The Punisher Max Review
End of the Line
By
Jake Estrada
Spoilers.
Punisher Max was a series that was written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Steve Dillon, and it was often regarded as a sequel series to Garth Ennis’ tenure on the title character the Punisher.
A BRIEF LOOK AT WHAT CAME BEFORE!
Now, some that don’t follow have to take note. The Punisher for many years was written by Garth Ennis under the Marvel Knights banner before he got his wish and had the series re-launched under a mature imprint that Marvel owns called MAX. Here, Garth Ennis took the Punisher right out of the proper Marvel Universe and threw him into what he called the real world. There were no superheroes or supervillians to combat. The Punisher was a cold, bloody killer who murdered real people who were ex-military operatives and gangsters that had an axe to grind.
This Punisher also aged in real time, and it kept his original origin pretty much intact which was that he served in the Vietnam War, and he lost his wife and children during a gang war in Central Park in 1976. Frank Castle had been punishing criminals for decades and he was getting older and older each passing year.
In Garth Ennis’s seminal run, he had the Punisher killing for decades. He wasn’t a hero; he was just a stone-blooded serial killer who rinsed and repeated his actions year in and year out. Of course, during his run the threats got bigger and bigger each passing year, but the central character always survived to kill another day.
Yet Garth Ennis left, and he left his mark on the series. Others tried to pick up the reigns, yet they were all short-lived until Jason Aaron was given a new series, which had him taking over Marvel staples such as the Kingpin, Bullseye, and Electra and throwing them into this Punisher universe.
A LOOK INTO THE ENTIRE PUNISHER MAX SERIES
When Punisher Max started, we bore witness to the rise of Wilson Fisk as a lowly bodyguard for a mafia Don who has a plan to take out the Punisher for good. At this point in the story, they decided they were to create a Kingpin figure that would have the Punisher coming with his guns blazing on this guy who ran the show. Of course, this idea was orchestrated by Wilson and Vanessa Fisk to really take over the show, but the other families didn’t know this as they believed it was just an idea to weed the Punisher out and kill him. The plan had the appearance of killing the Punisher, but Fisk always wanted to be the real Kingpin and he ultimately got his wish as he betrayed the other mafia figure heads using the Punisher.
What Wilson never expected during this course of action was that he too would lose his son and wife to become the Kingpin. The Punisher would become Wilson Fisk’s mortal enemy, and Frank Castle wouldn’t stop until he got his person.
Now Wilson Fisk as the newly minted Kingpin recruited assassins to take out the Punisher and they all failed. Fisk grew more paranoid and frightened by Frank’s crusade against him, and this is when Fisk came across a man known as Bullseye. Bullseye wasn’t a superhuman with great powers. He was a lunatic who enjoyed killing and was pretty good at what he did. So, once Fisk hired Bullseye to take out the Punisher, it became a contest between the two when they would finally meet up with each other at Fisk’s high-rise.
The Punisher had to fight against a much younger, faster, and potentially crazier foe. The Punisher’s fight was long and very brutal against Bullseye and ultimately it would take the Punisher down a notch or two. Surely, he survived but by the skin of his teeth, and it got him jailed as he recouped from his injuries at Rikers Island.
During his time on Rykers he was severally beaten, and his injuries were on the mend. We are taken back to Frank’s time with his wife shortly after returning from Nam. We see how he tried to re-enter society and how he didn’t have any real coping skills. He felt numb inside, and all he could do was revert to violence over and over. There were threats on his life as the mafia tried to make him join their organization, and his reluctance to becoming a hitman for the local heavy resulted in his family’s death.
As the story progresses, we learn that Frank during that fateful day in Central Park asked his wife Maria for a divorce, but that would never play out as his family’s lives were snuffed out giving birth to the Punisher as we know him today.
During this storyline, we learn about Nick Fury’s hand in trying to get Frank to work for him, and helping him avenge the death of his family. Nick Fury finally told him that it would never end well, but Frank didn’t care; he knew his role in life and that was to murder scumbags.
Finally as Frank went down memory lane, he is aided by a convict known as Big Jesus and escapes from prison, and once freed, the Punisher goes back to the only place he knows, which is home. Yes, the Castle home that is now abandoned. Here, the Punisher is weaponless, penniless, and doesn’t have the gear to combat the thugs on the street, but that doesn’t stop Frank. He goes out on the street, kills the first thug he sees and takes his gun, and he does it because this is all he knows and he knows he has to try to find a way to bring the Kingpin out of his ivory place high in the sky. Of course as the Punisher goes back to the streets, he notices that the vermin aren’t as scared as they used to be of him. He has to run away from a lot of gun battles now, and his presence doesn’t bring that chill to their bone like it used to. The new gangsters know what he is, an old man living the last days of his life, but this does not stop Frank Castle. It only makes him more determined to get his hands on Fisk.
Frank went the most extreme route; he went to Wilson Fisk’s son’s grave and unearthed his son’s body and brought it to Vanessa Fisk’s penthouse while Kingpin was being guarded by Electra from the Hand. Now of course, Kingpin was being played by Electra to amp up Fisk’s confidence. Fisk finally leaves his Ivory tower to face off against the Punisher. The ulterior motive was for Vanessa to have her revenge against Wilson. You see, Vanessa was distraught over the loss of her son at the hands of his own father, and she felt he had to learn a lesson and the only one to do this was to use the Punisher himself.
Finally, Fisk does leave his tower, he finally has the confidence to go toe to toe against the Punisher and he goes to the Punisher’s old abandoned home and they square off against each other in Punisher Max #21. The Punisher is wounded at this point due to the previous issue battle he had against Electra, but this doesn’t end here as Fisk has his entourage of men unleash their hailstorm of bullets down on Frank.
Frank stands tall and goes to war on these men. As they wreck his body with the bullets, he continues to plow through the hell his body is going through to kill each and every single man that Fisk has brought with him. One guy urges Wilson Fisk to run, but Fisk says no. He was tired of running, and he was going to deal with this himself.
The guy standing by Fisk is gunned down. Fisk picks up the man’s body, and he hurls it towards the Punisher as the Punisher unloads a round of bullets into Fisk’s stomach.
The battle between the two became a violent no-holds-barred fight to the end, and finally when the Punisher is down, Fisk goes on a rant telling the Punisher that his son died for a reason and that his son gave him this city and that he as Kingpin will leave his mark on the city forevermore, while Frank’s family’s death was pointless, it amounted to nothing and that he, Frank himself, was nothing. He wanted him to die knowing this as he, the Kingpin, would live on.
Frank, of course, took Fisk on by turning around grabbing his throat biting off his tongue, whacking him in the head with a hammer, Wilson Fisk would stagger away and find his way to Vanessa’s place of residence and beg to be let in, but he was refused as the Punisher would appear behind the Kingpin and blow his brains out.
This is when a very poignant and destroyed Frank Castle told the Kingpin, “Your city. My world!”
The Punisher walked away; he was completely destroyed as drops of blood fell with each step taken. He was an utter mess. Yet, he was determined to go rest. He knew he defeated Fisk, yet knew another would someday rise up and take his place, and he wanted to be ready to take on this menace. He was not as lucky as he was previous times. This time, he finally fell to the ground as a pool of blood beneath him formed and the issue ended.
When Punisher Max #22 opens up, we are presented with a very dead Frank Castle. His lifeless body lies on a coroner’s slab as they removed the bullets from his body. A very old and saddened Nick Fury looked down at this tortured soul. Here, we bore witness to the end of Frank Castle, this version was dead. The only man who had aged as if he was in real time, this 65 year-old Frank Castle had come to an end. His war was over. There was no more punishing coming from him.
A few dangling plotlines were tied up, such as Electra being revealed to have lived yet she was severally handicapped from the neck down so the Hand finished her off. Vanessa Fisk was elected to Kingpin Status to end up being taken out by Nick Fury.
The point was stressed over and over how old Frank really was, how each year his enemies were getting younger and younger, and how it must’ve been getting harder for him to contend with that and the sheer fact he wasn’t getting any younger. This was always destined to be his fate, and he met that fate. It drove home the fact that his war on crime was meaningless because it changed nothing and he was just a minor footnote in history to be easily forgotten by the next big thing. Just as Nick Fury makes these observations, a news broadcast plays out that people have taken to the street, that tenets to a building just had an uprising against their slumlord landlords and drug dealers and took action against them, and these people adorned the shirts made-up of Frank’s skull. So, in a way the Punisher did live on after Frank.
We are finally given a tombstone with Frank’s name on it. The war was over. The Punisher, at least this version, was dead. I know Marvel says this was the Garth Ennis version that passed, but it makes you wonder what Garth would have done considering he did write a Punisher the End story sometime ago that had a totally different ending. In the end, this version which was an old Frank Castle died and this is the story we were given.
How did I feel over this issue? I was sad to see him go, but at the same time I did think it was a well enough put together story delivered to us by Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon.
My score for Punisher Max #22:
4 STARS.
Enjoy folks!
Jake Estrada
Email me at estradajake@yahoo.com for website suggestions. Thanks.
Jake Estrada is a published author who holds degrees in Multimedia Design and Criminal Justice. He is a father to three wonderful children and married to his beautiful wife, Beth. You can find his comics at
http://graphicly.com/estrada-mediaand other fine online stores.
