And Everything Else Just Fades Away

Originally, I was going to do a post about how, in the final confrontation between the Punisher and the Barracuda, inside the school in #54, the background faded away, leaving only darkness, and talk a bit about what that meant.

Then I went back to check and whoops!, there were some background details. Not a lot, but enough you could tell they were in a room and such. So that didn't quite work the way I had planned. But then I noticed something else, and that's what I've got to talk about today. It's the internal monologue, you see. Or the lack thereof.

What I noticed was, that in that final confrontation, Frank has no captions until after he has used the AK to remove 'Cuda's head. Compare this to every confrontation they had prior to that in this story.

In #50, as 'Cuda lays waste to criminals with a M-60, Frank's thinking about how he's at a disadvantage, and how Barracuda planned this out perfectly. In #51, Frank wakes up in a hospital, and tries to figure out what must have happened. And in #53, he's thinking about exactly what he's doing to Barracuda as he kicks him in the head, hooks up jumper cables to 'Cuda's boys, and how he probably made a mistake leaving 'Cuda chained up in the back of his car, with all his firepower. Even at the beginning of #54, when they're fighting in the woods, Frank thinks about what'll happen to his daughter if he can stop 'Cuda. But when Frank breaks out the ax, all conscious thought, at least that we are made aware of, goes away. It's all about the action of the moment, and after that, Frank can take the time to think.

I think it's a nice move by Ennis, letting the fight speak for itself, and tell us a little something about the lengths a parent might go to protect a child, even when that parent is someone as seemingly inhuman as Frank Castle can be.

One other thing that occurs to me now. While the background doesn't completely fall away in the final battle, the lighting dims significantly in each battle. The first fight is in a brightly-lit hotel room, the second in a seedy, but lit, room, then subsequent battles take place in a darkened home, the forest, and finally an empty school. And it does get darker as the battle continues and the night stretches on. Maybe it signifies that Frank and Barracuda keep descending into more and more savage methods in their attempts to gain final victory. Certainly their clothes get less spiffy, since Barracuda had that nice jacket when he showed up in the hotel, but he's in an increasingly ragged tank top and jeans as they go back and forth, and Frank's bandaged up like crazy, and it ceases to be about planning anything, and more about grabbing whatever is handy, and using it to kill the other fellow.