by Jason Aaron (writer), Steve Dillon (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)
The Story: We’re introduced to the Marvel MAX version of Bullseye, as he begins his hunt for Frank Castle.
What’s Good: This issue sees Jason Aaron’s continuity-free take on Bullseye and overall, it’s successful. Aaron has a good handle on the character’s distinct voice, which is intelligent, detached, psychopathic, and mildly humorous. Bullseye sounds oddly affable and never over the top. It’s easy to write an intelligent serial killer like Bullseye in an over-the-top or scenery chewing sort of way, and I’m glad that Aaron steered clear from this route. Bullseye seems more real because of this, but still colorful enough to make for a compelling villain.
The strongest portion of this issue, however, is a conversation between a wounded Frank Castle and his doctor, who happens to be an old friend from Vietnam. It offers Aaron a chance to once again attempt to get into Frank’s head. There are wonderful touches of rueful retrospective and references to Frank’s age that have proven before to be useful tools for writing the Punisher. The conversation ends up feeling heavy and meaningful. I enjoyed how Aaron explored Frank’s erasure of identity and humanity. These are familiar themes for a Punisher comic and have been explored before, yet Aaron makes it all just emotionally significant and hard-bitten enough to make you forget that.
Steve Dillon’s art is, as usual, a perfect fit for the Punisher. His action scene at the issue’s end is rife with desperation and tension, yet the entire book nonetheless carries that hint of light-hearted wackiness that inhabits all of Dillon’s work. Everything looks good here and I enjoyed his take on Bullseye as well, from those devious, intelligent eyes to the little scars surrounding Bullseye’s infamous forehead scar, which were a really nice touch.
What’s Not So Good: Jason Aaron is capable of being funny. The eyeball gag in issue 1 was funny, the Mennonite in general was funny, and his Wolverine book has made me laugh. But he needs to stay far, far away from the extended gross-out gags. The naked old lady a couple issues ago fell completely flat and this month, he devotes a good chunk of the book to a prolonged bit of toilet humor, fart jokes and all, that just isn’t funny. The whole scene was just lame and it was a shame to see Aaron, who’s usually a lot smarter than this, devolve to the lowest denominator. This was just childish and generally dead. Worse still, Aaron seems to be unaware of this and so just keeps hammering onward with the same poop humour. I can’t imagine anyone over the age 9 even cracking a smile at this sort of stuff and with this being a very MAX title, I think/hope there aren’t any 8 year olds reading this.
The problem is that this scene is long and it’s also Bullseye’s first major scene. It’s just a bit painful seeing a character’s “badass introduction” being so hampered by lame comedy.
This scene’s presence also leads to something of a schizophrenic book overall. We start off with immature toilet humour and end with the touching conversation between Frank and his old friend. It’s a bizarre pairing of the absolutely meaningless with the meaningful. It’s as though this issue didn’t really know what it wanted to be: stupid humour or heavy tragedy. All I can say is that the latter was great and the former sucked.
Conclusion: A shaky start leads to an excellent second half.
Grade: C+
-Alex Evans
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Conclusion