Week of 11/18/09 – Punisher #11
November 20th, 2009
What happens to a grizzled, New York City vigilante like the Punisher when he gets hacked to pieces and thrown into the sewer? FrankenCastle happens. You and me? We die. Frank Castle? He gets resurrected by Morbius the living vampire down in the old Morlock tunnels beneath Manhattan. Some things just ain’t fair.
So here we are finally after seeing all those promo posters for FrankenCastle. The event that looked very dark and gritty. It is anything but. Tony Moore whom I first met in the pages of Brit and The Walking Dead does a wonderful job setting the tone in this book. It’s just not the tone I was expecting. It’s a bit cartoony. A bit childish almost. It almost feels like an all-ages book. Thank bacon that PunisherMax came out last week to give me some real vigilante blood letting.
So the Legion of Monsters resurrects frank and his Militarily strategic mind to help them fight some pack of Japanese marauders intent on wiping out monster blah blah blah. He’ll spend the next issue being angry and not helpful until something changes his mind. I will be picking this up for the novelty and for Tony Moore. That is it.
And while this book does seem to slip from current Marvel continuity the events leading up to it do not. And one of those books, Dark Avengers, showed Ares cutting Man-Thing in half a couple of weeks ago. In the swamps of Louisiana no less. Has the half plant half dumber plant creature already escaped Osborn’s prisons?
Honorable Mentions:
So remember like three or four issues ago in Invincible that wicked bad-ass Viltrumite, Conquest, came to town and started stomping our hero? And how after he skewered Atom Eve, Invincible went all bananas and beat in his skull to within an inch of his life? Well it turns out killing super villains is like playing football. It’s a game of inches and every one matters. Guess who recovered and escaped?
How Ariel Olivetti hasn’t gotten a Panel of the Week at this point is amazing. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. It’s probably the fact that this Banner and Son story line is a real snore. Hulk #604 is no different. I would pay 10 bucks for one solid issue of back to back Hulk fight between father and son. What is so hard about this? Just give it to us. Instead the two will be heading off to NYC next issue to help the Fantastic Four fight the Mole Man for the billionth time. Makes for good splash page though. Yes. Yes, it do.
It’s here. It’s finally here the Dark: Reign: The: List: that everyone has been waiting for. Normy vs Spider-Man. Well I’ll ruin it for you. It sucked. And Peter, much like the Seinfeldian villain, Newman, uses information to attack Osborn. Boo! Anyway Adam Kubert does a great job on the art despite the forgettable story. Here Webs sticks to a wall.
Finally we have a page from Viking #4. I’d like to tell you a little more about what’s going on in this page but I can’t because after four issues I have zero idea what is going on in this series. I don’t know a single characters name, I don’t know what they’re scheming to do. I don’t know who the bad guy is. It’s indecipherable. But the covers are oversized and shiny so I plunk down my money and skip out of the comics store every month and think to myself, it’ll be different this time.
