Who’s here to punish me this week? I am really reeling from the 1-2 punch of the last couple issues. Oh, inexplicably, it’s Zeb Wells. He had his name removed from the “brain trust,” I thought he was gone. Bob Gale’s not even here anymore, and he’s still in the “brain trust,” what is even happening behind the scenes? He’s joined by Paolo Rivera, last seen around these parts doing the fully painted art for TAC Vol. 2 #14. He has only become a better painter since, but now also does traditional pencil interiors. Here, he’s a couple years away from starting a partnership with his own dad as his go-to inker, which is very cool, a team that debuts on an excellent run of Daredevil with Mark Waid. In this issue, he inks himself, with colors by Javier Rodriguez and Dean White. Hard to imagine White’s painterly approach meshing with basically any other colorist, but both of them are very talented, so maybe they’re meeting in the middle. Well, we open on some guys receiving a case from some other guys, who are apparently very high end smugglers. We’re told the case was designed by Moses Magnum himself (Deep pull! Last referenced in MTU 86, last seen all the way back in Giant-Size Spider-Man 4. I really cannot tell you how much I miss reading old comics. Well, older comics), and then an explosion blows the wall open. As the various goons open fire, someone yells “It’s the Punisher!,” and we see a skull appearing through the smoke, but it’s not what you think. Well, sort of.
I am certain Rivera is applying those old school sound effects himself, as opposed to letterer Cory Petit.
This is a pretty old school Punisher appearance so far. I guess on purpose, given that shout out. We cut to Manhattan, the next day, where Peter Parker is… taking the exam to be a cab driver. And it’s going badly, unsurprisingly. Doesn’t he not even have a driver’s license? He does not pass, and is given material to study to retake it next week. He trudges home with a pile of books, thinking how Betty told him cabbies can make $400 a month if they’re good, when he bumps into the Punisher just walkin’ down the street.
Surely you don’t need all those books to take a taxi exam. Also, surely some of that is online by 2008. At any rate, we follow Punisher to Far Rockaway, to I guess the Punisher’s hideout, where he… watches a DVD. A DVD that I guess shows us good ol’ Moses Magnum (In normal clothes), convincing the viewer to invest in his “gamma irradiated Mutant Growth Hormone.” That sounds perfectly safe!
Rivera keeps running panels off one side of the page, unlike the usual one panel the width of the page. Wonder what his reasoning is.
The way Rivera renders Spider-Man’s mask like the top of the eyes are under his brows has always looked very cool to me, even if it doesn’t totally make sense. I probably mentioned this before. Anyway, this is a straight-up Gerry Conway Spidey/Punisher plot. Anything this retro feels like more Dan Slott’s speed, out of the brain trust bunch. As Spidey starts giving Frank one of his usual “I can’t let you kill people” speeches (Decidedly un-Conway), Punisher puts in earplugs and activates a sonic weapon. It doesn’t set off our hero’s danger sense until it’s already active, which is not satisfying. While Spidey is incapacitated, Frank shoots a net over him and hits him in the head with a rifle butt, knocking him out. He has just enough time to hang the net Spider-Man is in from a crane hook when Moses Magnum shows up for revenge, as expected.
What Rivera is doing with the integrated sounds and the visual effects in this issue is really cool. Later, on Daredevil, he will pioneer a really cool new approach to what DD “sees” with his radar senses that others adopt immediately. I really enjoy the way he thinks about comics.
If there were no credits on this issue, I would be easily made to think Gerry Conway wrote it. Right down to Spider-Man jobbing out to Punisher, this is incredibly 1970s Conway. But, uh… wait, there’s more? Why is there more? How… this issue is really long for some reason? It comes to a crashing halt for a 5-page “interlude” by Joe Kelly, Barry Kitson, Mark Farmer & Dean White… for… some… reason? What has the worst writer of the BND era returned to darken my door so soon with? It’s that awful bookie character barging into J. Jonah Jameson’s home to accuse him of being the Spider-Tracer Killer. Did we not drop this plot unceremoniously and unsatisfyingly at the end of New Ways To Die? I thought we did.
Why does Julia Delphi appear to be a dude? Why is that name so close to actress Julie Delphy? Why is this happening in the middle of this Punisher story? Why is this comic 48 pages? What is going on!?
And with that, we’re right back into the Punisher story. I cannot fathom what’s going on here. This issue is 39 pages of story including the 5 for this “interlude.” 34 by Wells & Rivera, Et All. A normal issue was 20 pages. Was this story too long for 2 issues, but too hard to cut down to 1, so they added this filler to make a 48-page product? It’s not a special anniversary issue or anything. Why? Well, whyever, we switch our focus to Spider-Man, waking up underwater and freeing himself to swim to the surface. Meanwhile, it’s not going well for ol’ Frank…
Shoulda showed him his Avengers ID card. He can’t even drive a car, can he drive a boat? Well, Punisher is being tortured and not cracking, with Magnum saying the sample he stole is irreplaceable. But don’t worry, Frank, Spider-Man has just reached the boat and smashed his way into the bridge.
Only slightly more acceptable than Bendis having Ultimate Spider-Man know the Love Boat theme song in USM 86. Man, remember USM? I sure can’t wait to get back to that. If Peter Parker is now perpetually 25, he’s 5 years younger than me in 2008. And while I was familiar with Love Boat as a concept, I never actually watched it. Elsewhere on the Love Boat, Punisher is being beaten pretty badly, then says he flushed the sample MGH down the toilet. As Magnum talks, it appears Frank is surreptitiously about to inject himself with the stuff, but Magnum saying he surely wanted to know what it would be like to have all that power seems to convince him to crush the little vial instead? I guess? I don’t fully understand. Magnum has come to believe Frank and is about to finally kill him when…
Now that’s a Spider-Man page! Beating up the villain while stopping in mid-fight to prevent Punisher from killing a guy is pretty much perfect Spider-Man.
Our hero prevents Punisher from shooting the unconscious Magnum. We learn Frank stole a Spider Tracer, and swallowed it, even, to keep Spider-Man on the trail, and decided not to use the serum because even he was afraid of what he’d become hulked out. Frank announces he’s taking the sppedboat, and when Spider-Man protests, he shoots Magnum in the gut, saying Spider-Man will have to take him to a hospital now and getting away clean.
And that’s that. This almost seems like it was meant for an annual or something. Also it seems like Zeb just read GSSM 4 and was like “I’ll do that.” Here the trade I’m reading includes a tie-in mini to the Secret Invasion event running parallel to these issues, so I’m skipping that for now. Which, ironically, leads us to an actual ASM Annual. The first of the BND era.