The Punisher is no angel… literally. But will the criminals of New York heed the warning shots? Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of The Punisher #1 awaits!

THE PUNISHER #1

Writer: Garth Ennis
Penciler: Steve Dillon
Inker: Jimmy Palmiotti
Colorist: Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Wes Abbott
Editor: Joe Quesada & Jimmy Palmiotti
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $2.99
Current Near-Mint Pricing:
Release Date: February 9, 2000

Previously in The Punisher: The long journey of Frank Castle from Spider-Man villain to anti-hero to full-on symbol of ’90s excess to corpse to literal angel was a long one, but with his 25th anniversary in the rearview mirror, The Punisher has returned from the dead and to the streets of New York City. In many ways, the year 2000 was a low point for the skull-chested vigilante, coming off of a legendarily bad revamp and stripped of many of the accouterments that had become his trademark in since 1987. Ennis and Dillon avoid all those issues by picking up the story in mid-sentence, with The Punisher shoving a large-caliber machine gun up the nose of a creep in a ponytail. It seems that he was looking to score some blow when Frank Castle arrived and executed his dealer.

The murder that follows immediately after this panel is more graphic than I expected from a book that doesn’t bear the MAX logo or any sort of adult content warning. It’s also the first moment where I was bothered by the coloring of the issue. Every panel is hyper-saturated, from the pinkish-red blood to the incredibly bright orange flames, with Frank’s black-and-white costume tinted with bright blue highlights that show off how hard it would be to hide in the darkness. Leaving the dealer’s house in flames, Frank returns home to his apartment building full of Ennis stock characters (the gross fat guy, the dumb kid, the mousy young woman) and ruminates about all that he has lost.

He mentions the loss of his partner Microchip, but doesn’t point out that Micro was murdered while trying to bring Frank back to sanity during one of his periodic losses thereof. Once again, the coloring/digital production affects the story here, as in its original form, I COULD NOT get this scanned page to reproduce well, without desaturating the colors and brightening the image a bit. This moment, showing a return to his traditional high-caliber gear, really should be the centerpiece of this Punisher #1, but instead, the bright reds looked like Kramer’s apartment with the Kenny Rogers’ Roasters sign outside. When the other members of the Gnucci criminal family arrive to claim the body of their fallen brother, they get more than they bargained for. Instead of collecting one corpse, they ended up joining a large pile of them!

With two of the Gnuccis burnt to a crisp and/or riddled with bullets, Frank tracks the third brother, another trademark Ennis fat-guy creep with dreams of taking a girl to the top of the Empire State Building for a horrific carnal liaison. When he arrives, though, he instead gets grabbed by The Punisher, who is ready to signal to New York’s criminal element that he is back…

…in the most visceral way possible.
This issue is full of Ennisisms and moments that really stick, with quite a few shortcuts to storytelling that might not have felt so familiar twenty-plus years ago. That said, this moment is note-perfect. “I caught a glimpse of heaven once” is such a brilliant, subtle way to reference the much-maligned Angel Punisher run that came before while maintaining the realism required by this story as The Punisher literally throws a man nearly a quarter mile to the concrete below.

I’m not always a fan of the murderous antihero archetype, but Steve Dillon’s art is well worth the price of admission here and Ennis doing Ennis is always fun, in horrifying ways. The Punisher #1 sets off the new/old era of high-caliber mayhem with aplomb, and while not everything hits home, this creative team is willing to take some really big swings to make us forget Heaven’s Avenger, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall. It’s a shame that 2000s Marvel production and coloring were so terribly unsuitable for this issue, as it could have easily been a four-star or better affair in different hands.

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THE PUNISHER #1

63%

63%

Garish coloring and over-rendered digital effects mar a well-drawn back-to-basics story with a REALLY dark punchline.

• Writing

  6
• Art

  9
• Coloring

  4
• User Ratings (0 Votes)
  0