Punisher #7
Collateral Damage
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Farid Karami
Colorist: Frank D'Armata
Cover Artist: David Marquez and Guru-eFX
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Six words.
That’s how many Frank Castle utters total between last issue and this one. And they’re all in this issue.
I get the whole “actions speak louder than words” adage, but still…
Magic Bullet Theory
The Punisher and Microchip are tracking the source of the mysterious techno-bullet that can kill multiple people in a single shot. However, they quickly realize that it is actually tracking them.
The man behind the bullet, called Collateral Damage, was born Ken Skilling. He was caught in the crossfire of a shootout between the Punisher and a biker gang, and has sworn revenge on Frank Castle.
Meanwhile, in the ICU of McCarthy Medical Center, Wilson Fisk—the Kingpin of Crime—awakens from the coma that Frank Castle put him in with that name on his lips...
The Silent Treatment
I can't figure this book out.
It's a Punisher title, but sometimes I don't really feel like it's actually about the Punisher.
Subplots seem to start and stop, with things just getting forgotten about.
For example: Detective Pluto. She let Castle walk at the end of Punisher: Red Band, then wasn't seen again. In Punisher #6, she shows back up and is assigned to find Frank Castle as a Person of Interest in the techno bullet killings. But just the issue before, Jigsaw's pet reporter Madeline went on the news and blamed Castle for a series of grisly murders actually commited by her master, so why weren't the cops already hunting him down? Now this issue Pluto lets him go again, because reasons, I guess?
I'm really over the "Castle doesn't speak and has no internal monologue" thing. I get that we're not supposed to identify with him, but there's a difference between relating to him and thinking he's a compelling lead character, you know? For Heaven's sake, Silent Bob talks more than this guy, and "silent" is right there in his name!
As for the villain of this short story arc, Collateral Damage... It's an interesting idea, but again the execution doesn't quite land for me. I thought it was a little abrupt and lazy how the story basically just stops in the middle of the issue to tell us his backstory. Not Castle, nothing is told in-story, it's just revealed to us readers by the omniscient narrator. If Frank had been told about it, then he might have had to feel an emotion other than gruff annoyance, and we can't have that. I like the idea that he was caught in the crossfire of a shootout that the Punisher was part of—I'm sure that kind of thing has happened plenty of times—but why does he immediately jump to blaming Castle for it, when the narration says he doesn't actually know who fired the bullet that hit him? How did he get the fancy exoskeleton that allows him to function, and where did the techno bullets come from? And who thought it was a good idea to make the whole thing powered by a plug that can easily be yanked out of the back of his head?
So once again, Punisher himself doesn't do much. He tries tracking the bullet, gets some people killed, gets his butt kicked by Collateral Damage, and then Detective Pluto pulls the plug on the baddie—literally. I'm not saying I need to see the Punisher emptying the clips of multiple guns into a wave of nameless, faceless mooks until the streets run red with blood or anything like that, but maybe something with a little more substance than what we're getting? This is a $4.99 title, after all.
Then the ending. I try not to spoil endings usually, but I have to talk about this one. Wilson Fisk wakes up from the coma that Frank put him in back at the end of Red Band. That's when he emptied multiple Uzi clips into Fisk at point-blank range, and the amount of blood on the ground made it look like Kingpin didn't have a drop left actually inside his body. I was sure he was dead. Nope, just a coma. He's got cute little bandages on each and every one of his bullet holes, he'll be fine... And he is. Now that he's awake, Frank's name is the first thing out of his mouth. I bet Matt Murdock is so jealous...
So to review: we've got the things set in motion by Jigsaw from the first arc, which may or may not be forgotten about. We've got the, well, collateral damage of Collateral Damage's attacks. Kingpin is awake and looking for payback. And next issue we're... checking notes... crossing over with Deadpool? Okay then...
Caught in the Crossfire
I think Benjamin Percy has a long-form story he wants to tell with Frank Castle. I'm just not sure he's got the right ideas about how to pace it. So many things have been teased or set up, then dropped. Instead we get issues like this one where the pacing seems to be off and either slow or dragged out. The way he addressed Collateral Damage's origin was a bit clumsy for me. And I can't really comment on his dialogue, because there really isn't much of it. I know he's a good writer, and there's hints of good stuff here, I'm just not feeling the overall whole at this point.
Artist Farid Karami is back again this issue to finish the story that he started in issue #6. His art is decent enough, but it doesn't really compare to the work of main artist Jose Luis Soares. His characters are a little more slight and look awkward for the most part—they're too rounded and with too many lines in them. Plus he has Castle's hair so tightly slicked back that it looks like a buzz cut on a majorly receding forehead instead of the style it's traditionally portrayed as. He does get to do some cool staging with the techno bullet and the paths it follows, and those are exciting to look at.
Frank D'Armata's colors keep the style of the title consistent even with the different artist. Karami's work isn't as glossy as Soares's, but the colors maintain the same look with plenty of dark shades but the bright lights of New York at night illuminating the action. The path of the techno bullet is done in a sharp shade of blue, making it stand out and be easy to follow around. The hospital scenes with Fisk have a reddish hue to them from the ICU lighting, and it makes those bits stand out as something ominous and foreboding.
Easily Distracted
Overall, Punisher #7 is a middling issue that drops the backstory of new villain Collateral Damage right in our laps and then abruptly resolves the conflict with Castle before it even has time to develop. This title is having some attention span problems, and it's not doing much to make its lead character very interesting or compelling. These are things that are going to need to be addressed soon, or the title is going to take a very sharp turn for the worse, I think.