Punisher #5

Written by Becky Cloonan
Art by Steve Dillon
Published by Marvel Comics

For those Punisher fans who miss a simpler time for Frank Castle, back when Garth Ennis resurrected the character in 2000 and turned him into an emotionless killing machine, this series might be for you. The similarities between Becky Cloonan’s and Garth Ennis’s takes on the character extend beyond sharing Punisher veteran artist Steve Dillon.

Now, as then, Frank is a force of nature. Gone (or at least ignored) is the humanization that Nathan Edmondson cultivated over the past few years. This type of Punisher story plays more like a nature documentary, where the human interest angle comes from survivors who emerge battered and broken from debris left in the wake of Hurricane Castle.

We’ve gotten some strong supporting characters from this kind of Punisher story before, including Detective Martin Soap, Barracuda and Rachel Cole-Alves. Becky Cloonan is betting that her strong female DEA Agent Ortiz can live up to the expectations set by past supporting characters. So far, there’s nothing particularly interesting about the no-nonsense Ortiz. She hasn’t been given much time to evolve after diving into a situation that is way above her pay grade. This series also introduces Face, a maniacal drug-dealing serial killer who cuts of people’s faces (I don’t know why it is, but Steve Dillon has drawn a lot of chopped-off faces).

This issue picks up after last issue’s car/helicopter chase that landed Ortiz’s partner, Henderson, in the hands of the bad guys. Frank escaped the scene while saving a little girl and made his way to the drug lord’s HQ. Hot on his heels is Agent Ortiz. In the early pages of issue #5, Punisher and Ortiz agree to a momentary truce that is rendered quickly irrelevant when they split up.

As I said in my review of issue #3, it hardly matters who the bad guys are anymore. They’re going to die. Frank can’t be stopped. Won’t be outrun. Can’t be outlasted. All the writer can do is make the bad guys interesting and the good guys 3-dimensional. So far, this series has been good enough, even if it’s nothing spectacular. The supporting characters should be a little more developed than they are, but it’s hard to gauge that kind of thing with how decompressed comics have become. Issue #5 only has 61 lines (not counting single words, grunting sounds and things like “damn it!”). That’s not enough dialogue to learn much about any one character and this issue has more than a few.

This story is efficiently told. The art is appropriate. Punisher looks tough. The bad guys get dead. It’s a perfectly acceptable Punisher comic book...but it just doesn’t have much meat. It’s disposable entertainment. That’s fine for a few issues, but we need something dynamic and new to happen soon or I, for one, will lose interest.