Monday, May 21, 2007

Fanboy stuff

Simon Strantzas has written an interesting post on The Punisher over at his blog, comparing Steven Grant's take on the character with that of Garth Ennis. He's also drawn a nice little sketch of old Frankie boy.

Pity he didn't mention Mike Baron's run on the Punisher. Admittedly Baron lost his way pretty quickly but personally I thought the first year or so of his run was pretty damn good. But I seem to remember Simon mentioning that he's not a fan of the Baron stories.

And just to clarify, Simon's discussing Ennis's MAXX stories not his Marvel Knights take on the Punisher. The Marvel Knights version was played for laughs and didn't really appeal to me that much whereas the MAXX version is deadly serious.

Finally, I'll take Simon's quote of the last line from Grant's Return to Big Nothing and raise him the last line to Ennis's The Tyger: "And I show them a face not made by God."

7 comments:

strantzas said...

That's true. I'm going to have to clarify the MAXX series in my own blog.

And, you're right, I'm not a giant fan of the Baron run. It was okay, and I still have those issues, but it didn't affect me the way Grant's and Ennis's runs did. I think it can all be boiled down to one word: Micro-fuckin-chip. I hate that guy! The Punisher is on a one-man-war, the operative word being "one". Ennis gets that.

Stuart Young said...

Next you'll be saying you didn't like Baron's "Punisher does Soul Man" storyline where he pretended to be black and teamed up with Luke Cage :-)

strantzas said...

Ha! That better be a joke, or else you'll finally understand the true meaning of this line from Grant's version of the Punisher (again from RTBN)

"Nobody wants to go to heaven, but everybody wants to die."

Stuart Young said...

Well, what about the time someone wrote in suggesting the Punisher donned a powered battle armour to make him look like Robocop and the editors sneered at him, saying they would NEVER use such a stupid idea.

Fast forward a year or so and guess what the Punisher did ... ?

strantzas said...

Poor Frank. Poor poor Frank.

:-(

Stuart Young said...

Or there was the story where, thanks to a few hours practice in a simulator whilst still in the Marines, Frank could fly a jet well enough to win a dogfight against a veteran fighter pilot.

strantzas said...

Ugh! I'm starting to remember why I stopped buying Punisher comics.

Did you know (there's no way you could have) that my Punisher-collecting habit became so bad that when Marvel started putting ads for the original on-going series into its various books, I actually contemplated buying everything.

That's right: I allowed for and ADVERT to be considered an "appearance". Luckily, sanity won out that time. Still, I remain strangely proud to own every comic and magazine appearance up to, at the very least, the mini-series.

I ought to dig out the issue of "Marvel Age" that first advertised that thing. I'd be good for a larf. "Right. 'Ere's a guy you ain't never 'eard of called "The Punishment" or somethin'!"