Saturday Splash Page #224

"Question of Faith," in The Question #3, by Dennis O'Neil (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Rick Magyar (inker), Tatjana Wood (colorist), Gaspar Saladino (letterer)

Steve Ditko created The Question at Charlton, but I've not read his work with the character. DC bought Charlton, and Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan went a very different route with Vic Sage.

O'Neil's Sage is a reporter, in Hub City, a rotting post-industrial city that is a national joke for its crumbling infrastructure, drunk mayor and bent cops. Cowan shows us dirty streets, apartments with holes in the floor, peeling wallpaper, boards over windows. The streets aren't crowded, but most of the people we see are either looking to commit a crime, or appear too exhausted to even contemplate that. Just worn down, lines etched deep in their faces.

Vic has a rep as a reporter who is fearless in exposing corruption, with the Question as his method to get information, but also as a cheap thrill. An excuse to release the anger inside him through violence. He gets in over his head after Lady Shiva beats him nearly to death, and then gets shot, but something about Sage impresses Shiva enough to bring him to Richard Dragon.

The Vic who returns to Hub City a year later is a changed man, at least temporarily. He moves differently, thinks differently. Speaks in circles. When people ask who "No-Face" is and he replies, "A good question," you wonder if it's a joke, or something he doesn't know himself. Zen, letting answers and paths come to him, rather than always trying to force his way through. As I said, at least for a while, but we'll come back to that.

Sage's supporting cast consists of basically three characters: Aristotle "Tot" Rodor, an elderly professor who serves as Vic's Alfred. Patching him up, asking questions so Vic can explain things to us, providing information from his various backgrounds. Myra Connelly, an old flame of Vic's who begins the series married to the useless, drunk mayor, but later runs for mayor herself. Lastly, Izzy O'Toole, a particularly bent cop who cleans up his act after the Question saves him from being killed by a couple of crooks Izzy objected to robbing a suicide victim. 

If I had to summarize the foes the Question faces, it would be people looking for meaning, or maybe acceptance. The Reverend up there is looking for some meaning in what he saw as a chaplin in Vietnam. He uses a bomber at one point, a thin, glasses-wearing, quiet, boy, desperate to live up to his father's idea of what a man is. Desperate enough to burn his own face with acid, to prove he's not a "sissy boy" for a father he loathes, a fat, sweaty, ignorant brute who taunts his son for being shy around girls. Disillusioned soldiers, trying to prove their strength, or that their strength has some meaning or purpose behind it. A doctor who treats patients with great humanity - and kills the ones who hurt them because he thinks there's a balance to redress. A sadistic Latin American drug kingpin that hopes to use a particle accelerator to transmute himself into something better, like turning lead to gold.

How effective the Question is in dealing with these threats in up for debate. Many of them end up dead, though not by his hand. (The reverend dies by Myra's hand.) Perhaps by his voice. Vic Sage is a bit of a silver-tongued devil. Maybe it's something about what he went through that opened his perspective. Grants him greater understanding of others, but also lets him see the flaws in their philosophies. The doctor didn't consider that the people he killed were not simply evil, that they could change, as Vic had changed from his directionless, violent youth. The soldiers realize they're not following a man with some higher purpose, just one with a desire to prove he wasn't weak when he broke as a POW. But all of them end up dead, so what purpose did the Question challenging their perspective accomplish?

That's something Sage struggles with, the limit of what he can do, and how best to do it. Because as the series progresses over its 36-issue run, Vic backslides. His anger returns, his calm recedes. He may not go out as the Question for thrills, or strictly to hurt people, but he begins to see problems only in the manner in which he can use violence to solve them. He ignores what he can do as a reporter speaking to the people of Hub City to make them aware of issues. When Myra's opponent in the mayoral election hires a bunch of bikers to try and intimidate people at the polls, Vic opts to try and fight an entire, massive gang, rather than make it publicly known this is happening. Given the choice between using his fists to do all one man can, and using his voice to possibly get thousands to act, he chooses to go it alone.

Myra wins, but it's questionable how much Vic or the Question had to do with it. She fires her campaign manager - I think replacing him with her make-up artist - speaks honestly, speaks bluntly about the problems the city faces. The Question does convince Izzy, who's by then built his rep back up as an honest cop, to give a public message supporting her, but it's ultimately Myra who gets herself elected. A real poisoned chalice. When we first see her, Cowan draws her like a fashion model. Long hair with lots of bounce to it, sweaters that hug tight to her figure. She's more Vic's old flame than anything else, a woman trying to survive a bad situation for the sake of a daughter that stays at an orphanage. By the time Myra's running for mayor, her hair is cut short, she wears suit jackets and business skirts. Cowan's lines get harder, making her jawline sharper, the bags under her eyes more prominent. She's trying to seize control of her life, do something with it, but being mayor of Hub City is like buying a house while it's in the process of burning to the ground.

And that's maybe the most interesting thing O'Neil does with the book: Hub City breaks Vic. The Question can't save the city, and he can't use fighting for it (or in it) to save himself. The questions he has about himself, where he came from, who his parents were, why they didn't want him? He's not getting those answers, and that uncertainty about himself erodes whatever foundation Richard Dragon helped him build. Ultimately, he has to be carried out and taken away. To South America, if I remember the stories in The Question Quarterly right. Myra stays, Izzy stays, to keep fighting for the city, but for Vic, it's over.

What I Bought 4/8/2026

I feel I've hit a wall on most of the games I'm playing. Granted, I'm not playing anything all that often, but whenever I try, it seems like a lot of quick deaths and no progress. I'm learning things in Outer Wilds, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with the information I'm learning.

D'Orc #3, by Brett Bean (writer/artist), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colorist), Nate Piekos (letterer) - Well, pull on a dwarf's beard and you ought to expect them to try and drive you into the ground like a tent peg.

The angry dwarf is hunting D'orc. This plays out as D'orc doing helpful things and the dwarf then killing the people D'orc helped. A white mage offers some new intel, but it doesn't help the dwarf. Except in terms of giving him more people to terrorize, which was probably not the mage's intent, since the mage is actually D'orc.

I'm unclear on what D'orc was hoping to accomplish. He says he's ready to deal out a beating to the dwarf for the damage he's done, but dude, some of those people got damaged because you sent him in their direction! Why didn't you just kick his ass sooner?

Oh, because you can't actually kick his ass. All attempts at sneak attacks fail, but the beating gives D'orc a chance to swipe the potion meant to erase him, and hit the dwarf with it instead. The dwarf says it's supposed to burn away any mistake it's hit with, but he just kind of falls over the cliff when he takes it in the face. So, did the Bone Witch who made it sell him a bum deal, or is it just a strict definition of mistake? 

Moonstar #2, by Ashley Allen (writer), Edoardo Audino (artist), Arthur Hesli (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - Aw crap, Papa Smurf has gone to the dark side, and he's grown to enormous size!

Moonstar and Kian travel to China, because there's some vessel deep in a cave that will let Kyron collect more souls. There's some arguing, and then they reach the bottom and - the vessel is gone. Great work! There's a meaningless fight with some undead - unless each of them saving the other at some point is going to be significant later - and Kian stalks out to try and contact some people.

And then Dani's grandfather appears, carrying the cursed sword and talking about how she didn't avenge him, so he's gonna do it himself. By killing Dani? I know I'm not well-versed in her backstory, but I think I'd have heard about her murdering family members.

OK, it's actually Kyron, trying a disguise. They fight a little, Dani grabs the sword, gets some sad backstory for Kyron about watching a sister die of some illness and him not accepting that nothing could be done. And then the sword got it's hooks into him, with some spiel about how it would keep everyone he cares about safe inside it forever, rather than letting their souls go wherever it is souls go in the Marvel Universe, I don't even know any more what the theological cosmology is after Ewing made such a big literal thing about The-One-Above-All in his Hulk stuff.

Anyway, Kian saves Dani from getting killed, but the sword still took her soul? I think. Well, Strong Guy ran around without a soul for awhile, right? No big deal. Though I guess he lacked empathy, which might be an interesting twist on what we've seen of Dani so far. If she didn't care about the cost of being wrong, and just dove into whatever plan she'd settled on. Though there'd still be the question of why she was bothering to stop him at that point. 

The Many Faces of Art Forgery - William Casement

Casement divides his book into 3 parts. The first is a broad history of art forgery, what we know of, anyway, going to back to people in Rome creating sculptures and then carving the names of famous artists of ancient Greece on them. This section covers not only forgers, but what he calls "copyists", who apparently make reproductions of famous pieces, but are open about it. You know it's not an actual Rembrandt or Donatello, but something done to look just like one of their pieces.

As he moves into the 20th Century, he delves into greater detail about the backstories of known forgers, their techniques, preferred styles to work in, their trials (if there were any.) This was the part that dragged the most for me. He includes photographs of forgeries in the book, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about art to be able to tell anything, even when he puts a picture of the original alongside the fake.

Part 2 is largely a discussion of the concept of forgery, or perhaps the idea of what makes the actual artwork. Early on, Casement discusses how some people define a "fake" as someone reproducing an original, a copyist that doesn't admit it, while a "forgery" is when you make an original painting, but in the style of a more famous artist, and try to pass it off as one of theirs. Yet others would reverse those definitions. So Han van Meergen made Vermeer paintings, including one, Supper at Emmaus, that Vermeer never actually painted. Forgery, or fake?

This was the part I found most interesting, as it also looks at the notion of work-for-hire, or having "studio" artists like Rubens or Warhol, who may create all or part of the actual painting based off a conceptual sketch or design by their boss. From there, it looks at the notion of appropriation, first in taking an image or work someone else created and repurposing it into something else, and eventually cultural appropriation, in terms of who gets to make art in the styles of various cultures, but also, who gets to define what is the art of a given culture.

Casement talks a lot about Indigenous Australians in that section, and a Richard Bell who points out there are many Indigenous Australians who live in urban settings and whose work reflects that life. Does that mean their art isn't part of their culture because it doesn't match the conceived notions of what their art is "supposed" to be?

Although the main takeaway I had from Part 2 was that I consider conceptualism, where guys like Damian Hirst and Jeff Koons argue they're the artist even all they contribute is the idea and someone else actually paints or sculpts it, bullshit. When I go to a comic convention and ask someone to draw me a picture of a character, I'm not the artist because I suggested the idea, the person who actually drew it is. But Hirst and Koons come off as hypocritical tools in this book, arguing it's fine for them to appropriate other people's work, then getting huffy at the slightest hint someone might be doing the same with their work.

Part 3 is a discussion of moral arguments around forgery. Those used by forgers or others to justify their actions, but also the question of authenticity and historical value. Little bit of a Ship of Theseus situation over at what point in restoring an old painting is it no longer the original, but in fact a reproduction? Is it more important to leave the painting as is, allowing it to degrade over decades and centuries but always being the work of the true artist, or touch it up to try and maintain something approaching its original state, recognizing it may be subtly altered in the process? That gets into a discussion of the "perfect fake", whether such a thing can exist, the relative aesthetic value of such a fake relative the original, and so on.

The aspect I hadn't ever considered was the potential historical damage. On a individual scale, a forger can provide a false impression of an artist's style or focus based on the forger's level of skill and what pieces they choose to reproduce or create. If Vermeer didn't actually create many paintings, but van Meergen paints several that he passes off as heretofore unknown Vermeers, that gives people the wrong idea about what Vermeer was doing. Or suddenly we think van Gogh's "blue period" was much longer or more prolific because someone makes a bunch of fakes in that style.

But Casement also discusses a guy who created fake sculptures of Mesoamerican peoples that we don't necessarily have much art from. And in some cases, the sculptures weren't based on anything other than the man's own whims. Not knowing those were fakes, archaeologists and historians were reconstructing belief systems for those people that incorporated deities and styles that were never part of that culture. So that was a new thing to consider.

The writing is a little dry at times, but Casement seems to be pretty thorough in examining the different sides of arguments and theories, providing direct quotes from forgers, artists, art historians, critics and legal statutes, where applicable. And the book certainly did not fill me with the desire to create forgeries, especially since it sounds like the actual forger usually makes a fraction of what the art dealer who sells the forgery does. 

'Eric Hebborn, in making a thousand fake Old Master drawings, capitalized on the fact that the artists he faked seldom signed their works on paper. He was known in London and Rome to be knowledgeable about art and active in searching out old works, and often approached potential buyers with "finds" while leaving the determination of authorship up to them.'

What I Bought 4/1/2026

I traveled to the KC area for work today, and for once, the weather wasn't crap. Typically - doesn't matter the time of year - I draw the short straw. Unseasonable snow, 50+ mph winds, heavy rains, always something. Results had to change eventually, I guess. Let's get into April's books.

Nova: Centurion #6, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alvaro Lopez (artist), Mattia Iacono (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Going to try and shoot the most damage-resistant of the 3 first, huh? Bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it works.

Last issue, so Nova's got to kill the alien parasite infecting Cammi. He was going to use all that stolen Mysterium, but the parasite crumpled up his ship and chucked it into space. So Rich uses the promise of the Nova Force to lure it inside entirely inside him, then unleashes said Nova Force and incinerates the thing. While making a speech about how he's not just a Nova, he's the entire Corps, and it can't beat all of them.

It is with disappointment I report that, when Lopez draws a page showing dozens of Novas, as representative of the legacy of the Corps that Richard is the inheritor of, he doesn't follow Brian Denham's lead and draw a blue Pikachu Nova. Tsk, tsk.

Anyway, parasite dead, Cammi saved (thank you for that, Jed MacKay.) The Kree-Skrull War are still barking threats, and Nova reminds them that is pretty stupid considering he could kill them both in an instant. Of course, now he needs a new ship and energy for the Worldmind, both of which require money. But he's got his combat accountant and Cammi, so he ought to be OK.

So, obviously things got rushed. We never really got much about Aalbort (the accountant), and MacKay clearly had more in mind for Star-Lord, since he makes sure to throw in a page about Quill regretting backstabbing Nova and how this time, he's going to do the right thing instead of the smart thing. I assume there was going to be more build up to Quill coming through for Nova in a key moment, especially since he doesn't really get to do anything other than be there in this circumstance. Rich and the Worldmind handle the parasite by themselves, the others are just an audience.
 

Batgirl #18, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (penciler/inker), Juan Castro (inker), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - I bet the phosphorescent skeleton knows the best party spots in town.

Cass, Tenji and Jaya leap into the portal to Spirit World. Where they find the guy with a big old gunshot wound in the back of his head, minus the wound and saying he's been waiting for weeks. Turns out the Bloodmaster's father is trying to hijack his body to live again. Because apparently the tradeoff for the blood powers is you only live once. No reincarnation.

This is presented as something Cassandra should be very concerned about, though I can't tell that she is. She just wants the powers gone, but they have to talk to whoever granted the family these powers, and there's some angry lady with big teeth, that I guess Cass met in that Spirit World mini-series, waiting for her.

Cassandra is also, in between being trained to form the blood into weapons and stuff, arguing with Tenji about whether they should look for Shiva here and see if they can bring her back. Tenji wants to try, arguing they're supposed to honor their family in this world, while Cass brushes it off. So the same argument they've been having basically since Tenji was introduced, and I'm still on Cassandra's side.

There's just a sense of obligation Brombal's implying with all this, that Cass has to acknowledge a "family" that has never been there for her in any significant way, if she wants to progress, advance, whatever the hell it is she's actually supposed to do, that I think is horseshit. Family is what and who you make of it, and to be considered family by someone is, like respect, earned, not given. But, hey, Batman seems just about as irritated as me, so maybe the family Cassandra actually chose is going to step in and try to help.

The Frighteners (1996)

Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) is a psychic investigator that's only partially a fraud. Partially in that he can see ghosts, but he convinces some of them to do fake hauntings so he can bilk people out of money. Unfortunately, the town he lives in is experiencing a spate of deaths that initially look like heart attacks, but the hearts show no signs of damage. And Frank is starting to see glowing orange numbers carved in the foreheads of random people, that are not the doing of his pals Cyrus (Chi McBride), Stuart (Jim Fyfe), or the Judge (John Astin.)

I've watched part of this at some point in the past, but I didn't realize there was so much going on in it. Probably too much. Frank's not dealing with his wife's death. His scams. Lucy (Trini Alvarado), a nurse who thinks Frank is legit and whose husband ends up a victim. A ghostly killer (Jake Busey.) An FBI special agent (Jeffrey Combs) gone entirely round the bend from too many years investigating paranormal cult shit. A woman kept trapped in a house by her authoritarian mother. There's even a bit of a subplot about the local newspaper publisher gunning for Frank.

Peter Jackson really tries to make it all fit, shifting focus from one thread to another. The newspaper publisher as another suspicious nail in Frank's coffin, removed from the table once we've got the FBI agent as an immediate physical threat to go with the supernatural one. And then saving the reveal of the truth about the woman and her mother for late in the film, to introduce a different physical threat. Lucy's there as the one person who believes in Frank, including Frank himself, but also to provide medical knowhow required later on.

(Curious to me Frank keeps watching people's hearts stop in front of him, but never considered trying chest compressions.)

But I don't think Jackson quite pulls it off. When characters die, or whatever you'd call it in that case of the ghosts, it doesn't feel impactful so much as them just sort of, dropping out of the film because Jackson ran out of use for them. The ghost of Lisa's husband feels pretty important in the first half, and then his spectral face gets ripped off and he's just gone. Even if he clearly had a different impression on the health of their marriage from Lisa, he did care about her in his own way, but he's just tossed aside. It felt like Cyrus and Stuart's sendoffs should have gotten more emotional heft as well, considering they were the closest thing to friends Frank had for several years.

Maybe that's just because I enjoy Chi McBride in everything he does. Always a delight. 

Fox actively tries to suppress the cocky charm he traditionally brought to roles, and I think he pulls it off. Frank is too surly towards the ghosts, and mostly too lazy in his interactions with other people, to really be charming. He's just going through the motions, everything is a script designed to either quickly get to the part where they give him money, or quickly end the discussion. Lisa's husband is freaking out about being dead, and Frank is describing how he'll have another chance to go into the light in a year, and he's going to excrete ectoplasm until then with the air of a man late for a bus.

I'm less sure Fox pulls off the turnaround to "guy who does care, actually," in the final stretch. Frank still just seems kind of tired, but maybe that's the point. He at least understands what happened to his wife, so now he got no objections to joining her. He has to get some closure on that front before he can really open himself up again.

The special effects and CGI are, well, it's the mid-90s. Some of the stuff with how the ghosts' bodies are manipulated (getting temporarily flattened by car tires, for example), doesn't look too bad. The "Reaper" look for Busey is pretty good, as compared to the translucent blue glow thing most of the ghosts get. The bits where ghosts are interacting with physical objects, picking up children or post-it notes, well, Who Framed Roger Rabbit did that stuff better in the '80s.

What I Bought 3/30/2026 - Part 2

Alex invited me along for another weekend jaunt to Chicago in a couple of weeks. Let's see, the first time I did all the driving and wound up on an entirely incongruent sleep schedule as him and everyone else. The second time I got friggin' motion sickness or something from the Uber driver we used getting back from dinner one night. Am I doomed to disaster, or is third time the charm? Find out in a couple of weeks. Assuming I survive.

Spirit of the Shadows #3, by Daniel Ziegler (writer), Nick Cagnetti (writer/artist/colorist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Great, Bunnicula leveled up its vampiric powers to include wings.

So Erik's back from the dead - again - thanks to the witch that wants revenge for killing her sister. The sister who is still wandering the afterlife, gathering the pages of the book of Erik's life. Which is how we learn that his previous return was by the same doctor the witch attacked previously. And once Erik was back, he was deadset on reuniting with Katrina, only to find she'd married in the 2 years that passed. So he killed her husband, and showed off his corpse to Katrina. That went as well as you'd expect.

Hellena, however, is more interested in the fact the doc is the one who knew how to resurrect people. So she traps Erik in some magic bubble and rushes off the combine her magic with the doctor's science and - Erik escapes the bubble, disrupts the spell, and rather than Hellena's sister being resurrected, a bunch of ghosts start rising from the graveyard. Whoopsie.

Nobody could let things go in this world, apparently. Erik kept trying to either get back to Katrina or bring her back, causing more harm in the process. Hellena keeps trying to get back her sister, hurting others in the process. Katrina's father - who apparently killed Erik - is back as a ghost and ready to kill Erik again. Maybe the Doc realized it was a mistake bringing back Erik, but that didn't stop him from helping Erik use more women in his experiments. Nobody lets go, and nobody learns anything. Cyclical, except the orbit is widening, and the damage is spreading wider.

I am curious to see if any of these ghosts end up with weird powers, considering there's been no explanation for why Erik came back looking like he did, or why he can make a glowing green violin that produces notes that knock back supernatural creatures.

Is Ted OK? #2, by Dave Chisholm (writer/artist/letterer) - That's a strange choice for a design on your sunglasses. Most people just go with a skull, or a flag. 

I don't have the first issue yet, which is too bad, because apparently Ted either spontaneously combusted or flat out exploded. But he's OK, folks! In that he's up and moving around again the next day, to the confusion of Sarah, who was assigned to watch him. She's either not doing a good job, or doing too good a job, because Ted notices her following him, but recognizes she tried to help him.

So they talk, because Sarah thinks he needs a friend. Ted thinks the company he works at is actually staffed by aliens. And when things happen like his computer's mouse bleeding when he clicks too hard, or him finding a mysterious silo somewhere inside, you gotta wonder. But also, Sarah is able to see him no matter where he goes, thanks to something her computer is connected to. And there are worm like things that can possibly do something to specific memories in your head if you name what you want focused on?

It's all weird, is what I'm saying. There's a big guy with a manbun (never a good sign) that works with Ted and tends to loom threateningly. He also speaks in the sort of generic phrases that seem ominous when Chisholm constantly draws the guy so we're looking up at him. 'I'm sure we'll meet again soon.' that kind of thing. Still, Ted slips the leash long enough to see some things he's not supposed to, then get tranq darted. I'm not sure what they were, even looking at them, or I'd describe them. I'm as confused as Ted, which is probably a good move by Chisholm.

Although the issue ends on some reporter interviewing - and I use the term loosely, the reporter talks for 21 caption boxes or voice balloons, across 2.5 pages, without actually asking a question - some tech mogul trillionaire who somehow saved the world from some horrible devastation wrought by some terrorists in the Ukraine. The fact the tech mogul points out the guy hasn't asked a question 17 balloons in doesn't make it less annoying, but there it is. The mogul's got some big announcement, but whether that's going to be bullshit (probably), or something to do with what Ted found, I've got no idea.

Chisholm also uses a heavily orange color scheme for the tech mogul parts, after mostly sticking to greens, purples, and a sterile, whitish-blue for Ted's workspace up to that point. Without seeing the first issue, I don't know if there's significance to that. It's not quite the same shade as the clip we see of Ted on fire at the start of the issue - that orange has more red in it - or in the above panel - which has more yellow - but it's got a similar fire/sun vibe to it. So is fire going to be significant? Fire of knowledge? A Prometheus-type thing, where Ted learns something and is punished for it? Or is Sarah the one that's going to learn that awful thing, and it's about Ted?

Sunday Splash Page #421

"Working Man," in The Punisher (vol. 7) #19, by Garth Ennis (writer), Leandro Fernandez (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Dan Brown (colorist), Gent (letterer)

Eventually, Marvel started up a MAX imprint, essentially comics with content that wasn't for kids. Nudity, graphic violence, various slurs and profanity. All on the table, and Garth Ennis got to write a Punisher book under this label, which meant no more cartoony violence about feeding people to zoo animals, no more goofball Russian with huge melons, no more arcs making fun of how stupid and useless costumed heroes are compared to a Hard Man with a Gun, Doing Hard Things (the most tedious of Ennis' various hobby horses.)

Ennis set Frank Castle loose in our world, more or less. There are no superheroes, no superpowers, save Frank's impossible ability to never kill anyone he doesn't intend to. Well, that and money, but that's always a superpower. In addition to the various organized crime types, the Punisher deals with crooked U.S. generals, slave traders, unscrupulous corporate scumbags, a group of women he made widows. Although that last group all died at the hands of their old friend, who they fed into the metaphorical woodchipper of marriage to a sadist mob guy. Ennis is very good at setting up antagonists that are horrible enough I'm fine watching Frank Castle extra-judicially murder them.

It probably also helps that many of them are connected to the levers of power in one way or another that my cynicism tells me that people like them - and they surely exist in this world, in one form or the other - will never face any real consequences from the legal system.

But it's the version of Frank Castle that Ennis presents here that interests me. In Ennis' telling, it's not just one thing that makes Frank Castle the Punisher. Not just his military service, not just his family's death at the hands of a mob shootout. Nor was it an immediate thing, like flipping a switch, but a gradual accumulation of factors until Frank felt he had to act. As one character in "Widowmakers" remarks, 'You're a soldier, so you gave yourself a mission.'

Some versions of Batman strive to eliminate all crime, so no little kid will lose their parents because they took a shortcut through the wrong alley, and may even think it an achievable goal. Ennis' Frank Castle does not, his outlook realistic in a very nihilistic way. Near the end of "The Slavers," when, having obliterated one operation, Frank thinks to himself that he could never stop it entirely, any more than he could stop the flow of heroin, or the tide from coming in. All he could do, was maybe make them pause for a moment. Frank gave himself a mission, but it's one that only ends with his death. (Or the human race going extinct, as in Punisher: The End.)

It's a difference Ennis explores in "Widowmakers", where we also have Jenny Cesare, out for revenge against her sister and her friends, and Detective Budiansky, who has a rep as a cop who ignores regs when he thinks someone needs to act. But when Budiansky seems like he wants to murder someone in revenge for his wife being shot (but not killed), all it takes is Frank asking if Budiansky wants to end up like him for the cop to withdraw. He still has someone to lose. Jenny gets her revenge, but with all the people she was after dead, she has nothing left. She's not going to go on killing criminals forever like Frank, but she can't see anything else. Frank has no one to lose, and in his mind, what he does isn't revenge, it's killing people who need killing, however he defines that, wherever he comes across them. There are always more, so the mission continues.  

And while it's a mission Frank chose initially, it's one he's locked into now. He might be able to take a break for a time, but he knows that at some point, he would see something in the news that would make him take action. And he knows what that means for himself. Even if he wanted to live a normal life, he can't. He's too fundamentally changed now for all that. His life - maybe existence is the better word - is all about death. Too many bullets are in the air around him for anyone to survive his presence for long. And that plays out in the series. There are 10 stories in Ennis' 60-issue run, and no character other than Frank lives past a 3rd story. Three strikes - if you're lucky - you're out

Micro and the CIA guy who hopes to recruit Frank die in the first arc, though the CIA guy's assistants, O'Brien and Roth, make it out more or less intact. More than you can say for mob schmuck Nicky Cavella's lackeys, Ink and Pittsy. Cavella and Roth's luck runs out in their next appearance, "Up is Down and Black is White." O'Brien survives that, as does her ex-husband, CIA prick and general scumbag Rawlins, but neither make it through "Man of Stone," and neither does General Zhakarov or his top guy, Dolnovich (like Rawlins, key fixtures in the third arc, "Mother Russia," though none of them actually met Castle then.)

Barracuda survived one encounter, but made the mistake of accepting the chance at a rematch. The generals who pulled the strings on Rawlins and Barracuda didn't meet the Punisher in "Mother Russia" or "Up is Down and Black is White," but once they do, it ends swiftly. Yorkie Mitchell shows up in 3 arcs, but only in flashback in the third, because he got killed. Budiansky only shows up in one arc, ditto social worker Jen Cooke. They get far the fuck away from Frank and everything he represents at the first opportunity. Even Nick Fury doesn't risk the odds, appearing only in "Mother Russia," and "Valley Forge, Valley Forge."

Near the end of "Long Cold Dark," after Frank describes a scene of O'Brien looking briefly free of the demons that haunted her, he says, 'Memories like that, I try to kill. But you can do something with it, if you like.' Castle tries very hard to take emotion out of the equation, whether because it makes him sloppy, or because it makes him realize what a hellish prison cell he's made his life. The fact he still has that memory to relate to O'Brien's sister speaks to his inability to bury that part of him. Ennis likes to present things that drag it out of Frank.

Children in danger a couple of times, ones Frank can save the way he couldn't save his own. Nicky Cavella trying to throw him off by digging up the bodies of Frank's wife and children and pissing on them. Maybe even the generals sending a team of elite U.S. soldiers after him in "Valley Forge, Valley Forge." Guys who believe in serving the same things Frank believed in once. Threats, certainly moreso than the mob guys, but not one Frank can declare needs punishing. But also not a threat he wants to allow to stop him. That's what makes it a little different. With the children, or Cavella's nonsense, Frank's response is simply violence, but more brutal. Rather than calmly shoot someone, Frank dismantles them. Barracuda is left as something barely recognizable as human.

The soldiers, he can't do that, and there's only so far even he can go against that many highly trained guys that he won't kill. Ultimately, he doesn't really fight his way out, so much as survives for being unapologetically what he is. The generals try to pretend at still being soldiers, or caring about anything but saving their own asses and their post-career seats on various corporate boards. Frank is the Punisher, full stop. He doesn't compromise, he doesn't quit, he doesn't pretend. One of the soldiers, upon seeing the remains of an attack the Punisher made, compares him to the Xenomorph. 'I admire its purity.' And for the most part, he's not wrong. Even the Punisher's compassion often expresses itself through violence.

The book went through several pencilers over 60 issues. Lewis Larosa, Doug Braithwaite and Lan Medina each drew one arc. Goran Parlov drew three (with Howard Chaykin drawing the first part of "Long Cold Dark" for some reason, his work looks nothing like any of the others, let alone Parlov's), and Leandro Fernandez drew four arcs. I think Fernandez is the best of them. Larosa and Medina each lean a bit too much into photo reference. Budiansky sometimes looks exactly like Sam Jackson, and Larosa is clearly cribbing from Clint Eastwood for Castle, to the extent it gets distracting.

Parlov's art is exaggerated and cartoonish enough it feels like it would have been a better fit for the Marvel Knights book. The Punisher is running around with forearms like Popeye in some of those panels, and the level of violence Punisher and Barracuda inflict on each other isn't far from what Punisher and the Russian did (though Parlov's art makes it look more brutal than Steve Dillon's, though maybe that was just the more lax hand a MAX book got.)

Leandro Fernandez seems to strike a nice balance over the course of "Up is Down and Black is White", "The Slavers", and "Man of Stone." His characters look tough, or craven or arrogant or whatever, but in a grounded way that you could see real people looking like that, without any obvious famous people being lightboxed into the panel. He can do the shocking or graphic violence, make a person who truly looks like they've been through hell, but not go so over-the-top it knocks me out of the story entirely. (There were some panels Parlov drew where I had to stop and sort of shake my head. "What did I just see? Jeez," kind of thing.)

Brown's colors likely help with that. He tends to keep the figures in more muted tones, often almost washed out skin color. These are not people who go around in daylight. It's their surroundings that are lit up, like the world is on fire, which makes for a stark contrast.

Ennis left the book in 2008, after 60 issues. Surprisingly, Marvel didn't cancel the series and renumber it. Instead they kept it going and Gregg Hurwitz became the writer. I gave him two issues and concluded I really didn't need to read any more Punisher comics. And that's stayed true for the 18 years since, but Ennis wrote some other Punisher stuff at the same time as the ongoing, so that'll occupy the next two weeks.