When it comes to seeking revenge comics, travel no further than the castle … Frank Castle, that is. He’s the one-man vigilante squad known as The Punisher, and the initial 20 issues of his debut series from the late 1980s are collected in Marvel’s long-overdue ESSENTIAL PUNISHER: VOL. 2. (In contrast, VOL. 1 rounded up all of The Punisher’s early appearances in various issues of SPIDER-MAN and DAREDEVIL, plus his own five-issue limited series.)

In a story you will hear repeated a dozen times in these issues, Vietnam vet Castle was a normal family man until the day his picnicking family got caught in the gunfire between two warring mobs in Central Park. He was the only member to survive, and has spent every day since donning a kick-ass skull costume and a crapload of ammo to rid the world of criminal scum – like Travis Bickle, with a better wardrobe.

Here, that mission of vengeance takes him from local crack houses to a Bolivian drug empire, from bank robbers to a cult’s reverend. He takes on nuclear terrorists in Times Square and serial killers on Wall Street. He punishes in Australia, he punishes in Las Vegas. And whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas … because they’re dead once he’s through with them.

In a storyline that echoes the Tylenol scare of 1982, he tries to take down a disgruntled employee who’s poisoning the company’s products with cyanide, but Daredevil – being a believer in the justice system – does his best to keep the scum alive and let the courts decide. In another headline-inspired tale, The Punisher goes undercover to bust out a Charlie Manson-esque kook from prison so he can snuff him and his “family members” out.

The lengthiest and best arc places Castle as a substitute social-studies teacher in a dangerous inner-city school – Malcolm Shabazz High – to infiltrate the student gangs who do business with criminal mastermind Kingpin, who remains an ultimate target of Frank’s.

Two standalone stories comprise the super-sized THE PUNISHER ANNUAL #1, in which he fights robots in a coke lab in Bogota, and his tech-pal Microchip helps out an old flame in danger of being snuffed out by her no-good husband.

Almost every page is written by Mike Baron, and he shows a great handle on The Punisher character, who’s one of my favorites in comics overall. Primarily, Baron makes good because he keeps things bleak and violent, plus he never plays it safe. Allies are introduced, and not all of them live to see the issue’s end. Cry blasphemy all you want, but I actually much prefer this old-school take to the more recent Garth Ennis-penned incarnation.

Klaus Janson and Whilce Portacio are among the talented artists who bring Baron’s words to bloody life. It’s kind of amazing on some of things they’re able to get away with, as these issues were still under scrutiny of the Comics Code Authority.

Some people shy away from Marvel’s ESSENTIAL line because of the black-and-white printing. And while that’s understandable, I think this is one of the cases in which the lack of color works for the story, enhancing its inherent grittiness. And whereas some ESSENTIAL titles of late haven’t held my interest, PUNISHER had me by the balls. –Rod Lott

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