#garth ennis punisher max

[lethalsubject]

frank; steadily losing feeling in his body, hours away from dying

me, giggling; he looks so silly. goofy guy. little man.

[vertigoartgore]

2004's Punisher: The End Vol.1 #1 cover by artist Richard Corben.

[castle-rook]

Me when I lie

[smashpages]

Ennis + Burrows pit the Punisher against Nick Fury in ‘Get Fury’

The Marvel MAX miniseries set during the Vietnam War begins in May.

cover by Dave Johnson

[spooky-donut-ghost-house]

In my honest opinion Garth Ennis doesn't understand The Punisher

Garth Ennis' take on The Punisher is that he is a man who is utterly obsessed with violence and war and really never cared about his wife and kids and really just use avenging them as an excuse to start killing again because he's a sadistic killer and says that he worships and prays to war

That's.... really fucking edgy and not at all who or what Frank Castle is

Frank Castle is a traumatized war veteran who after all the pain and sorrow he endured in war (wether it was the Vietnam war or the war in Iraq it depends on which version you are reading) finally gets happiness by having a family until one day they are taken away by a drive by shooting caused by mafia hitmen which this event basically breaks Frank and essentially makes him lose all will to live and essentially sets him on a war path to avenge his family and make sure no one goes through the same pain he did until the day he dies

He doesn't kill because he enjoys it he kills because what else is there for him to do? How can he go back to a normal life when the one thing he loved was taken from him?

He is a tragic Rambo-esque character who essentially has nothing left to lose and spends every waking moment killing criminals because there is nothing left for him

He's completely numb to everything around him but not because he's a heartless killing machine but because he's a dead man walking Frank Castle died with his wife and kids and all that remains is this numb broken shell of a man that is now The Punisher

This is why I feel like Jon Berenthal's portrayal of Frank is the most accurate he's a broken man with nothing left to lose whereas Thomas Jane and Ray Stevenson's (rest in peace) portrayals of Frank are more akinned to Garth Ennis' version of Frank

Frank Castle isn't a sadistic killing machine who is in love with death and violence and war

Frank Castle is a broken man who kills criminals because that's all that he can do

Ennis' Frank Castle isn't Frank Castle he's American Billy Butcher

Bottomline: Garth Ennis doesn't understand Frank Castle

[age-of-moonknight]

“Deliverance,” Marvel Zombies: Black, White & Blood (Vol. 1/2023), #1.

Writer: Ashley Allen; Artist: Justin Mason; Letterer: Clayton Cowles

[holy-shit-comics]

[artbyblastweave]

i only learned recently from a friend's who much more comic literate than I that magneto's backstory as an Auschwitz survivor wasnt planned from the start, which surprised me since it seemed to me a really integral part of his character. anyway, twofold question: how common is it to see capes with backstories tied to very specific historical events, and, as time inevitably passes and real world survivors of those events pass, how do they justify having their characters still alive and kicking? (stay safe on your mountaintop friend)

Depending on how wide you cast the net, this is a pretty big list! There are a lot of comics who's characters cutting-edge ripped-from-the-headlines origin later became a very specific historical event, or at least Of A Specific Moment, in a way the writers had no reason to anticipate the franchise would run long enough to have happen. But to shed pedantry and hone in on some specific ones;

The big one, of course, is Captain America. Superficially Cap's contemporary origin comes with a baked-in means of him making it to the present day- he gets stuck in the ice and then gets unthawed. The fly in the ointment, though, is when he unthaws. When they first brought him back into rotation in 1964, his stint in the ice was only around 20 years; long enough for there to be a significant culture shock, but not long enough that his entire social circle was dead or even culturally sidelined. Nick Fury is still around and kicking ass as a zeitgeist-appropriate 60s superspy. But the further the sliding timeline hauls forward his implicit date of release, the more it changes the tone and tenor of the resulting story. Losing twenty years is different from losing fifty years (as was the case in The Ultimates, where he very explicitly comes back during the Bush years as part of the book's commentary on The War On Terror) and those will both be way different from when we inevitably hit the point where he's lost 100 years and he's the cultural equivalent of a Civil War Vet or something. There's strength to all of those stories but they're undeniably different.

Iron Man's origin was originally explicitly tied to the Vietnam war; he was captured by a detachment of "Red Guerillas" while consulting for the US military and the South Vietnamese government. Unfortunately U.S. foreign policy to this day has prevented this from ever becoming an unresolvable storytelling issue.

The Fantastic Four are a case where their origin was intimately tied to the space race; their untested, cutcorner spaceflight was expressly an attempt to show up the Russians. The extremely specific political context of their test flight is something that sort of gets brushed off; the Ultimate incarnation (written by Warren Ellis) threaded this needle deftly by having the accident be a dimensional expedition instead, circa the early 2000s. I'm not actually sure how the urgency of their test flight is currently contextualized in 616 continuity. Anyone got their finger on that pulse?

The Punisher was also originally a Vietnam vet- but through the jaded cynical lens of the 1980s rather than the straightforwardly peppy and jingoistic lens that defined Iron Man's debut in the 60s. Current continuities I believe have mostly bitten the bullet and updated his origin to the invasion of Afghanistan. However, an interesting decision in the Garth Ennis-spearheaded Punisher MAX continuity of the early 2000s- where Punisher is literally the only costumed vigilante- is that they bit the bullet and posited a version of Frank Castle who really has been killing criminals nonstop since shortly after his return from Vietnam in the 70s, a man well into his 60s who's survivability and efficacy at killing are edging up against the boundaries of magical realism.

Hulk I feel sort of deserves a mention here- he's in a sort of twilight zone on this issue, as there was, uh, a pretty goddamn specific political context in which the Army was having him make them a new kind of bomb, but you can haul that forward in the timeline without complete destruction of suspension of disbelief. Pretty soon it'll be downright topical again.

To circle back around to The X-Men, Claremont introduced a lot of historical specificity with the ANAD lineup. Off the top of my head, Colossus was explicitly a USSR partisan (updated to a gangster forced into crime to survive in the mismanaged chaos of the USSR's collapse in the Ultimate Universe) and Storm was orphaned by a French bombing during the Suez War. More to the point, the timing was such that Magneto, in his upper-middle age, had a pretty strongly defined timeline vis a vis his ideological development vs Xavier; child during the holocaust, Nazi hunter who eventually rifts with Xavier during the mid-to-late 60s, and then the two of them spend their years marshalling their respective resources before coming to blows during the quote-unquote "Age of Heroes," whatever the timeline looked like for that in the 80s. And it was a timeline that held together pretty damn well in the 80s, but it's gotten increasingly awkward as time's gone on. The Fox films completely gave up on having it make sense, near as I can tell. In the comics they've had all sorts of de-aging chicanery occur that very pointedly ignores what an odd timeline that implies for everyone else in the X-books besides Magneto. The Cullen Bunn Magneto standalone from 2014-15 I remember actually leaned into playing up the idea that he's just old as shit and dependent on so many superscience treatments to remain functional that he's basically pickled, which was a take I liked; the comic ended when he died of exertion trying to stop two planets from crashing into each other, right before a brand-wide universal reset. When the MCU was at it's peak and people were wargaming how to integrate the X-Men (lol) you occasionally saw people float "fixes" for the issue, such as making Magneto a survivor of the Bosnian Genocide, or making him black and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide; I remember that this consistently drew a lot of ire from people who (reasonably) thought that his Judaism and connection to the holocaust were deeply important to his character, continuity be damned. But yeah, he's a character dogged by specificity in a way only Cap even slightly approaches. If this is a tractable problem I'm not going to be the one to tract it.

Interestingly, I'm genuinely having a lot of trouble coming up with stuff that's analogous to this at DC comics- almost universally the core roster updates into any given time period much more smoothly. Furthermore, DC stuff has always been much more willing to eschew Marvel's World-Outside-Your-Window philosophy in favor of deliberately obfuscating the time period via the Dark-Deco aesthetic of BTAS's Gotham or the retrofuturism of STAS's Metropolis.

The closest you get to this kind of friction is The Justice Society, who, pre-crisis, were siloed off in a universe where superheroes had existed since the 40s and there was no comic book time, so they were all in their upper-middle-age to old age now, with their kids and grandkids as legacy capes. Post crisis they were (and are) kind of an awkward fit in DC continuity; in the scant few JSA comics from the 90s and early oughts that I read, surviving members of the WW2-era lineup like Alan Scott and Jay Garrick were absolutely written as dependent on their metahuman physiques to have endured up to the present day. I think they're still doing stuff with those guys. I don't know how. I do understand the impulse, though. I also never throw anything out.

[lethalsubject]

FRANK CASTLE

the way he plans everything down to a T. but anything can change, or anything can happen that could cause max to leave earlier than he's meant to. frank has a perfectly clear shot of him at that point which, despite his careful planning, he is no doubt aware that in the hour window he has it could change. but he won't turn away someone, especially not a little girl, who needs his help. even with how terribly awful max is and how hard - though not impossible - it would be for him to get him on the cruise rather than right there, right now. the way innocents always take prevalence over targets.

even though he's keeping a careful watch on max, he's still attentive to her. making sure she doesnt know he's in any kind of rush - he isnt rushing and disregarding her while trying to find her old man. and he isnt trying to pawn her off onto some stranger to take care of, which as well jst shows how confident he is in his abilities and his planning. he knows people. he knows bad people and how they act. how strict they are when it comes their plans - because they think it saves them. they think frank castle - the punisher - cant get them if they just plan. but he can and he will.

the way he cant help but see lisa in becky. his sweet little blonde lisa, who's life he unknowingly traded to get the war he's always wanted. the war he's been fighting since the picnic in the park. hell, even before that. the flashes of lisa's bloodstained face, the gore that was her intestines spewing from the gaping hole in her stomach. he doesnt have to buy the doll (even tho be doesnt actually buy it) but he does because he's a fucking SOFTIE!!!!

[dreddedwheat]

Back to the Dredd-tomes: Judgement Day

Okay, so-!

Brief introduction: I used to have a previous blog that focused on my youthful fanboyism of the 2000AD and Judge Dredd universe. A few misstimed clicks a year or so back and that all got nuked, and it basically killed my enthusiasm for writing stuff up, since I lost a metric ton of amateur analysis, fan-mixes and other stuff that most people would usually forget.

There was a lot of back and forth with good folks like @judgeanon (who I credit with helping support what is a vanishingly small online discussion around Dredd and 2000ad in general), which is now sadly mostly lost. Usually for the better with my more immature antics, hence the fresh start and fresh name to go with it.

However, after a Christmas filled with a sudden surge of - probably ill-informed - Dredd buys, I decided to get back into things. That means actually talking about the comic that was formative for me as a fan of both comic-books and fiction in general...

JUDGE DREDD

And where better to start than the biggest, the meanest, and the best/baddest (depending on who you ask) Dredd epic, JUDGEMENT DAY. (Spoiler warnings, images courtesy of the 2000AD site and Google Search.)

So, let's get into a basic overview of this contentious Dredd epic...

The Story so far: Judge Dredd is a law-enforcer in Mega-City One, a massive post-apocalyptic metropolis. As a Judge he's authorised to deliver instant sentencing on the spot, no jury or court necessary. He's judge, jury and executioner, and he is the law, but you probably already knew that.

Johnny Alpha is a Strontium Dog, a mutant bounty-hunter that wants to break free of life on an increasingly anti-mutant Earth. Taking on the bounties no-one else will touch, he utilises his unique 'Alpha Eyes' to see through walls, sense other people's intentions and more. He always gets his man.

Alright, now that introductions are out of the way, let's get into it. For the uninitiated, a Dredd 'epic' is a pretty standard description for a big summer storyline. This all started with the "Apocalypse War" back in the eighties, a storyline which defined not only Judge Dredd but also British Boy's comics.

For American fans, and British comic readers of a certain age (like me) it's hard to imagine a time when most British comics were simply lukewarm re-treads of the same adventure stories you'd read in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Of course, not all of these were bad - far from it - but like many things in Britain during the eighties they were a victim of a stuffy, uptight and squeamish society.

2000AD proved to be a seminal title in many ways, mostly in introducing borderline graphic violence, mature storylines, cynical themes and more complicated heroes. Judge Dredd, a tyrannical authoritarian supercop who nonetheless has strong principles and heroic intentions is the most emblematic of that.

However, for most of his lifetime Dredd had been a relatively straightforward and heroic figure. And although a direct criticism of this was not far away - in the form of the Democracy Now storyline - the Apocalypse War was perhaps the first time we saw Dredd on a firm backfoot.

The lantern-jawed hero was put thoroughly on the defensive when the Sovs, a pastiche of Soviet-era Russia, attacked and destroyed a large portion of Mega-City One. It was a grand war story depicting the Judges of the city waging guerilla warfare and culminating with a particularly chilling page where Dredd retaliates using the Sov's own nukes, obliterating hundreds of millions of people.

Yee-ikes, even nowadays this is vicious stuff. Now imagine this in a mag that's being sold next to "The Beano" on shelves and you can imagine why this was considered such a definitive storyline.

But, okay, why am I telling you this? Well, put simple, Judgement Day is a result of the inherent love that writer Garth Ennis, best-known now for titles like The Boys and Punisher Max, had for this storyline. At least that's the prevailing thesis put forwards by people like JA, God knows that online discussion of Dredd is hard to come by no matter what.

Regardless, this should set the stage. By now, Mega-City One has fazed many crises and successive near-extinction events. Most recently - at the time - Necropolis, where the Dark Judges (we'll get into them) invaded and took control of the city's Judges, attempting to carry out their campaign of omnnicide before being narrowly halted by Judge Dredd, McGruder, Cadet Giant and the everlovin' Psi-Judge Anderson.

So, stage-set, where does that lead us?

Judgement Day is, in simple terms, Dredd vs Zombies. Pretty cliché now, but back in the 90s this was still a fresh and rather bloody concept. And regardless of what one thinks of Ennis' writing, the art is stunning and graphic, with Dredd mainstay Carlos Ezquerra taking center-stage. Although I'd argue that Dean Ormston is at least second-best if not better, with some mouthwatering - pardon the pun - depictions of flesh-eating zombies cribbing from giallo films.

Judge Dredd - and the rest of his post-nuclear world - suddenly face an overwhelming undead assault from the necromagus Sabbat. Resurrecting billions of corpses, Sabbat wages all-out war on the Mega-Cities, and all seems lost until the arrival of Johnny Alpha...

Alpha and Dredd had already met in the story "Top Dogs" where Johnny and his partner, the time-displaced viking Wulf Sternhammer, narrowly escaped capture by the lawman. Naturally, they don't get on too well.

Regardless, Alpha proves instrumental in helping Dredd - and a coalition of international Judges - finding and destroying (or near-enough) Sabbat in a bloody showdown in the Radlands of Ji, a part of post-nuclear China.

In-between we have lavish set-pieces of Dredd and his fellow Judges fending off hordes of the undead, flashes to other parts of the globe and other judges playing their part, as well as fantastic art throughout.

So, what's the problem?

Well, the main issue is that, as JA pointed out in his own posts on the storyline, Judgement Day is very much a 'blockbuster' event. And sadly, it's as close as 2000AD has ever gotten to emulating the American comics ideal of the big crossover event. And NOT in a good way. Although you couldn't criticise it for being slow-paced and overwrought, it has many issues that mark it out for fans.

For one, the storyline - as I only recently found out - ran consecutively in both 2000AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, the latter a solely Dreddverse-focused publication. Now, obviously, the issues with asking people to buy two magazines, monthly and weekly, aside this also meant that the fairly fast-paced movie-style storyline was constantly being broken up.

Add onto that the ridiculous stakes ("Billions of people are dying! Planet Earth is on the brink!"), an at-times-confusing tone (Sabbat's zombies performing a Disney-esque musical number during the climactic showdown), the destruction of various international Mega-cities - few of which we'd even had the chance to know - and the borderline fanservicey pairing of Dredd and Alpha, and we have a recipe for...not a disaster, but something that's a bit of a messy moment in the Dredd saga.

Because, yes, Dredd's story has been continuous, and while not concrete generally the broad-strokes have always been pretty solid (usually a tweak to a character's origin or what they said and did here, but stuff like the Apocalypse War is almost untouched). Judgement Day really feels like a moment where a lot of potential areas of the world like Brasilia, Mega-City Two and others were, quite literally, nuked off the face of the Earth. We also saw some interesting side-characters gored under the zombie hordes, such as Oz Judge Bruce and Judge Dekker.

Basically, Judgement Day slammed the door shut on potential plotlines, was shaky in terms of the publishing angle and overall had more of an overwrought Hollywood blockbuster than intense action-thriller. It also came hot on the heels of Necropolis, and arguably was part of a quick-succession of world-shaking crises such as Inferno which, as far as I can tell, numbed readership going into the 2000s.

Sabbat also stands as quite a weak villain. He rarely appears until the finale, and his backstory - a downtrodden teacher's pet turned murderous necromancer - may be an amusing reference to the aforementioned "Beano" but it's also a bit of a silly one for someone who's meant to be our big, brutal bad-guy, and not in a good way. He's not a bore to read, but sometimes his moments of simpering arrogance can undercut what is essentially an apocalyptic moment for the world of Dredd.

However, even more frustratingly, Judgement Day is also a massive stepping-stone in terms of the-then current Dredd plotline, making it very hard to ignore. It effectively marked Chief Judge McGruder's last major heroic moment, the first time we saw Judge Hershey take up the mantle of Chief Judge and perhaps the most definitive Alpha/Dredd crossover.

I think it's a testament to the overall high-quality of major Dredd storylines that Judgement Day holds up as well as it does. But it also bears all the hallmarks of something that would work well in a vacuum, but which has a messy place in continuity. I'd loved to have seen a non-canon take on this, perhaps allowing us to bring in characters like Wulf Sternhammer - who was sadly offed before this storyline was written - into the zombie battle royale.

There's also some usual holdovers of poorly-aged stuff that was endemic to British comics at the time. Hondo-City, Ciudad Barranquilla and other areas get equal billing but some traces of their stereotypical origins remain. This storyline did go some way to fleshing out the wider world - as much as it obliterated it - of Dredd.

Yet I can't deny that, in the moment of reading, Judgement Day is enthralling. It's pure, gorey action and fanservice. I just wish it didn't cast such a shadow across later stories, and that it hadn't taken so many interesting places and people with it in the process.

Picking this story up, you know what you're getting, and if you're along for the ride...you'll have a hell of a time.

As it stands, Judgement Day is a weaker entry writing-wise but still well-worth picking up for the art and general premise alone. If you're a new Dredd fan and want something a bit lighter than the commonly-cited "America" storyline, this is a fine way to get into the fast-paced and more action-focused content of 2000AD without needing much forward knowledge.

FIN

[vertigoartgore]

Dave Johnson's cover for 2013's Fury: Max #13.

[sarcastic-salem]

I’m really upset right now cause Marvel had to shelve The Punisher comics for Loki knows how long now that the US is basically a police state and the dumbasses behind the blue lives movement have hijacked Frank’s logo. Like Frank will be back eventually. Or else someone new will take up the mantle of The Punisher — no one in the Marvelverse stays dead. Not forever.

That’s the whole point of the Marvelverse.

But I feel like they’re gonna wanna let the dust settle on this one for a while. At least until after the 2024 election and……Shit. This is a good thing, though. This was a smart move on Marvel’s part. The fact that they’re willing to put to the character to rest to avoid tarnishing his legacy further is incredibly responsible and will help preserve the creator’s integrity and the symbolism behind Frank Castle as a character.

If you guys aren’t familiar with Frank’s story, I really encourage you to watch Daredevil on Disney Plus, specifically season two. Frank’s story in arc that series was inspired by Garth Ennis’s 2005 MAX run of The Punisher.

The MAX collection was a series of books published by Marvel that were intended for an adult audience due to the books graphic and political nature. These books can be extremely triggering and are recommended only to mature readers.

If you’re interested in collecting the Ennis run then you should be aware of the following trigger warnings—

Graphic violence & gore

Drug usage

Swearing

Racism

Misogyny

And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Fyi, you’re gonna wanna start shopping for those books like yesterday. Ennis’s Punisher books start at $50 USD for a used copy, but they’re about to start trending big time since Frank is going back in the vault. That means prices are gonna sky rocket because the Garth Ennis run is a fan favorite. That’s the beauty of supply and demand.

Happy shopping.

[crossh4irs]

@CROSSH4IRS independent thread-based writing blog for marvel's punisher, heavily headcanon-based padded with influences from the punisher season one, garth ennis and jason aaron's punisher max runs, punisher: the tyger, born, and the things they carried by tim o'brien.

CARRD | SIDEBLOG | PLAYLIST

[cbmnet]

#ThePunisher #MAX #GetFury #CBM

[comicbookclub]

January's Bestselling Graphic Novels, NYC Schools Publish New Comic, Garth Ennis Returns To The Punisher | Comic Book Club News For February 9, 2024

We dive into January 2024's bestselling graphic novels. The NYC Public School System is publishing their own historical comic. Garth Ennis returns to The Punisher for a new Max series at Marvel. All on Comic Book Club News for February 9, 2024.

We dive into January 2024’s bestselling graphic novels. The NYC Public School System is publishing their own historical comic. Garth Ennis returns to The Punisher for a new Max series at Marvel. All on Comic Book Club News for February 9, 2024. SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, APPLE, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, TIKTOK, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON…

[comicbookclublive]

January's Bestselling Graphic Novels, NYC Schools Publish New Comic, Garth Ennis Returns To The Punisher | Comic Book Club News For February 9, 2024

We dive into January 2024's bestselling graphic novels. The NYC Public School System is publishing their own historical comic. Garth Ennis returns to The Punisher for a new Max series at Marvel. All on Comic Book Club News for February 9, 2024.

We dive into January 2024’s bestselling graphic novels. The NYC Public School System is publishing their own historical comic. Garth Ennis returns to The Punisher for a new Max series at Marvel. All on Comic Book Club News for February 9, 2024. SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, APPLE, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, TIKTOK, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON…