The Punisher: An All Time Great

Today I thought I'd write about one of my favourite comic book characters. The Punisher, the man who carries out vengeance on all criminals since his family were killed in a mob hit.

His first appearance was in The Amazing Spider-man #129 in 1974. In that issue he was an antagonist for Spider-man who went about killing mobsters without a care in the world as he waged his one man war on crime. Spider-man was on his kill list as he was wanted for killing Norman Osbourne. From this initial arc The Punisher was found to be a hit with the readers and went on to feature in other titles like Daredevil and Captain America before finally getting his own solo run.

My first encounter with Frank was back in the mid-nineties. After being pulled in to the Marvel universe by the awesome animated X-Men series I decided to go to my local comic book shop, Comics Unlimited, and pick up a few comics. After browsing through the long boxes of  X-Men back issues, I decided to broaden my horizons and try something new. The first thing that caught my eye was picture of man in a black uniform that had a giant white skull emblazoned on his chest, emerging from some water while a fire burned behind him. In his hands were a grenade launcher and a machine gun. Even today I still consider it a brilliant piece of artwork. The issue was entitled Fire Fight and was 1 of 3. After a quick check I had all three in my hands.

The story was about The Punisher trying to stop an arsonist who is trying to burn down New York City. Whilst dealing with this problem Frank is being pursued by a vigilante task force who are out to capture him. I loved every bit of these books and would go back and read them again and again. From there I went about researching him where ever I could. This was hard work due to the lack of wikipedia back then!

 After about ten years away from comics I returned to them as an adult and the first thing I bought was Vol 1 of the Garth Ennis run on The Punisher Max. The Max imprint is where The Punisher belongs.  A place where there is no holding back in terms of language and violence. A place where The Punisher can truly punish. Ennis is the definitive writer when it comes to The Punisher and I especially love his story The Punisher: Born. This is a story that shows the soldier Frank Castle fighting in Vietnam before the death of his family. The dark events he faces in the war is where The Punisher is truly born.

There have been three films made of The Punisher and they go from being ok to god damn awful! The first film made in the eighties is not too bad. It has Dolph Lundgren in the main role and it hasn't aged well to be fair. Then in 2004 Thomas Jane wore the skull and again this was ok but what followed next with Ray Stephenson is just too bad to write about. Maybe now the rights have come back to Marvel they could do him right. I think the best place for him to be brought back would be as a recurring character in the upcoming Daredevil TV show. There they could use the classic stories written by Frank Millar to really establish Castle in the MCU. If all goes well there then maybe even his own show. The following short film shows how to do it right.

 I think the thing that makes me really like The Punisher is the fact he is just a normal man, maybe a bit unhinged but still normal. No super power. No money. Just a cold hard desire to stop evil in any way possible.

Marvel Dropping Fantastic Four

 
The Fantastic Four are the first family of Marvel. When they were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1961, they became the first of many. Now it appears their time is up. It has been reported on bleeding cool that The House of Ideas is dropping all comic book titles connected to the Fantastic Four. Not only that, but apparently instructions have been sent to sketch card artists to no longer draw the Fantastic Four or any of the supporting characters (Doom, Silver Surfer, Galactus etc).

This instruction has come from the very top with the Marvel CEO, Ike Pearlmutter being behind all of this. The reason for all this comes down to the movie rights. It appears Marvel no longer want to give Fox free advertising by producing a comic series featuring characters that Fox own the movie rights to. The X-Men also fall into this category but the sales of their books is just too high for Marvel to drop. That being said, Marvel are killing off one of the biggest X-Men, Wolverine, could that be related? There has been more emphasis on the Inhumans recently, with them seeming to be a possible replacement for mutants in the MCU.

Sony has a different relationship with Marvel over the rights to Spider-Man so it will be web-slinging as normal over there.

I can see why Marvel would do this but the history of the FF should not be forgotten. I just wish for one shared universe with all Marvel characters back where they belong.

What do you think? Are Marvel cutting off their nose to spite their face?

Good Time For Geeks

I do believe Jesus was misheard when he said "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth". He clearly said "Blessed are the geek: for they shall inherit the earth" and inherit it they have. 

At the moment you can't escape comic books. Go to the cinema and it's superheroes all the way. Drive home and you will likely see Captain America or the X-men looking at you from a bus stop. Get home and put your telly on and slowly but surely more comic book shows are starting to appear. Even the theatre is getting in on the act with Spider-Man the musical!

Gaming has become an acceptable hobby with more people owning a gaming console then ever before. Games are starting to become more and more cinematic with trailers shown on the TV as if it were a blockbuster film. Even your grandparents can get in on the act with the OAP friendly Wii. It truly is an experience to get your arse handed to you by your grandad whilst playing a computer game.

See what I mean? It's a good time to be a geek!

But is it getting too big? Will the bubble burst? Yes it probably will as all things eventually come to an end. But for now I'm going to ride this wave and enjoy every minute of it!

Watching Telly On A Wet Bank Hoilday

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Well the new X-Men film is out and I'm broke so cant get to see yet. Because of this inconvenience, I don't have a lot to say about it except I hear it's the best X-film yet. I was slightly worried about it at first after seeing pictures of Quicksilver (he looks like a futuristic glam rocker), but it turns out he is one of the highlights of the film. Looking forward to Aaron Taylor-Johnson's portrayal of him in Age of Ultron and seeing which one is the better one.

I will try and write a review once I have finally seen the film. It will have a lot to live up to, since I've read the original and seen the 90's cartoon version which, is my favourite arc from the show.

Game Of Thrones

Well I was gonna write a bit about GoT but its not on this week. Arse.

Arrow

Every cloud has a silver lining so with GoT not being on, it meant I got to finish season 2 of Arrow. I was taken by surprise when it first started as I'd not heard anything about it. Not being experienced in Green Arrow, I did not know what to expect. Part of me thought it might be similar in tone to Smallville. Boy was I wrong! Arrow starts off with villains being killed left right and centre as Ollie crosses them off his list. So it was a lot darker. As the show went on, my interest went up and down throughout the first season but ended on a high and the same can be said for season 2. I think the problem stems in the number of episodes there are. If they were to shorten the length of a season to say 13 - 15 episodes then there would be less filler and more killer.
But all in all its a really good show and looks set to be the first of many from the DC side of things. More on that in another post. For now I'll leave you with this...

Daredevil

So a little bit of news has surfaced about the Netflix original series of Daredevil. Steven S. DeKnight will serve as executive producer and show runner after replacing Drew Goddard. DeKnight has an abundance of experience when it comes to superhero shows from working on shows such as Smallville, Buffy, Dollhouse and Angel. He also has heavy connections to Joss Whedon after working with him on those last 3 shows. This could help focus the interconnectivity between the big and small screen. Drew Goddard will still be working on the show as executive producer whilst fulfilling his duties on the upcoming Sinister Six film.

I've got high hopes for this show as Daredevil is top of my pile every month. The current run from Mark Waid has been fantastic and has really brought DD back to the top of people's lists. This is my favourite book at the moment as the writing is superb and the artwork is gorgeous. If you are not already reading this book, then you need to go and have a little look.

Any way I hope your Bank Holiday wasn't as wet as mine and I'll see you in the comments.

Number two (snigger)

So the difficult 2nd post. Where to start? Maybe give a brief outline of the stuff this blog will probably cover and a bit of my history with it.

Video Games

Gaming has been in my life for a long long time. The earliest gaming machine I had was a Commodore 64. That should tell you how long I've been gaming. I'm now rocking the PS4, PS3 and Vita. I'm working my way through my PS3 back catalogue at the moment since there is a lack of good PS4 games out there that I haven't already played. Currently I'm playing Batman: Arkham Origins and it has carried on the tradition of the Arkham games being awesome. I was concerned when I heard Rocksteady were not making this game but WB Game Montreal have done a good job with the foundations they were given. There is not a lot of differences from the last games, but when the last games were so good, more of the same is just fine. Now it turns out Rocksteady have been busy building Arkham for the next gen (or is it current gen now?) and it looks like all their hard work is going to pay off.

Comics

I've only just started really collecting comics in the past 2 years, but I have had a love for superheroes since the 90's when the X-Men and Spider-man cartoons were on the Saturday morning tv show "Live and Kicking". These shows were the first introduction to serialised television as well as Marvel comics that I'd had. The animation was the best, but the story lines were well written and kept you coming back for more.They dealt with themes that other shows might have thought were too mature for younger audiences. For example the X-Men having to deal with fear and hatred from the people they were trying to protect. Mutants being rounded up and put into camps with echos of the Holocaust. These were not your average stories on a Saturday morning. The crossover was also brought to my attention when the X-Men turned up in Spider-Man. Never before had my two favourite shows been meshed together in one shared universe. Who knew that years down the line Marvel would do it again on a grander scale?

I tried collecting single issues of comics back then but was too impatient (and poor) to wait and keep buying monthly. So I stopped buying comics, but still followed anything to do with them. Once I got a full time job, someone introduced me to graphic novels and trade paper backs. That was me sold and I started collecting them. Now I'm on single issues and I'm slowly losing space.

That's the 2nd post done. Feel free to chat in the comments because I'd love to build a community here, might even set up a Facebook group if it takes off well. You guys could also suggest topics for future posts.