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Edge & Christian posted:I haven't seen Daredevil season 2 yet so who knows how that might affect things. I can't really see it affecting anything too much. Jon Bernthal had a solid performance and did more with the character than the script gave him but it wasn't a break out performance in my book. I certainly can't see anyone picking up a Punisher comic after that as they did nothing to give you an idea of who he fights beyond generic crime groups and what his character conflicts are.
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Mar 21, 2016 19:50
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Season 2 does do a TV version of the "Daredevil trussed up with one hand taped to a revolver with one shell" scene from early in Ennis's tenure. Between that and War Zone, I'd say that Ennis's Punisher is the definitive model at this point.
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Mar 21, 2016 20:05
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PaybackJack posted:I can't really see it affecting anything too much. Jon Bernthal had a solid performance and did more with the character than the script gave him but it wasn't a break out performance in my book. I certainly can't see anyone picking up a Punisher comic after that as they did nothing to give you an idea of who he fights beyond generic crime groups and what his character conflicts are. It was definitely a break out performance and I picked up Punisher Max because of it.
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Mar 21, 2016 20:45
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Veg posted:It was definitely a break out performance and I picked up Punisher Max because of it. That's good to hear someone liked it that much. A buddy of mine seemed pretty into it, at least he was most looking forward to seeing where the character goes next season but I doubt it would get him to buy the comic. I really liked the episode with him and Daredevil on the roof debating the ethics of his character for 20 minutes, that was something the character really needed and I honestly thought it was building to a Daredevil 191 climax as the last episode. I was a bit disappointed I didn't get that actually.
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Mar 21, 2016 20:52
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PaybackJack posted:I'm so sad that Rachel-Cole Alves didn't get a bigger push as "female Punisher". Rucka did such a nice job building her up. With Marvel doing a big push to get other races/genders into the mantle of their popular guys I was surprised there was nothing announced for her coming out of the ANAD wave of books. I'm not. Most of the vocal Punisher fan base I've been exposed to would red pill out and on the list of roles people want women to fill mass murderous psychopath is somewhere near the bottom.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:22
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PaybackJack posted:That's good to hear someone liked it that much. I've seen almost universal praise for the Punisher in DD season 2. This is just going off comments and reviews and stuff, but most people I've seen say that he's the best part of season 2.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:23
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Edge & Christian posted:I think part of the issue is that honestly outside of the Garth Ennis run (which probably doesn't fit into their transmedia plans), Marvel hasn't had a Big Definitive Baseline Punisher run in decades. None of his movies have really been successful, and none of the non-Ennis runs (from Avenging Angel to Wacky Quipster to Supervillain Gadget Assassin to Frankencastle to Punished Snake with Female Apprentice to Fascist Role Model with Female Apprentice) have really been the sort of Model Iconic Punisher they want to have. Everyone else they've given alternate versions (Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Wolverine, etc.) have those familiar touchstones (both in comics and TV/film) to use as a baseline. They're still trying to get Punisher version 1 "right". This seems to be their MO. DD Season 2 contains the definitive Punisher from 2016 into the distant future
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Mar 21, 2016 21:58
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PaybackJack posted:I can't really see it affecting anything too much. Jon Bernthal had a solid performance and did more with the character than the script gave him but it wasn't a break out performance in my book. I certainly can't see anyone picking up a Punisher comic after that as they did nothing to give you an idea of who he fights beyond generic crime groups and what his character conflicts are. There's a guy in the recommendation thread who picked up pretty much every Punisher comic in the MAX imprint after seeing the show. I really liked how that version of the character was slightly dumber, slightly less perfect, and more emotional than the Punisher that's been mostly depicted in Marvel comics. I've gotten super annoyed with the perfect grim specter of death Ennis wrote him as who never makes a mistake and never breaks and is smarter than everyone and always kills the bad guys no matter what. He's still idealized in the sense that he manages to never hit anyone innocent while shooting tons of bad guys in public places, but it's taken down several notches from the most ludicrous comics.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:21
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SirDan3k posted:I'm not. Most of the vocal Punisher fan base I've been exposed to would red pill out I fail to see the problem. quote:and on the list of roles people want women to fill mass murderous psychopath is somewhere near the bottom. Why not? Like, I don't think there needs to be a quota that literally every character needs a female equivalent (for example, we don't need another female symbiote character), but if Rachel's already an established character people like, why is her being a mass murdering psychopath a problem but Frank being one is just dandy?
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Mar 21, 2016 22:29
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I thought Rucka's run was super boring and Rachel was a weak-rear end character. The best thing she did was get verbally smacked by Daredevil one time.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:33
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Lurdiak posted:I thought Rucka's run was super boring and Rachel was a weak-rear end character. The best thing she did was get verbally smacked by Daredevil one time. And set up that Spider-Man joke. Lurdiak posted:I've gotten super annoyed with the perfect grim specter of death Ennis wrote him as who never makes a mistake and never breaks and is smarter than everyone and always kills the bad guys no matter what. Ennis' Punisher did accidentally kill an innocent girl once when he drugged a bunch of people at a slaver's place and she fell face first into her soup.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:44
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Lurdiak posted:I thought Rucka's run was super boring and Rachel was a weak-rear end character. The best thing she did was get verbally smacked by Daredevil one time. I freely admit I have read nothing at all with Punisher and have no idea who Rachel is other than "like Frank but a lady". I'm just saying "misogynistic Punisher fans won't like it" and "female mass murdering psychopath isn't really a great accomplishment for women in comics" aren't great reasons to get rid of the character. Also RE: ANAD books we've dropped, I read a lot of series (probably around 15 currently) but I think a large part of why I'm reading so many is just that my DC reading list has been gutted lately. Even the returning books from pre-SW all feel like they've lost their grooves (with the exception of maybe Squirrel Girl). If I had to guess what my big problem is, it kinda feels like every book is grinding its gears until ANAD finishes setting up, i.e. we get the big event that every book will tie into.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:47
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WickedHate posted:Ennis' Punisher did accidentally kill an innocent girl once when he drugged a bunch of people at a slaver's place and she fell face first into her soup. She didn't die and nothing in that sequence is meant to make you think she did.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:49
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Wanderer posted:She didn't die and nothing in that sequence is meant to make you think she did. Huh. It's been a long time since I read it but I could have sworn she did. Cool.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:50
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WickedHate posted:Ennis' Punisher did accidentally kill an innocent girl once when he drugged a bunch of people at a slaver's place and she fell face first into her soup. One time regular Punisher shot up a family having a picnic while trying to kill some mobsters and was like "Oh gently caress! Oh well, poo poo happens." DrProsek posted:I freely admit I have read nothing at all with Punisher and have no idea who Rachel is other than "like Frank but a lady". I'm just saying "misogynistic Punisher fans won't like it" and "female mass murdering psychopath isn't really a great accomplishment for women in comics" aren't great reasons to get rid of the character. This is all true, but demographics-wise, Ennis' Punisher largely appeals to the shittiest kind of redditor you can imagine, so I can see a guy in marketing seeing Rachel as a non-starter.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:52
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zoux posted:I've seen almost universal praise for the Punisher in DD season 2. This is just going off comments and reviews and stuff, but most people I've seen say that he's the best part of season 2. Yeah for sure, but at the same time there's not much that's really unique about that take on the character, it's just good writing and acting.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:57
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Daredevil Season 2 Spoilers here: The implication that something was hosed with his deployment is definitely something new, and I thought this particular take on Punisher was more out of control and PTSD-motivated than the versions we usually get.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:01
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DrProsek posted:I fail to see the problem. Because MRAs are a cancer on nerd hobbies and need to be shown the door instead of being coddled? On a more general note, it's pretty nice to be seeing a Marvel with 0 Punisher and 2 Wolverine books currently. Even Deadpool seems to be down to 2 books, 3 if you want to count the current miniseries. And Marvel doesn't seem any worse for sales because of it. I know it's going to cop a lot of flak, but I'm fine with finally dropping the stupid anti-heroes books as a final break from the grim & gritty era. I have this horrible feeling a lot of the fanbase for these guys (especially Punisher) are the same kind of people who missed the point and thought Rorschach was a badass instead of the broken shell of a man the text explicitly showed. I get that at their best Wolverine and Deadpool avoid this, but in general that's when they're in a team book and the author doesn't need to constantly revel in the anti-heroes' angst and need to kill. Punisher really doesn't have this, as he was a straightly played villain until the poor idea to unironically protagonise a regular person murdering regular people was a great idea for a super hero comic.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:02
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That was why Ennis and Rucka's runs were well-liked, and why Edmundson's wasn't. Rucka's Frank is fundamentally broken and the narrative spends surprisingly little time with him; it's mostly about the effect he has and people around him reacting to him. Ennis's Frank is a particularly efficient serial killer. Neither are in any way laudable. It also isn't an accident that every arc in Ennis's MAX book is at least as much about the antagonists and supporting characters as it is about Frank himself. Edmundson, on the other hand, gave Frank a bizarre network of people who explicitly supported his endeavors, because he's a member of the Military Brotherhood or something, and thus his actions are Right and Just. There's a bizarre subtext in the Edmundson run that's all the more bizarre because Ennis repudiates it in the first arc of MAX.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:44
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Ennis still turned Punisher into a nearly infallible badass in a way almost no one prior had. It was nice to see Jason Aaron actually show Frank stumbling. Edmundson's run was just terrifying "Chris Kyle was a hero" poo poo, though.
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Mar 21, 2016 23:46
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Lurdiak posted:Ennis still turned Punisher into a nearly infallible badass in a way almost no one prior had. It was nice to see Jason Aaron actually show Frank stumbling. Not really. That's a poor reading of the text, which is your specialty. Ennis's Castle is a confident planner who mostly succeeds due to being up against people who are nowhere near his level, and via guerrilla tactics. This is explicitly laid out in the first arc. He's a former Marine and combat veteran using military-grade weapons; he's typically up against Mafia street soldiers with pistols. His usual opposition's complete lack of actual training is the basis for one of the most famous sequences in the entire volume, the "they put the sights on top for a reason" line. Frank is simply on a higher plane than the people he targets. Even so, Frank ends every arc of the MAX book heavily injured, and often only succeeds due to pure dumb luck. In "Up is Down & Black is White," he would've flat-out died if Kathryn O'Brien hadn't taken a hand; in "Kitchen Irish," he spends much of the last fight half-conscious in a raft after he's hit with a stun grenade, and the entire story more or less resolves without him. In "Widowmaker," he's barely a factor, and lies injured in bed for half the arc while Jenny takes care of business wearing his colors; Frank's role in the larger plot is as a symbol of the price of vengeance, and why it's not worth paying. Yeah, there are dozens of tiny toons who read Ennis's Punisher and simply see a gun-wielding, black-ops badass who mows down hundreds of story-coded criminals, but it's an incredibly selective reading that ignores broad swaths of the text. The overarching theme of Punisher MAX is "Being Frank Castle is loving awful."
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Mar 21, 2016 23:59
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Hakkesshu posted:Yeah for sure, but at the same time there's not much that's really unique about that take on the character, it's just good writing and acting. Well, that is a huge part of it. Bernthal absolutely murdered it.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:19
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Wanderer posted:Not really. That's a poor reading of the text, which is your specialty. I don't know why you're unable to make your incorrect and surface-level point without taking a shot at me, you loving moron.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:38
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Wanderer posted:That was why Ennis and Rucka's runs were well-liked, and why Edmundson's wasn't. Rucka's Frank is fundamentally broken and the narrative spends surprisingly little time with him; it's mostly about the effect he has and people around him reacting to him. Ennis's Frank is a particularly efficient serial killer. Neither are in any way laudable. It also isn't an accident that every arc in Ennis's MAX book is at least as much about the antagonists and supporting characters as it is about Frank himself. I think this is the big Punisher trade I read back when I first got back into comics in the 00s (Welcome Back Frank) and it's still fundamentally unreadable to me, if only because I understand that most of the people reading it are cheering Frank and miss the whole point. I'm also the wrong audience for Garth Ennis stuff I guess, though as time goes on he's way better than whatever kind of filth monsters Mark Millar or Alan Moore have turned into. In the end, Punisher has the same problem as Batman does to me. He's a white dude who can't get over the one loss in his life, and does impromptu therapy by beating up the lower classes. I think it was Grant Morrison who I first saw bring up the class commentary about it (actually just Supermen & Batman), and now I can't help but see it all the time. But at least Batman has had some great stories that move away from those tropes (well, basically one great story arc in the Morrison stuff) but I've never seen something for Punisher that was both a step away from the angry white dude shoot criminals in the face stuff and also iconicly good.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:51
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Rucka's Punisher run really needs an omnibus treatment. I mean it lead us to this
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Mar 22, 2016 00:54
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Rhyno posted:Rucka's Punisher run really needs an omnibus treatment. I mean it lead us to this Was that Rucka or waid?
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Mar 22, 2016 01:02
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people being unable to critically read something is not the author's fault or your problem I don't get that mentality
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Mar 22, 2016 01:07
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bobkatt013 posted:Was that Rucka or waid? I'm pretty sure that's from the Punisher issue of the crossover.
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Mar 22, 2016 01:15
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bobkatt013 posted:Was that Rucka or waid? That book's attributed to both of them, as I recall. It reads more like a Waid joke to me. rkajdi posted:I think this is the big Punisher trade I read back when I first got back into comics in the 00s (Welcome Back Frank) and it's still fundamentally unreadable to me, if only because I understand that most of the people reading it are cheering Frank and miss the whole point. I'm also the wrong audience for Garth Ennis stuff I guess, though as time goes on he's way better than whatever kind of filth monsters Mark Millar or Alan Moore have turned into. Yeah, Ennis's Marvel Knights books are way more into the escapist fantasy angle than the later stuff, and I should've drawn that distinction. Marvel Knights, especially in "Welcome Back, Frank," is an attempt for Ennis to do a PG-13 version of the kind of comedy he'd become known for with Preacher, and I really don't think it lands. I suppose it helps for me, to some extent, that he primarily pursues organized crime and he was never rich, which dodges some of the unfortunate class-warfare subtext. That was much more present back in the '80s and '90s, I think, where guys like Mike Baron and Chuck Dixon would give him million-dollar "battle vans" to play with. Lurdiak posted:I don't know why you're unable to make your incorrect and surface-level point without taking a shot at me, you loving moron. Yeah, I could've not done that. That said, any interpretation of the MAX run where Frank is "infallible" is the kind of thing you can only really say if you haven't actually read the MAX run, or if you're interpreting "Frank always survives to the end of the arc" as infallibility. It's a critically indefensible position.
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Mar 22, 2016 01:17
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Wanderer posted:Yeah, I could've not done that. Oh yeah, Frank getting physically hurt totally counteracts Garth Ennis' inability to write him as someone who's ever in the wrong about anything or is ever shown in a position of weakness. My view is "critically indefensible" because I notice things like Frank being immune to torture unlike everyone else in the narrative, or the people he goes up against being largely caricatures of humans beings who more often than not have some kind of sexual perversion to let us know that they're not 'manly' like Frank is. The last arc of Ennis' run was an entire squad of marines being repeatedly defeated by Frank until they realize his position is morally superior to those who want to stop him. My view isn't a "misreading" of the text, it IS the text.
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Mar 22, 2016 01:22
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People getting hurt doesn't actual matter if it doesn't actually effect how he does thing. It's just as uncritical as saying surviving means infallible.
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Mar 22, 2016 01:34
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Lurdiak posted:Oh yeah, Frank getting physically hurt totally counteracts Garth Ennis' inability to write him as someone who's ever in the wrong about anything or is ever shown in a position of weakness. My view is "critically indefensible" because I notice things like Frank being immune to torture unlike everyone else in the narrative, or the people he goes up against being largely caricatures of humans beings who more often than not have some kind of sexual perversion to let us know that they're not 'manly' like Frank is. It really isn't. The last arc features a squad of Delta Force soldiers who underestimate Frank on their first encounter with him, and on the second, roundly defeat him, despite Frank's attempts to first bluff, then talk his way out. They handcuff him to a chair, and their commanding officer, Howe, gets curious enough about Frank that he independently investigates the claims Frank is making. Specifically, it's that the group of generals who Howe is working for are responsible for (summarized briefly) an act of terrorism for profit, and the entire operation to find and arrest Frank is in the name of killing Frank and destroying some evidence Frank's got. It's not the "right thing to do," as it was initially pitched to Howe; it's one hundred percent rear end-covering. It also comes out that Howe has history with Frank, which is why he volunteered for the mission of arresting Frank. When it becomes clear to Howe that turning Frank over to the generals would result in Frank's execution, and that the generals have all committed treason in the name of personal profit, he lets Frank go and walks away. If Howe had been able to guarantee Frank a trial, followed by prison, he would've kept Frank in custody. It's not that Frank's morally superior; that's more Edmundson's trip. It's that Howe owes Frank a favor from well back in the day, though Frank doesn't remember him, and that after verifying Frank's evidence, Howe is pretty sure that Frank being loose is a lesser stain on his conscience than letting the generals go. The entire arc consists of Frank in a position of weakness, where he's generally treated like a mad dog; at first, it's because he absolutely refuses to go lethal against American soldiers, and then, it's because he's handcuffed to a chair. It's an arc about various people trying to figure out how something like him gets created, and how and if it can be stopped; it starts a slight trend in Ennis's work in the period, where he examines the similarities between Vietnam and the then-current war in Iraq, hinting that that war could easily produce something as broken as Frank Castle. He's depicted as broken, alone, and used-up. It might be worth doing a Let's Read of the MAX run, actually, in the wake of the second season of "Daredevil." Ennis has really primed a lot of people to act as if his work's less nuanced than it sometimes is, and I think it does his more thoughtful stories--mostly the military fiction, although you can point to individual arcs or issues of some other stuff--a disservice. CharlestheHammer posted:People getting hurt doesn't actual matter if it doesn't actually effect how he does thing. It's just as uncritical as saying surviving means infallible. Frank spends half the "Widowmaker" arc lying in a bed, unable to do anything else, with multiple gunshot wounds. He also spends the denouement of "Kitchen Irish" lying in a dull heap because he takes a flashbang to the face. The dude bleeds a lot in MAX. Wanderer fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Mar 22, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 02:09
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I like the Punisher that shoots knives and the Punisher that becomes Frankenstein. That is the best Punisher.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:11
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Mr Hootington posted:I like the Punisher that shoots knives and the Punisher that becomes Frankenstein. That is the best Punisher. I agree.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:14
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Wanderer posted:Yeah, Ennis's Marvel Knights books are way more into the escapist fantasy angle than the later stuff, and I should've drawn that distinction. Marvel Knights, especially in "Welcome Back, Frank," is an attempt for Ennis to do a PG-13 version of the kind of comedy he'd become known for with Preacher, and I really don't think it lands. Sorry, I didn't realize that there were two separate Ennis runs on Punisher. I'll also say that a lot of my feel for the character is from the 90s, when it was specifically much more Grimdark Batman with Guns. But even with Welcome Back Frank I saw an angry white guy who'd slot well into AAA game of the moment killing a bunch of a vaguely ethnic mob criminals. And there's the fact that class is more than just money--stereotypical criminals are considered lower class despite sometimes having huge amounts of wealth. Frank's class is also somewhat elevated by the stupid amount of ARE TROOPS stuff that's internalized into American culture. It's pretty hard for me to not read a subtext of "Angry All-American Uh Rah takes out the lower class criminal trash" into the character. I mean, he's not taking down fraudulent investment bankers or tax cheats (which would also make for a bad story IMO) it's the standard low life mobsters.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:31
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Mr Hootington posted:I like the Punisher that shoots knives and the Punisher that becomes Frankenstein. That is the best Punisher. I never read Frankencastle, but it looked sort of interesting and different. Given that I pretty well liked all of Remender's other Marvel stuff besides Uncanny Avengers vol 2, would you say it's worth picking up as someone who doesn't otherwise enjoy the character?
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Mar 22, 2016 02:33
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rkajdi posted:I mean, he's not taking down fraudulent investment bankers or tax cheats (which would also make for a bad story IMO) it's the standard low life mobsters. You might enjoy the "Barracuda" arc on Punisher MAX. It's Frank vs. a bunch of cocaine-addled power company executives.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:34
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Wanderer posted:You might enjoy the "Barracuda" arc on Punisher MAX. It's Frank vs. a bunch of cocaine-addled power company executives. Hmm... that's some violence I could  to.EDIT: Power companies? That was relatively contemporary with the whole Enron debacle, right?
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Mar 22, 2016 02:38
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rkajdi posted:Hmm... that's some violence I could I believe it was directly inspired by the California energy crisis, yeah. I don't have the issues on hand.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:45
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rkajdi posted:I never read Frankencastle, but it looked sort of interesting and different. Given that I pretty well liked all of Remender's other Marvel stuff besides Uncanny Avengers vol 2, would you say it's worth picking up as someone who doesn't otherwise enjoy the character? Yes. Most of his books that are set in the main MU since his return in Civil War have been enjoyable. That is my opinion though since the books are very comic booky and that is what I like in my comics. Instead of buying them get Marvel Unlimited to see if you like it. They do have that special going on and usually have some free month trial somewhere.
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Mar 22, 2016 02:49
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