Comic review: Punisher #17- The inevitable come-down after a rare moment of truth in Marvel comics

Writer: Nathan Edmondson
Artists: Mitch Gerads & Brent Schoonover
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 1st April 2015


If you kidnap a top US politician, get him to confess that he’s a criminal, and then run around Washington DC with every uniformed order follower in the city hot on your trail, how do you get away? How do you make your escape when you have helicopters featuring the very latest in high tech thermal, night vision equipment tracking your every move?

Easy, you throw a Dictaphone (circa 1986) at the nearest soldier, tell him that it will prove you are innocent, then hide in a bush for half a minute and wait for everybody to fly off. You can then calmly stroll out and have a moment to yourself, right in the open, sitting alongside the Washington Monument and all of that other creepy occult architecture that is in the middle of Washington DC. Don’t worry about CCTV or anything like that, and don’t worry about security guards, soldiers, cops or any of the other people who are looking for you. They’ve flown away now, so take your time and enjoy the scenery.

Next scene it’s daytime and you are in a small town meeting your old army buddy. How did you get there when the entire military and police forces of the USA are looking for you and would have put up roadblocks all over town? Don’t worry about it, you just got there, let’s not get bogged down in details, okay?

From there you can saunter off to Mexico and beat up a top drug lord, blowing up his car and somehow tracking him and getting past all of the special forces trained security guards that would be protecting him 24/7 night and day.

Ahh, it’s easy being the Puinisher in 2015, isn’t it? Don’t worry about the high tech Police state of 2015 that has been exposed by numerous whistle-blowers recently. Just do your thing; pretend that it’s 1980 and that all of the new spy technology doesn’t exist. Oh, and if you are ever in big trouble just remember those two special weapons in your arsenal, the Dictaphone and the bush.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What the Hell happened to this book? It was pretty decent last month, but it’s fallen apart now and what I’ve just read is so completely stooopid that I’m almost lost for words in describing it. It even had one panel with a US superhero criticising the Punisher because he killed somebody without ‘Due process,’ like that’s even a thing in the US today where they kill people all of the time with no regards to due process whatsoever. What the Hell do you think those drones in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan are doing every day? Perhaps they are just looking for evidence for an upcoming trial, and accidentally killing women and children because of some design fault?

Goddamn it, this is too stupid for me to take in. Punisher #16 hinted at some kind of connection to reality in 2015, but Punisher #17 has just gone and reigned itself in by being as wilfully ignorant and as stupid as possible. Perhaps the last issue was a bit too radical, a bit too dangerous, a bit too close to the truth?  We can’t have that in Marvel comics now, can we? Punisher #17 has rectified that problem, and has promised to be a good boy, promised to be just another silly little comic, and promised not to reflect reality in a way that would be uncomfortable for anybody with power and/or money.

Writer Nathan Edmondson has kissed corporate ass this week, and put out a comic that will please his masters very much indeed. Don’t worry boss, issue #16 was just a one off. Issue #17 will be a good little boy, and I’ll get back to talking about rotten apples, Mexican drug cartels and how there is nothing wrong with the actual system itself. No, there’s no problem there. Land of the free and all that. Well, free as long as you can pay, obviously. Now get back to voting, back to serving the system, back to the rat-race, back to striving for that movie contract, back to the greasy corporate career pole, back to statist slavery and back to a comic book fantasy land that still acts like it’s 1986.


Rating: 2/10 (Just for the comedy value of seeing a US superhero talk about ‘Due Process’ in 2015 with no sense of irony whatsoever).











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