Trying To Describe My Dissatisfaction With The Punisher

I feel reasonably certain that when I go to the comic store tomorrow* I'm going to request the Punisher be removed from my pull list. But I figured it might be worth trying to examine what about Hurwitz' Frank Castle that rings so false for me. Chris Sims has been doing a pretty solid job of summing it up as he's been reviewing the issues, but I figured I might spend a little time examining my personal feelings on it. I think it's because Hurwitz writes him as Frank Castle, not the Punisher.

The feeling I got from Ennis' work was that the Frank Castle calling himself the Punisher has actively attempted to bury the Frank Castle that had a wife and two children, and that other Frank leaks through mostly in dreams, provided nothing upsets the balance. It's a conscious decision, done to help him maintain a certain distance from what he does. Without that distance, what he does goes from a mission to kill those who harm the innocent, to a revenge based killing spree. The end result is possibly the same, but with emotion in the picture, the means will be different, his thinking will be less clear, innocents are more likely to get caught in the crossfire, and he is more likely to die himself. While Ennis' Punisher is realistic about his mission, that he will never kill all the criminals, and that he will die someday, that doesn't mean he's in any hurry for his time to end. He plans to keep doing what he does for absolutely as long as he can.

Going for revenge jepardizes that**, so he tries very hard to push any emotion down, and it's a constant struggle. Nearly every arc Ennis wrote seemed to involve Frank being faced with some situation that dragged his human emotions to the surface. It was Micro reentering his life, his family's remains being desecrated, girls being used by the slavers, the generals sending American soldiers to stop him, or his having another daughter. Those produce reactions in him that hampoer his effectiveness. He holds back, or loses control entirely and makes poor decisions. For the continuation of his mission, it's a bad thing.

With Hurwitz, the memory of Frank Castle's family is much closer to the surface. There was the monologue about all the things that are still happening while 'they are dead'. Seeing them in TV screens, mirrors, or in drinks. I'm fairly certain the scene at the end of #62, where he grasps the wrist of the girl he believes he's just killed to be a callback to him holding his daughter after she'd been shot in that park. The one that truly stuck in my craw was when he's reached the town, and the townspeople offer him the services of a girl. He turns them down initially, but she follows him to his room, and he doesn't send her away. But as she starts in, he looks over and sees his family bleeding out on the ground reflected in the mirror. That was a bit much. Really, if it bothers him that much, why didn't he send her away again? He typically trusts his instincts, and if they're telling him this is wrong, then why would he continue?

I think that's what goes wrong with it. Hurwitz wants us to feel a deeper connection with Castle, so he wants to make sure we know he still misses his family. But having him not refuse the girl kind of udnercuts that. Ennis certainly wasn't adverse to having Frank get some action (O'Brien in two separate arcs, Jenny in The Widowmakers), but there was never any indication that Frank felt he was being unfaithful to Maria. I think that's because he did his best to deny any emotional connection to these women***. He questions in Long, Dark Night arc whether he merely pretended to like O'Brien because that's what he felt the situation demanded, or if he genuinely cared about her, despite his best efforts to avoid connections. It wasn't love, but affection? Possibly. Still, I think it works because the specter of his deceased wife doesn't loom over it. It doesn't feel he's being unfaithful to her memory, because he doesn't seem to dwell on how it might be. The man that married Maria, loved her, is hardly there. he's been buried out of necessity, to undertake this mission. Hurwitz has brought that man out to be a more consistent part of the picture, but he's trying too hard, and it's overwhelming some of the professionalism, for lack of a better word, that I think defines the Punisher's approach.

* That's right, I've returned to the place I was before the previous two months. So I'll actually be able to provide my crappy reviews in a timely fashion! For the next 2 months or so, anyway.

** See the arc Up is Down, Black is White.

*** Beyond perhaps sympathy for them.