Punisher MAX with Jesse Fresco
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about Punisher MAX! Our host this week is Jesse Fresco!
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Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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⏱️ YouTube Chapters
00:00 – Intro
00:08 – Jesse Fresco Returns
00:42 – The Autumn Frost Novels
01:17 – Why Jesse Loves Punisher MAX
02:25 – What Made Marvel's MAX Imprint Different
04:44 – Frank Castle's Code and the Best Story Arcs
06:24 – Garth Ennis, Politics, and the Character's Legacy
07:51 – The Rest of the Punisher MAX Line
09:23 – Why Frank Castle Is More Complex Than He Appears
11:04 – Why Punisher MAX Still Holds Up
12:44 – The Perfect Ending for the Punisher
15:06 – Promo: Long Live the Legion
Transcription
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it.
00:08
Hello, Trade School. This is Jesse Fresco returning once again, host of or ex host of the now defunct Jaguar Sharks podcast. But episodes are still available if you want to go back and listen to them. Came back on because it's been a rough year for a lot of people and from a political standpoint. And I decided to go back and start rereading one of my favorite runs of comics just to have a little bit of catharsis. Before I get to that, I want to plug something. My second and third novels came out this year. It's the beginning of what's gonna be an ongoing crime series set in the Maryland area called the Autumn Frost series.
00:42
My second novel, Drive Like Hell, came out back in January and the next in that series, Black and Blue, by the time this episode gets released, will already be out and available from IngramSpark and Amazon. Basically it's about a Lyft driver that just gets into wild crazy adventures and has very, very bad luck. If you want some action heavy crime noir, slightly Punisher inspired type of stories, then I think the Autumn Frost series might be for you. And speaking of Punisher, that's what I'm here to talk about. I am a very leftist individual and I hate it when I see military and police using the Punisher logo as a representation of the thin blue line or of military personnel because Frank does not like super right wing followers and certainly does not like cops.
01:43
So it's very frustrating when I see that because he would be very annoyed by that. So I'm here today to talk to you about one of my favorite runs of comics of all time. I should be talking about just one trade, but I'm going to talk about the entire series because I've read it twice. I've going back through it for a third time. It's my favorite runs of comics of all time. I'm going to talk about Garth Ennis's run of Punisher max. So if you don't know what the MAX line was, it's now defunct. It was a Marvel property for a while. It was a chance for Marvel to kind of do adult oriented content. Hardcore violence, sex, swearing, nudity, politics, adult themes. And it was disconnected from the mainstream Marvel universe. They did eventually put some superhero type characters.
02:25
I think Wolverine got a small run, Deadpool got a small run. Terror Inc. I think got something as well. But it was mainly. It was mainly just the Punisher show. You know, I think there was a full killer run as well by Greg Hurwitz, which was okay. Punisher actually shows up in the second trade of that. And that series ended on a huge cliffhanger that was never resolved and still annoys me to this day. But mainly it was the Punisher show. It was a chance for Ennis to kind of get away from the ridiculous cartoonish whiz bang wall up of his mainstream run, which had just wrapped up. And he went in to do the Max line, which is completely disconnected. So it starts fresh. And that version of Frank Castle is in his 60s. He's been operating for about 30 years.
03:09
He's a Vietnam veteran and he has a kill count of around 2, 000 people. If you want Grim Punisher, this is it. This is the one. And it's the. It has the most perfect opening for any comic I've ever read. And it just shows who he is, what he's doing and why he's doing it. And there's a full page shot of him with the Punisher skull on his shirt and he's standing there with an M60. And he just goes, I'm going out to make the world sane. It's. It's very dark. It's very dark. It's. I can't really say that it's for everyone. It's most certainly if you are, if you have a low tolerance for violence, this is not for you. If you're looking for a goofy, funny Punisher, this is not for you.
04:01
There are funny moments, but for the most part, this is a dark and serious take. There's no superheroes disconnected from Marvel. Only a handful of Marvel characters show up in Ennis's run. Nick Fury shows up in later storylines, but he's not a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. He's a CIA operative that was also in Vietnam. There was a spin off series that happened after Ennis wrapped up his run called Get Fury, which is a nine story, a nine issue arc that details Fury looking back at his military career and kind of resenting everything about it. Castle shows up in that for a little bit. Ennis's run of Punisher Max really gets into the nitty gritty details of why Frank does what he does. And it's. It's him going after real criminals.
04:44
He goes after the Mafia, he goes after the ira, he goes after a human trafficking ring at one point. He goes employees of Enron at one point. Which was really fun. It is Dark. It is grim. It's in a lot of ways very mean spirited. The. The kind of things that he does to people, he does them almost with a sick level of joy. There's points where he douses a guy in gasoline and sets him on fire. He rips the bowels out of one guy and drapes his intestines from tree branches. He will just randomly shoot gang members if they even slightly piss him off. It's. It's a dark, brutal series, but it does show that he does live by a code. He doesn't drink, he doesn't indulge in any kind of illicit substances. He focuses completely on his mission.
05:36
But it does also illustrate that he is in many ways human. At one point there's a character named o' Brien that shows up in the series who is probably one of, I think one of Ennis's best characters he's ever created. Castle and o' Brien hookup and he accidentally has another kid. And so that's a long storyline that happens. Towards the tail end of that series he introduced a character named Barracuda which is kind of like an inversed foil of Frank Castle and that he's this big kind of macho black guy, kind of like a Michael Clark Duncan who's very kind of constantly happy all the time. But he's a sick, twisted, interesting character. He got his own spin off later on. It. It's. It's a really fun series and if you want catharsis, this is the one to deliver it.
06:24
As far as I'm aware, Ennis is very progressive. He. There are things in his work I think don't age very well. There's. Some of his earlier work does have things where there's jokes at the expense of people's sexuality, which does bug me a little bit. I think he has since moved away from that. But you can tell that he is a. He is a leftist leaning progressive. He just, he just has a dark sense of humor. But his run of Punisher Max lasted, I believe it was from 2004 to 2009. Then there was some spin offs that happened after that. There was a Dwayne Swersinski run. There was a. I think there was.
06:59
Who was.
07:01
Was a Greg Hurwitz run. There was a Victor Gishler run. There was. There were some one shots in there as well. And it was. Overall, Ennis's run is a solid conclusion to the character. It ends in a really good place. And then Jason Aaron came in a few years later and did his run which lasted about four volumes. It was only about 25 issues and that wrapped up the Punisher story. And then they did some one shots and such to wrap everything up. And as far as I'm aware, the Max line has since been defunct. There's been a recent rebranding called the red band storyline, which I guess is just the max line. And this did come back for a one shot miniseries called Soviet, which took place during the 90s dealing with the proxy wars in Afghanistan. It's overall okay.
07:51
It's a nice little addendum. Like, yeah, there's this little bit of story I just wanted to get out of my system. But overall I think that it is a nice run for this character. It's. Ennis is known for three separate series, Preacher the Boys and Punisher. He didn't create Punisher, but he definitely solidified the character within culture and for both good and bad reasons. There's people that take this character, you know, right wingers, fanatics that use him as a symbol of the thin blue line, which is really up because cops using the Punisher as their logo. You clearly don't give a about protect and serve. It's very obvious. It's. It's unfortunate that this is the world we live in that people just don't get it. I wouldn't say all of the spin offs after NS's run are great.
08:41
And this summer, like, okay, I'd say probably the weakest is the Dwayne Strzinski run. Even though I love Dwayne, I love his writing, I think it's probably the weakest run. It's okay, it's. It's fine. I would never say any of these are outright bad, but in terms of, if you just want one concise storyline, just read Ennis's run, just his stuff, and you've. You've got it. That is the most perfect run of comics in my opinion. It just doesn't get much better than that. Because the one thing that's always been leveled at the Frank Castle character is that, oh, he's so simple, he's so basic. He's. He's not interesting. No, he delves deep, he gets deep in this character. There is a lot to unpack with this guy.
09:23
There's one storyline where the son of one of the mafia guys in New York, in order to piss off Frank Castle, digs up Frank Castle's family's bodies and then videotapes him pissing on their corpses. And Frank sees this when he's having dinner at a diner and there's this one page shot of Frank as the conclusion to that storyline. And it's him just furious. He's like, oh man, he's gonna explode. And he does the next or the next issue after that he goes on a three day bender, doesn't sleep and kills every mafia goon in every hideout across New York and leaves only one guy at each location with the message Bury my family. Yeah, it. This is catharsis. This is catharsis. And to be clear, a human being could never actually do these things.
10:19
I mean, Ennis even admits in multiple interviews that the Frank Castle character, the things he does are impossible. Like a human being could never actually pull these things off a realistic Punisher. He'd probably make it around a month and then the cops would get him or the mob would get him or he would get sloppy and accidentally shoot an innocent person and blow his brains out from the guilt. Like a human being could never do this. But. But for the sake of Catharsis and for storytelling, it really works well. This is great for action storytelling and in many ways it feels more like a crime noir akin to Ed Brubaker's run of criminal. I'm kind of surprised that Ed Brubaker never touched Punisher. I'm kind of surprised by that. He'd be a good writer for Punisher. They do feel more like crime noir stories.
11:04
Modern crime noir. Beautiful artwork by a. By a whole host of illustrators. Louis LaRosa comes in for the first arc. Leandro Fernandez, Goran Parlov, who's who. I at first didn't care for as an artist, but now I really like his designs. Kind of. It looks kind of like Rob Liefeld but not as ridiculous. Although there are points where Frank Castle's arms are bigger than his head. Yeah, this is like. This is a brilliant run of comics. It's highly. I highly encourage you to read this if you can stomach it. There are things that will push your buttons, piss you off. There is a lot of sexual assault. There is some elements of racism, bigotry, homophobia. It's also incredibly political at certain points. If you are easily angered, I would suggest passing on this one.
12:03
But if you really like this kind of stuff, if you really want something to delve into that's fresh and unique and it is of its time. This is very post 9 11. You can feel it. You can feel it's post 9 11. So some things haven't aged well, but overall I think it's. It holds up pretty well. If you like the NS run, go into The Max run that Jason Aaron did, it's a nice conclusion and it's literally a conclusion you can't do any more than after that, which is why they restarted it. And they've since gone into doing the red band storyline, which was overall okay. It was fine. I, I think that everybody continues to try to recapture the style of Ennis's work and they never quite get there.
12:44
Ennis has a very particular voice, has a very particular style, and you can very much feel it in Punisher Max. It's not his character, but he really did make it his character. And he never really tries to say if you should support or not support Frank at all. He just says, this is what he does. This is what he does. He goes out and he handles things the way that he wants to handle it. Jason Aaron delved into that a lot more when he did his run. And that run gets very depressing, but it's also an incredibly strong run, even though it's only about four trades long. And also these storylines from Ennis and Aaron, they never go out of print. The, the one shot storylines, like Six Hours to Kill, Girls in White Dresses, those have kind of dropped out of print.
13:31
They haven't really recaptured those. I don't think reprinted those in any hardcovers or any omnibuses. I think as they just figure, well, these are sort of like what if storylines. They don't really fit anywhere. You can kind of throw them in anywhere and they exist. So they don't get as much love. I don't think they're bad, but they are, you know, they are still part of that universe. I wish they would bring them back and put them in some kind of omnibus. I don't think they're available. And there was some one shot storylines. There was one called Butterfly by Valor. Dio, I think, has retired from the comics business. That one was pretty good. And there was a one where he took on an underground snuff porn ring. That one's not so good. That one comes across as very tone deaf in many places.
14:16
It's supposed to be kind of funny, but it's a really vile storyline. So not all of the Max stuff is good. Yeah. As much good Punisher is out there's also some. There's also some crap. Yeah, if you're expecting goofy, over the top Punisher, this is not the one. But if you're expecting kind of a fun, cathartic take upon this character, this is the one for you. It's dark, it's grim, and it has a hell of an ending. The Ennis's run ends on the most perfect note, and I'm going to repeat it here. In the end, the war in Vietnam was just like all the others. There were those who profited, those it devoured, and then there are those for whom there are no words. Happy reading.
15:06
We're back, baby.
15:08
Who's back?
15:09
The Legion of Superheroes is back. It's taken a while, but DC's oldest super team is back.
15:15
Everything's different, but everything's the same. Does that make sense?
15:18
Kinda.
15:18
It's gonna take a lot of work to bring fans up to speed and let them know all about the Legion.
15:22
That's what the Long Live the Legion podcast is for. Every episode, we break down the characters, the stories, and the different versions of the team.
15:30
So whether this is your first time.
15:31
Reading the Legion or you've been reading.
15:32
Them for a while, check out the.
15:34
Long Live the Legion podcast, hosted by.
15:36
Us, Jim and Jay. We'll help you get to know the team a little bit better.
15:40
See POV certainpov.com.