Punisher #5
“Under His Skin”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: José Luis Soares and Sergio Dávila
Colorist: Frank D’Armata
Cover Artist: David Marquez and Guru-eFx
At last. After circling each other for the past four issues, Punisher finally comes face-to-face with Jigsaw. And... gets his butt handed to him?
Yeah, I saw that playing out differently.
Knife to a Gunfight
I wondered how they were going to handle this first face-off between Punisher and Jigsaw since their respective resurrections. To just have Castle murder the mobster again would have made the previous issues pretty much moot, so there had to be some kind of twist. "Jigsaw beats the crap out of him" was not on my Bingo card.
Frank Castle is finally in control of his faculties again. Just in time to get jumped by Jigsaw and sliced up by the mobster's scalpel, which is laced with a paralyzing nerve agent. You see, Jigsaw has decided that fear is the best way to keep people in line, and no one puts more fear into criminals than the Punisher.
So he wants to wear Frank's face.
While Jigsaw tries to convince Castle to help him star in Face/Off 2, Tombstone—recently sprung from the joint—decides to pay Jigsaw a visit.
Two rival mobsters, and a drugged-up Punisher in the middle? That won't end badly at all...
I'm Gonna Take His Face... Off
Well, you can't say the first story arc of this new Punisher series didn't end with a bang. Literally in this case.
As I said earlier, the fight between Punisher and Jigsaw—if you can even call it a fight, it was pretty one-sided—caught me off-guard. But, it's perfectly in-character for Jigsaw all the same. Four issues of plotting, planning, and scheming, and he reverted back to the old thug who gets impatient and acts without thinking. And it cost him. I refuse to believe he's dead (again), because there was no body. But he'll still be laying low and licking his wounds for a while.
For an issue that was largely a showdown between two crazed-but-mortal men, there was still a lot to take in. Jigsaw practically laid his soul bare to Castle while cutting him up, laying out his schemes, his aspirations, his favorite color... oh wait, not that last one. But he was definitely oversharing with his prey, and that's what gave Castle the time to somehow fight off the nerve agent and clap back.
I like when writers have the criminal element refer to the Punisher as an inhuman monster who can't be stopped, that's a perfectly effective take for a character like him. I don't like when they actually write him that way—he's still a mortal man, so he shouldn't be indestructible. And I don't care how indomitable his will is, there is a limit to how much an ordinary man can overcome. I think they pushed that limit a bit too far this issue, with the amount of punishment he took and how he was able to fight off the paralytic. That's a tough line to un-cross, so I'm concerned about the series escalating cartoonishly if he continues to be portrayed like that.
One thing is for sure: Castle isn't going to get much time to rest and heal up. Thanks to Jigsaw's "investment" in wannabe reporter Madeline Phipps, the entirety of New York now thinks that the Punisher is the one responsible for Jigsaw's recent trail of mangled and faceless bodies. So Frank Castle is once again on the defensive, with everyone out to get him.
Capes and Capos
Unlike Punisher, Jigsaw, and Tombstone, who just can't seem to get along, the team of writer Benjamin Percy and artists José Luis Soares and Sergio Dávila were taught at a young age how to play nicely with others.
Percy has been steering the good ship Punisher for a while now, and with all of the characters and subplots he's introduced, he doesn't show signs of stopping anytime soon. He keeps this issue well paced for what is basically one huge fight scene and an epilogue, shifting focus to another participant when a refresh of perspective is needed. As I said earlier, I do worry that he's making Castle a bit too superhuman in some ways, so that's something he'll have to watch in the future.
Soares and Dávila once again split the art duties, and while I admit it usually bugs me when that happens, it works pretty well here. Their styles are similar enough that I can guess where they traded off, but I can't tell you for sure. There are a lot of dynamic close-up shots of Punisher and Jigsaw as they alternate trying to kill each other, and there's no shortage of blood and peeled-off faces to go around. Pretty gnarly stuff. The last shot of Punisher this issue has him walking down an alley with his trenchcoat billowing behind him like a cape, while a police car passes by in the background. If it weren't for the "X" slashed across his chest from Jigsaw's scalpel, it would make an iconic image and an awesome poster.
The color work by Frank D'Armata helps to keep the two artists' styles enmeshed. The issue takes place at night, so everything is draped in shadow, but lit at alternating points by blood, gunfire, and flames. It's all so effective, that when we switch over to a brightly-lit TV news set at the end of the issue, my eyes literally took a second to adjust. Very effective work that helps ground the more realistic tone of the book compared to your average cape comic.
Public Enemies
Punisher #5 wraps up the first story arc with a bloody and brutal showdown between Frank Castle and Jigsaw, which has our hero on the back foot more than we're used to seeing. I do worry that he's losing that "normal man" feel, as Castle withstands more punishment than a regular person should be able to, but I'm hopeful that can be reined back in. Based on the end of this issue, he's not going to have any time to rest before he's in someone's crosshairs again.