Marvel!NOW and Jason Aaron's Great God Thor

I'm in the middle of the second part of my big move, this time going from Chicago to Austin, TX, my final destination and my home for the foreseeable future. Tonight, I'm in Joplin, Missouri, and I didn't fall asleep right away after an almost ten hour drive, leaving me some time to catch up on my books. Among the lot of good stuff that came out on Wednesday was the last issue of the first arc of Jason Aaron's Thor: God of Thunder; although I was suspicious about this title's potential when it was announced, my fears were quickly assuaged. Aaron is a very talented storyteller, and one with many hats, and Esad Ribic shook off some trouble with facial expressions at the starting line, becoming one of the better Frank Frazetta-influenced comics illustrators I've ever seen.

As the books that were relaunched as part of Marvel!NOW begin to reach their first birthdays, its been interesting to me thinking about their relative success or failure, in light of the creative failure of DC's New 52 initiative, which is now almost two. Whereas DC reinvented their characters and their universe, they didn't really do anything interesting or exciting with their talent pool. Mostly they just shuffled around some creators to see what stuck. To a certain extent, Marvel did the same thing with Marvel!NOW-- they just did a better job of it. Putting Jason Aaron on Thor was an inspired move; he was willing to separate the character from the very good, although somewhat onerous, past few years of story, which freed him to write a very, very good book. Aaron's Thor is dark fairytale about what it means to be a god and whether or not gods are good. What he ends up suggesting, at least in passing, is that people need things to believe in and that gods, good or bad, are as good a thing as any. In other words, its just the sort of pop-philosophy that makes Marvel so great, done in the high adventure/sci-fi combo that Thor is just right for.

This is exactly why Marvel!NOW worked where the New 52 seems to have failed; Marvel gave me a reason to give their new stuff a try, reinventing old ideas rather than recycling them, while DC seemed to be trying to make me take a pass. This isn't to say that the books are uniformly better at Marvel right now than they are at DC, just that, a year on from the relaunch, the House of Ideas is at the high point of a recent creative resurgence. Aaron and Ribic seem like a good bet to keep it going; let's hope the rest of the publisher's good books can, too. 

Coming Soon To A Spinner Rack Near You: Nightcrawler

When I started reading X-Men comics, I was twelve years old. Nightcrawler was my favorite character-- it must have been because of X2, which had come out pretty recently. Chuck Austen's story, running in Uncanny back then, was very heavy on the blue elf; he was busy becoming a Catholic priest. If that sounds terrible, well, I don't know, it probably was. Those Austen books, read now, seem to be too much drama, too much yada yada. Those were the heady days when Juggernaut was on the X-Men. But, I'll tell you, I certainly loved it. Nightcrawler was leading his own team. How could that possibly be bad? 

As time went on, as I became (I hope) a slightly more sophisticated reader of comics, my favorite character leading his own team just didn't seem like enough anymore. Nightcrawler sort of faded into the background, anyway; his presence in the books steadily declined for five or six years. But it's not that I had stopped paying attention when Nightcrawler died a couple of years ago, during the Messiah War crossover, its just that I wasn't going to buy sixteen something books to read a story I wasn't that interested in. Plus, you know, comic book death. He'd back, right? 

Sure enough, he's back. From Marvel's X-Men panel, courtesy of CBR, emphases mine:

The room bursts into applause again as Singh asked who in the audience wants Nightcrawler back in the Marvel Universe. The room cheered again as the panel announced Nightcrawler will be in the brand new series “Amazing X-Men” by Jason Aaron and artist Ed McGuinness... 

“We’ve been having to keep this a secret pretty much since Jason was writing ‘Wolverine And The X-Men,’” Lowe said, adding that this book will answer where the little blue and red Bamfs have been coming from. “Nightcrawler is dead, but that’s not the end of his story,” Lowe continued, explaining Azazel is a pirate that is stealing something the X-Men need and Nightcrawler needs to stop him. The team on the book will also include Northstar, Wolverine, Beast, Iceman and Storm.

Now, all of this is in the language of Con announcement speak; much said, little meant. There's simply no good way to untangle "Nightcrawler is dead, but that's not the end of the story," since, typically, that's what being dead means. Still, I'm excited; my favorite X-Man is back. What could be bad?

Two Jasons, An Ed and A Steve: On "Southern Bastards" and "Velvet"

Yesterday, Image held its own little convention, Image Expo, down San Francisco way, a chance for the publisher to take a victory lap after its recent successes and announce some new stuff without the pesky Big Two (or, as will be the case later this month in San Diego, the movie and television industries) getting all up in the spotlight. Of the many, many interesting announcements and interviews done over the course of the day, there are two announcements that seem worth mentioning and parsing out a little bit. 

The first is the news of Jason Aaron and Jason Latour's Southern Bastards, a crime comic with a dixie twist. The end of Scalped a year ago left a big, big hole in the crime comics landscape and, although 100 Bullets is back (speaking of which, HOORAY!), nothing has come along which matches that book's twisting intensity; that Aaron, who is also writing the excellent Thor: God of Thunder and the very fun Wolverine and the X-Men for Marvel, is returning to the genre is very welcome news. That his partner in this new endeavor is Jason Latour is another reason to be hopeful about Southern Bastards. I like Scalped's R.M. Guera a lot, but his compositions get muddied by his heavy line, often to the detriment of his storytelling, and they are often not particularly interesting as individual units in a sequential story. Latour has a much lighter touch, which keeps his art uncluttered and allows him to add expansive detail to his panels. He also has an interesting sense for the way slight adjustments in color make for dramatic results; look closely at that promo image, check out the light red line work, in the background, and the benday dots, in the foreground, and you'll see what I mean. On top of that, his design sense is impecable, and in particular the way that he seems to see words as images that contain important information but which also can have their own distinct visual qualities. All of this is to say that Latour's comics rejoice in the juxtaposition of words and pictures, like a slightly less Popped Chris Bachalo. If the two Jasons can come together in a way even approaching the way I think they could, Southern Bastards may be a step up from Scalped, an actual masterpiece as opposed to merely transcendently good comics. 

Also of note is Ed Brubaker's new spy comic Velvet, which focuses on the life of a character reminiscent Ms. Moneypenny. Brubaker's doing the book with Steve Epting, his partner from the best of his Captain America days, which is another recipe for success. I don't think that Epting gets his due as an artist; although his work approaches photo realism, and he occasionally has trouble drawing characters or objects that or difficult to conceive as actually existing, he's perfect for straight up espionage, like those Captain America comics or this project. Brubaker, of course, reconceived Captain America for those comics as a kind of international super spy, a kind of louder, Red, White and Bluer, James Bond. As his stories developed, first in the pages of the character's home comic, then through Civil War and the long Death of Captain America arc, he seemed to become less and less interested in playing with the possibilities of the conventions of a super hero story in a spy comic, finally turning in a second Captain America series that he didn't quite seem fully behind and, in Winter Soldier, a nice and neat spy story that might be among his best work, before leaving Marvel altogether. I have to confess that I've fallen way behind on Fatale, his most recent series with frequent partner Sean Phillips, so its nice to have a reason to get back to Brubaker's work, but the most interesting thing for me here is his very conscious development as a particular kind of genre writer, one who blurred the boundaries between two different genres (and has actually done it twice, both times very successfully), into one who feels comfortable playing with our expectations in the much smaller space of a single kind of story. 

  

All-New, All-Different

I've been reading X-Men comics for a long time. Not as long as some people, of course: I'm barely as old as that massive selling #1 written by Claremont and drawn by Lee, but I've been reading X-Men comics a long time. Long enough that, when I started almost a decade ago, a mediocre writer given to melodrama, Chuck Austen, was writing Uncanny, a certain mad Scot named Morrison was writing New X-Men, and Chris Claremont, a man whose name is probably more closely tied to the group than any other, was writing a book titled (horrifically) X-Treme X-Men. It was, for sure, an odd time for Xavier's merry mutants: the three mainline books were vastly different from one another in not only tone and style, but also in quality. Although I've learned to love Morrison's take above all others from the period, in the moment I loved Austen's Uncanny the best: it had my favorite characters. Now I understand the book to be basically incomprehensible but, when I was thirteen, Austen had me. I loved the melodrama; I loved Angel's angst, I loved that Juggernaut was on the team, I even loved that storyline where Nightcrawler joins the priesthood, only to discover that he was ordained by a bunch of anti-mutant psychos.

All of this is to say, basically, that I'm pretty invested in the X-Men. Except for a two year period during high school, I've been buying and reading X comics pretty consistently for the last nine years; certainly, behind Captain America, they are the major superhero franchise I care about the most and, although I've come close a few times, I've never quite managed to quit them, although I did narrow my purchases from three books to just Uncanny. The last few years have been trying, to say the least, because the writing (from the two writers I hold above all others as the paragons of quality in mainstream superhero comics, Brubaker and Fraction) has been uneven at best and because I was forced to endure the art of Greg Land for a full half of the issues (of course, that the Dodsons did the other half was one of the reasons I hung on for as long as I did). Then, Kieron Gillen took over the book from Fraction and things started to change a little bit. There wasn't a major uptick in quality, at least not immediately, but the books certainly felt different.

And then Schism, a mini with two brilliant ideas and an editorially mandated ending that went on two issues too long, hit.

All the sudden Jason Aaron, he of one of the great crime comics of all time, Scalped, and a Ghost Rider series that is supposed to be very good, despite have been read been read by precisely no one, was writing a book called Wolverine and the X-Men and Gillen was writing a renumbered Uncanny. Despite my distaste for the renumbering, and my ultimate dismissal of the status quo setting mini as utter crap, I have never been more excited to be reading the X-Men.

Let me be very clear about why: both books are hilobrow pop art at their best. This is most obviously true of Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men: Chris Bachalo's art is, of course, the key here. Bachalo's art is highly stylized, and there's no one in the industry who draws anything like it. The figures are reduced to their necessary components; there are no lines out of place, no extraneous muscles. Visually, the book is to the point, yet, it is, because it uses only those distractions (like the occasional benday dots) that add to the books overall style, incredibly detailed. In terms of story telling, Bachalo uses what we might call functional form; when things are calm, so are the layouts. When things get a little more madcap, the panels go a little crazy. He gets points, too, for his colors, which are understated without being drab; it would have been an easy out to go garish, but instead the book has a dreamy, almost water colored look. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, his designs are fantastic. Although no one receives a serious overhaul, everybody looks just a little bit different, and brilliantly so. In particular, what he's done with Quentin Quire and Beast stands out: the choice to go full throttle on Quire's punk streak is welcome, as is the t-shirt with the red exclamation point, the one he wears underneath his school uniform. As for Beast, well, I don't think I've ever seen such a compact vision of the character, bristling with kinetic energy.

If it sounds like there's a lot going on, there is: in contrast to the slow, melodramatic pacing he's employing on Incredible Hulk, Aaron just sort of throws everything out on the table here and, somewhat miraculously, everything works. There are a hundred ideas going a thousand miles an hour inside Wolverine and the X-Men, and each one is better than the last. The characterizations of Quire and Beast stand out here, too, and I suspect that they're the two to watch the most closely. The additions of an arrogant Shi'ar prince, a mutant born of the Brood and some miniature Nightcrawler-looking things to the cast add just the right amount of mysterious and intriguing to make the whole thing feel worth the energy it takes to read. This is a mad book, which takes its cues from Grant Morrison's time with the extended mutant family; it is, in this way, the inheritor of the best X-Men run of the last twenty years, and maybe of all time. If Aaron can sustain both the energy and the coherence of his first issue over his whole run, he might give Morrison his only proper challenge.

That said, Uncanny is the most exciting its been in a really long time. Kieron Gillen really kicks it into gear with the title's first #1 since the sixties: where Aaron's book is wild, though, this one is reigned in. Although some writers would take the opportunity, when writing a team book with a team that's half ex-supervillains, to do something utterly incomprehensible or suffocatingly moralistic, Gillen makes Cyclops' vision for his team just Machiavellian enough for the enterprise to make sense; it helps that his characterization of Cyclops as the military leader of a sovereign state, inherited from Fraction but perfected since then, is spot on. The rest of the team feels right, too: Magneto, Namor and Emma are, perhaps rightfully, arrogant; Storm's humble power is striking; Colossus and Magik are convincingly tortured. Dr. Nemesis and Danger, two characters who sometimes get short-shrift because they have gone relatively undeveloped except as plot devices, get some of the book's best moments. This is a team book at its best, controlled, except the one place it shouldn't be, that is, the villain, and Mr. Sinister here is a perfect counterpoint to Cyclops and his Extinction team.

Although I've been really impressed with Carlos Pacheco's art in the past, here, despite its few flaws, there's something stopping it from transcending from mere high-quality into a kind of brilliance. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but I do sense that Pacheco is holding back a little bit, perhaps mirroring the control of the writer. I wish he would let loose a little bit; it's a good time to be reading the X-Men, in part because there's nothing conservative about either of the line's new books. If Pacheco begins to take the same chances that Gillen, Aaron and Bachalo have, we could have another brilliant new book on our hands.

True Punishment is Living With the Pain.

"PunisherMax" #12 from MAX Comics (an imprint of Marvel Comics)

Ever found it hard caring about Frank Castle? Mr. Punishment? Or maybe you've never heard of the Marvel Comics superhero The Punisher: Vietnam veteran watches his entire family shot to death for accidentally witnessing a mafia assassination, Castle vows vengeance and becomes a Batman-like avenging demon of a man. The difference between Bruce Wayne and Frank Castle is that Wayne refuses to murder people under any circumstances and Castle has no such reservations. For better or for worse.

The title for the new story-arc that started in this issue of "PunisherMAX" is simply "Frank" and writer Jason Aaron is presenting a somewhat different version of the character here. The Punisher's origins have been covered pretty extensively by Garth Ennis, the man who revitalized the character about a decade ago in the mini-series "Punisher: Born". But Ennis' "Born" was the story of Castle's time 'in-country' and very little work has been done, to this writer's knowledge, with the period between returning from Southeast Asia and his destined vows to death and violence. We get to see a bit of it in smart flashbacks and hear Frank Castle describe it in his own words in this issue.

Aaron's (@jasonaaron) writing is razor sharp, Steve Dillon's art does its usual job of making hollowed-eyed faces communicate so much sadness, and Matt Hollingsworth's (@MDHollingsworth) colors really bring strong overtones to the scenes both in the present and in the past, with divergent 'cool' and 'warm' tones to differentiate them.

This story opens soon after the events of the last issue in which the Marvel MAX universe version of the villain Bullseye has just completely destroyed the Punisher. Broken his limbs and bruised his body, shattered his spirit, and got him arrested. Somehow Bullseye brought the memories of the family he lost pouring back into Frank's mind. And that's the real torture:

"The pain of death is hollow. After all, dying you only gotta do once. ... But the pain of living just goes on and on. ... It's the living that scares me. Always has been."

Holy crap. Intense and disturbing. War turned Frank into a monster hiding just below the surface, waiting for an excuse.

All this is revealed and laid out for us while Frank lays barely alive in a prison hospital ward, awaiting the gangs of cons who's friends he's killed to come in the night. When they do... man I don't want to spoil that moment. Too good. I rarely do this, but you should read it for yourself. Gasp-worthy and hilarious.

I was truly blown away by this material and I'm making a safe bet that you will be too. The entire issue is a tight machine of a character analysis. If you're a Punisher fan, if you're an Aaron fan, or simply if you can stomach some serious violence and seriously disturbing concepts related to trauma and war you must do yourself the favor of looking for the twelfth issue of "PunisherMAX".

~ @JonGorga

Oh and P.S.? The cover by Dave Johnson brilliantly turns the symbol of the Punisher, the elongated skull, into the key that locks him in...

The Digital Divide

I have fallen really and truly behind in my Captain America reading. Every month I buy Brubaker's monthly and somehow, some horrible how, I end up with it at the bottom of my pile and it never gets read. This is a great and true travesty- those Captain America comics are surely among the great comics of our time, as they have been since Brubaker took over the title five years ago. To be completely honest, I miss the Captain a great deal, and one of my comics related new years resolutions was to make sure I read as much good Cap stuff as there is, on time and monthly. I want to do this partially so I can review it and consider it critically (I do, after all, have aspirations towards being the world's foremost Captain America scholar), but mostly because I want to read the stuff; although I've mostly moved away from character based purchasing, in the case of Captain America (and sometimes Iron Fist) I just can't help myself from wanting to read all of it, even the bad stuff (and some of it is really bad). Luckily for me, some of the Cap stuff that's coming out appears both great and essential: I'm trade-waiting Mark Waid's "Man Out of Time" mini, although Gorga has had some great things to say about it, and with the upcoming movie and the character's upcoming 70th birthday, there's bound to be more good stuff to come.

Including, of all things, Jason Aaron and Ron Garney's Ultimate Captain America. Aaron has slowly and sneakily become one of my favorite writers: between Scalped and Punishermax he's written some of the best comics of the last couple of years and has even managed to get me interested in characters as lame as Ghost Rider and as ubiquitous as Wolverine (every time I pass a new issue of the current "Mr. Logan Goes To Hell" arc I have to try really hard not to break down and buy all the issues so far. On that day you will know I have failed, for the cries of joy and despair will be spread across the four winds) and I was pumped to see him write my favorite character. Even better? Ultimate Captain America was going digital day and date.

Some of you might already know this, but back in October I cracked the screen of my laptop by falling on top of it (the story is very short and pretty funny, but I'm not going to speak of the incident anyway) and solved my problem by hooking up my laptop to a monitor on my desk and buying an iPad for mobile use. It didn't hurt, of course, that I could buy and read comics on the thing. I'm not sure I could ever give up on physical format comics (I'm twenty, but I still buy vinyl!) and particularly not at the prices their being offered for at the moment, but I'm always up for trying something new and interesting- it helps that comics look great on the thing, without the limitations of printing and absurdly high-res.

In fact, I was so interested in the way comics look on my fancy new toy that it was inevitable, given my interest in the comics consumption problem, that I would also become interested in the differences between the two formats. I proposed to Gorga that we each review the whole of the series in one of the formats, and use it as a springboard to talk about the pros and cons of each format. I was more excited for this series of posts than I was for the comic itself, and so when the release date rolled around on Wednesday, I was pumped. I booted my iPad, logged onto the Marvel comics app and...

I found that Ultimate Captain America was missing.

And then I realized that Jonathan Hickman and Carlos Pacheco's seriously brilliant Ultimate Thor (featuring Ultimate Captain Britain wearing a lab coat and his costume AT THE SAME TIME!), also announced as day and date, hadn't shown up the last week in December, when it came out in physical stores everywhere. That comic has had some distribution problems of its own, so I wasn't that worried about it, but it hasn't appeared since either. I don't want to speculate too much on why this is, but I'm having trouble believing that Marvel is going back on their day and date announcements, particularly in the wake of the recent news about the death of Ultimate Spider Man. It's too bad, too: starting off their same day digital release program with two minis that were likely to be very popular was a smart move for digital readers, although it may have damaged some relations with physical retailers, but promising something that never appears is a good way to turn readership off of digital comics entirely, particularly given what seems to be a wide preference for comics you can read off of paper and prices that are simply too high for a product that only exists digitally.

I hope to see the minis soon- I would like to read them, after all, and am getting tired of waiting. It's a fast moving comics business and I wouldn't want minis that are deserving of attention to fall in the same spot in my stack as my poor ignored Ed Brubaker Captain America comics.

Building a Better Universe: On Marvel's Architects Intitiative

Yesterday, Marvel released the following press release, detailing their new Architects initiative:

The very fabric of the Marvel Universe is changing and the Architects are the ones leading the charge! Marvel’s Architects initiative spotlights the writers and artists telling the most exciting and impactful stories that rock the Marvel Universe to its very core every month.

But just who are the writers in Marvel’s Architects?

·Brian Michael Bendis, writer of AVENGERS, NEW AVENGERS, Death of Spider-Man, the upcoming MOON KNIGHT and an upcoming top secret project

·Matt Fraction, writer of THOR, INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, and a top secret upcoming event

·Ed Brubaker, writer of CAPTAIN AMERICA, SECRET AVENGERS and top secret upcoming new series

·Jonathan Hickman, writer of FANTASTIC FOUR, S.H.I.E.L.D. and a top secret upcoming new series

·Jason Aaron, writer of WOLVERINE, ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE and a top secret upcoming new series

“These are five of the top writers in comics and they’re writing some of the best Marvel comics ever” said C.B. Cebulski, SVP Creator & Content Development. “Each of their projects lays the groundwork for the future of the Marvel Universe and in 2011, their plans—which are being seeded in their current work as we speak—will come to fruition. There’s never been a better time to be a Marvel fan.”

Stay tuned to Marvel.com for more news on Marvel’s Architects, including interviews and the unveiling of the artists redefining the Marvel Universe!

Jason Wood, over at iFanboy, believes that press releases like this send the wrong message (he, by the way, makes a couple of very good points), I'm more interested in a couple of the other hints that they seem to be dropping:

The absence of Uncanny X-Men under the titles that Fraction writes is curious, since he's been the lead on that since the summer of 2008- almost as long as he's been writing Invincible Iron Man. Does this mean that recently announced co-writer Kieron Gillen (whom, you will remember, is one of the few writers I adore as much as I adore Fraction and who's series S.W.O.R.D was canceled far too soon earlier this year) will be the new director of the X-Verse? Fraction's run on the title has been hit and miss, but I suspect that has more to do with the artists he's paired with more than anything else. Is he jumping ship? Or at least stepping back to focus on whatever this top secret event is?

Speaking of top secret, each of these writers is writing a "top secret" something or other. So, that's news, I guess. My one big hope is that Brubaker's unannounced project is a Steve Rogers: Super Soldier ongoing- that was some of the best comics all year, and it let Ed do some straight up espionage comics, which was fun to see.

Most interestingly, though, is the inclusion of Jason Aaron on this list- every other writer is involved with a major aspect of the Marvel universe, but Aaron's big title right now is Wolverine, which I've heard is very good but usually seems to exist in its own space: finding out what his big upcoming project is going to be is extremely exciting, if for no other reason than it suggests that its going to be huge. The little work of Aaron's that I've read (Scalped and a few issues of PunisherMax before I just couldn't handle the violence of that comic any more) was fantastic, and I'm having trouble containing my curiosity.

Days of Deathlok's Future's Past's Moral Compass

"Tomorrow Dies Today" Part 5 in "Wolverine: Weapon X" #15 from Marvel Comics

(You should know up front, I haven't read Parts 1 through 3 of this story from "Wolverine: Weapon X" #11, 12, and 13.)

I avoided this story for a long time simply because it looked like just another excuse to have a bunch of superheroes do a dogpile on a bunch of killer robots... I wasn't entirely wrong but I wasn't entirely right either.

I only peeked at it because of Spider-Man's appearance on the cover, a sometimes accurate and sometimes entirely inaccurate promise of a guest-appearance in mainstream superhero comics, and was shocked to discover: not only is Spider-Man actually in the damn thing, it's also a comic intelligently using tropes of the superhero genre, sci-fi action time travel movies, and the history of several Marvel Comics characters to tell a probing story about the nature of humanity. I should have known better than to assume junk could come out of the mind and the pencils of the writer of "Scalped" and the penciler of "Amazing Spider-Man" #539, one of the better issues of a Spider-Man series in recent memory.

The character Deathlok, as I remember him from the 90s, was a cyborg who talked to himself. Not exactly brilliant-sounding stuff is it? As a cyborg he had an onboard computer, this computer had an A.I. which took care of all the needs of their shared body's mechanical parts. So there was always a bit of arguing between them. Whether Aaron was the first to utilize this dichotomy for revealing something about our own humanity is pretty immaterial as he has done it very well here. This new version of Deathlok is just one of a massive army of Deathloks, a mere drop in a sea of cyborgs. His mind belonged to a serial killer named Evan and his robot A.I. well... it makes some interesting choices for itself.

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
Jason Aaron and Ron Garney have crafted a good story of heartbreak, human deprivation, and finally redemption.

With a lot of superheroes.

And time travel.

~ @JonGorga

Punished.

Twice in the month of November, Marvel revamped the Punisher. Twice.

Now, that sounds absurd- and it is (although, you could see it happening, the way things turn around at the Big Two), but when you realize that it was in two totally different books with two totally different continuities, well, then I suppose it makes a little more sense.

What's so interesting about these books (Punishermax #1 and Punisher #11) is that they take the character in such totally different directions- stylistically, thematically, artistically, etc. The first is a revamp of Marvel's long-running Punisher ongoing published through their adult MAX imprint, starting with a new number one. Having never followed the book before, I can't tell you what has changed besides the title, but I can tell you there's a damn good reason its published under the MAX banner. This book is violent as all hell, which I suppose plays to Steve Dillon's strengths, but there you go.

Dillon's art is, I think, a good place to start: has there ever been a more perfect artist to draw the Punisher? It's been said that his art is a little too goofy for this incredibly serious sort of book, but I wonder if that may be the point- you take this absurd level of violence (and, just think about this for a second, at one point in this issue Wilson Fisk pops a guys eyeballs out by squeezing the dude's head) and you combine with this grim n' gritty anti-hero and you can either take yourself too seriously and end up doing a bad Garth Ennis impersonation (which, I imagine, is why no one has done particularly well with the character in the last few years) or you can make it seem just as ridiculous as it is- not playfully ridiculous, mind you, just flat out ridiculous. Dillon's art walks this line perfectly, I think- it's just absurd enough to make the reader knows that it's absurd, but realistic enough that I actually cringed about a dozen times throughout the course of the issue. This makes sense, since the only other book that did that to me on a regular basis was, well, Preacher.

Jason Aaron, too, seems to be just the right guy for this character. He seems to get what makes him compelling and what makes him dangerous, and he gets the moral ambiguity that this book should have just right- the Punisher, ostensibly the good guy, is out for revenge- killing, murdering, torturing, doing not good things to not good people. Wilson Fisk, soon to be a paper Kingpin and nominally a bad guy, doing what he does so that he can make a life for his wife and son. Aaron's a smart guy, and he's writing a smart book- again, which is just what this book needs to be. Otherwise, the violence would go from senseless to gratutiously so, and what is a fantastic book would cease to hold any interest for me.

Rick Remender's revamp, on the other hand, is pretty much just silly (something that Jon predicated way back when). The plot goes something like this- bug eyed yellow guys save the remnants of Frank Castle from H.A.M.M.E.R, Man-Thing beats up on some Osborn cronies, Morbius puts the Punisher back together, Punisher throws a series of tantrums.

OK, it's more complicated than that, but where Jason Aaron impressed me with nuance and grace, Remender reveals that he has no concepts of the terms.

Which isn't to say that the book is bad- it's not. In fact, it's actually a lot of fun. It's not a high-concept story, and it knows it's not high-concept. I get the distinct feeling that someone said to someone else, "wouldn't it be cool if we took the Punisher and turned him into Frankenstein?" and that the idea just snowballed from there. It also happens that it's kind of like candy- nice, but sugary sweet and when it's gone, it's gone.

That the art is so unabashadly goofy doesn't help either. I think Marvel may have overcompensated here a little bit- I mean, really this art is often just silly. Frank Castle's Frankenexpressions are good for a laugh, but even those just help enforce the seemingly throw away nature of the story. Clearly, there's something at stake for the monsters who bring Castle back to life, but there's not really anything at stake for me.

Still, if you're looking for some fun with a bizarre idea, Punisher #11 should be right up your alley. If you're looking for really good comics, though? Check out Punishermax #1- you can't go wrong.