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| The Punisher: Born By Garth Ennis Grade: B by Mike Gilday |
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I'm a big fan of the Punisher's Max series. Gritty, violent, full of coarse language, it reads like the R rated film a realistic take on The Punisher demands. So when I picked up The Punisher: Born, Garth Ennis' secret origin of Frank Castle's alter ego, I was intrigued. Set in Vietnam, it details a young Frank Castle's last days in Vietnam and the choices he is forced to make that culminate in him one day becoming The Punisher.
We've all seen Vietnam movies and documentaries so we know it was bad, lots of drugs, ambushes, no one wanted to be there, etc. Except Frank Castle. He is described by characters in the story as being "in love with the war", and while certainly an atypical stance, when you dissect what The Punisher is, it's not that surprising. He's a character who kills his enemy without mercy. Some decisions he makes are questionable from a moral standpoint, but when you think about them in the context of Castle being a man who not only believes in the war, who wants to kill the enemy, and who cares about his men, it's not that surprising. Throughout the story, Frank is tempted by an unnamed voice. Readers of the Max series will recognize the caption box's color and font as being that attributed to Frank's thoughts. So that got me wondering. Was it The Grim Reaper or Satan tempting Frank? Or was it just his own mind, his dark side, tempting his human side to give in and let it take over?
Anyone who's at least seen the crappy film versions of The Punisher knows that, regardless of who is tempting him, Castle gives in. It's the cost of the deal he makes with the devil, or his dark side, that is the most shocking.
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