of a grim & gritty Batman, Timothy Dalton's take on James Bond, the A-Team and so many more, the Punisher was a natural fit. Of course not all these heroes were portrayed in quite the same way - there's a wide gap between the A-Team's almost cartoon violence where few people get hurt or killed, and the hard edged violence and blood of Licence to Kill.

Curiously it's a very different series that springs to mind as the most obvious starting comparison for these issues. At about the same time as the series was launched, so too was the second Silver Surfer series (the first eighteen issues of which can be found in Essential Silver Surfer volume 2). Both series rapidly became amongst Marvel's top sellers, as seen most obviously when both were part of a 33% price rise on the nine top-selling titles at the start of 1988 (taking effect from issue #8; the other seven titles were Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Avengers, Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor and the New Mutants) and both were among the only eleven superhero titles to have an annual that year (the others were the same list as before plus Fantastic Four and the West Coast Avengers). Both starred long established Marvel characters who had previously been used relatively sparsely, and both were in settings somewhat detached from the mainstream of the Marvel universe. But the contrast in approaches is clearest between the first issues. The Surfer had a double-sized first issue that contained a complete story (as well as setting up threads that would run throughout the first thirty issues), summarised all the key points of the character's history and sorted out the key issue in the status quo to allow unlimited adventures. By contrast the first issue of Punisher is a regular sized first part of an ongoing storyline that doesn't really introduce the character at all.

Perhaps realising the mistake early on, issue #2 opens with a text box with the Punisher rapidly summarising the key points in a very quick and to the point manner. Most subsequent issues include either a thought box or dialogue that recap the Punisher's origin with the same information. The obvious omission each time is just why the Punisher went down the route he did - not every relative of a victim of crime turns vigilante and even if they do, many don't go in for the arbitrary killing of criminals. Punisher stories can veer off to various extremes on this point - either they implicitly acknowledge the issue and just present the Punisher as an exaggerated killer of almost cartoonish shallowness, or else they delve deep in his mind, trying to reconcile the factors. This series, however, follows a more middling course (at least in this volume) by presenting the Punisher as a straightforward man with a general mission but without delving into just what it is that drives him so. I'm not persuaded that this is the best approach as it leaves the Punisher as a somewhat hollow character. This is enhanced by the state of the series around him.

The supporting cast is rather limited. We hear about Microchip before we're first introduced to the computer hacker and equipment developer. His son "Junior" also appears, but is soon killed off. There's an indication that Junior could perhaps have become a questioning voice to draw out details of the Punisher's actions such as how he prioritises, but it's also clear that such an approach can't work when the Punisher invariably operates solo. Junior accompanies the Punisher on a couple of missions but can't always obey orders to stay in the van. The first time he saves the Punisher's life but the second time he loses his own. His father sticks around for the whole series, providing the Punisher with much needed equipment and support at times but rarely taking to the field himself. Microchip is the star of a back-up feature in the annual in which he has to protect the widow of an old friend from her new husband who has become a assassin. We see how resourceful and ruthless 'Chip himself can be, but otherwise don't learn too much more. The only other characters who come close to recurring are the small band the Punisher assembles to take down the Kingpin - Reese McDowell, a student, and Vernon Brooks, a teacher, both from a rough inner city school that the Punisher briefly teaches at whilst tracking down a radical revolutionary hiding there, and Conchita Ortiz, the widow of a soldier turned prison guard who helps the Punisher in trying to advance a convict's execution. Over the course of the story the attrition rate is high with only Vernon living by the end. The possibility is dangled of Conchita becoming a recurring romantic interest, but she is then immediately killed, a reminder of how grim and lonely the Punisher's path can be.

The Punisher's methods invariably don't leave many foes who can recur. We get a variety of archetypes - Latin American drug barons, Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, right-wing political extremists, cultist preachers, insider traders, serial killers, people traffickers, left-wing revolutionaries, drug dealers and mobsters. Many of these could be taken from the news though I don't know just which of these types were actually dominating the headlines in the late 1980s. The Kingpin appears in a multi-part storyline but curiously both he and the Punisher act as though they have never met - in fact they did so back in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #82. Still he's the only foe to walk away alive after Microchip and Vernon realise that it's the only way to prevent a vicious gang war.

The volume contains material from two different crossovers. One is a two parter with Daredevil and, as I previously discussed, Ol' Hornhead is one of the best heroes to contrast with the Punisher due to their very different views of the system of law & order. On this occasion we get a standard clash of values but presented in a novel approach - rather than a direct two part story each issue first focuses upon the title character's investigation of a disgruntled ex-employee of a pharmaceutical company who is taking revenge by poisoning bottles of its products until they encounter the other on a rooftop and fight over what to do with the criminal. Whilst the Punisher issue shows a conventional fight between the two, the Daredevil issue shows the same fight from the perspective of the killer who listens to them and concludes the two are more alike than they realise. We also get to see the Punisher acting as a detective, trying to quickly track down the killer and resorting to the unusual method of turning to the Jehovah's Witnesses to see if they have seen anything whilst door-knocking.

The other crossover is the second part of the "Evolutionary War" storyline. Although there had been stories told over a couple of annuals before this was the fist time such a large story was told there, taking up no less than eleven of the mainstream annuals (and also a humorous piece in Alf). At US $1.75 an issue (at a time when the regular Marvels cost $0.75 though most of the books were from the $1.00 line) it cost nearly $20.00 to own the entire crossover on first release - an early sign of the mess whereby readers increasingly found they either had to fork out large additional amounts for comics they wouldn't normally buy or else not get the full story. (A better approach in my opinion would be closer to that adopted by Secret Wars II and DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths whereby the main story is concentrated on a central limited series that individual ongoing titles feed off, but in such a way that a reader doesn't have to buy loads of other ongoing titles to know what's going on - and for that matter the limited series can later be collected by itself in a tradepaperback.) Fortunately most of the individual annuals are structured in such a way as to be reasonably self-contained with the High Evolutionary's plans as the sole common theme, and one can read them in isolation, as the Punisher annual is presented here on its own (and the same approach has been taken in the relevant volumes of Essential X-Factor, Essential Silver Surfer and Essential X-Men), though if one wants the entire story, including the back-up detailing the history of the High Evolutionary, it's available in an Omnibus hardcover edition (be warned though that this edition omits other back-up strips from each annual not related to the crossover). What makes the crossover stick out even more like a sore thumb is the poor motivation for the High Evolutionary's Eliminators (the High Evolutionary himself doesn't appear). This small squad of armoured humans are trying to wipe out all drugs across the world as a prelude to plans to forcibly advance humanity to the next stage of evolution, and also to eliminate potential threats like the Punisher. It's very hard to accept the High Evolutionary has anything like the resources for a global instantaneous war on drugs and as for the idea the Punisher could threaten his plans, it just doesn't seem likely.

The series doesn't limit itself to New York and instead takes us to many different parts of the United States and even abroad, with visits to variously Bolivia, Guiana (that spelling is used over twenty years after it became Guyana...), Colombia, Mexico and even the Australian outback. The multiple settings and situations help to keep the series fresh, showing the Punisher having to adapt to different situations and circumstances with some interesting results. That helps to make up for the shortfalls in character development and exploration.

Overall this series is quite mixed. The individual issues are generally well written and drawn, and it's easy to see why Whilce Portacio developed into one of the big name artists of the early 1990s. But fundamentally the main problem I have with the series is that there's very little sense of development and, with the exception of a few details, the stories could be rearranged in almost any order. Whilst the individual tales offer plenty of diversity and interest, with only really the annual sticking out as badly conceived, overall the whole thing just doesn't go anywhere. The Punisher has a mission against crime, but it's not always clear if he's just after organised crime or all criminals. There's no real overall strategy to his approach and instead he targets a succession of different crimes, sometimes responding to tip-offs, sometimes going after a particular wrong-doer them himself. Was this another series created by popular demand without thinking through its raison d'être? It's odd as all the issues in this volume have the same writer and editor (Carl Potts), so it's not as if it was a book handled by an endless succession of creators doing just a few issues at a time.

I'm not sure the basic problem lies with the Punisher's character - he's hardly the first example in comics of a bereaved relative with no actual super powers turning vigilante, and he's starting from a position of greater training than the likes of a young Bruce Wayne. Perhaps it's the way his approach of not adopting a secret identity and not being able to maintain a permanent base means that he rarely stays around any one place long enough to develop any roots, but again the wandering hero is common enough in fiction that it can be pulled off more successfully than here. Probably the deepest problem is the lack of any in-depth exploration of the Punisher's motivation and drive. Apart from his brief argument/fight with Daredevil there isn't any direct exploration as to just why he lacks faith in the system of law and order and instead has set himself up as a one man judge, jury and executioner. When the Punisher guest stars in other characters' titles it's often possible to contrast his outlook and methods with the title character's, but in his own title where the only supporting cast members are his technical support there just aren't any voices who can draw out the dilemma. Ultimately the Punisher is a difficult character to write a good developed ongoing series for, and unfortunately this volume doesn't hit the target.