The Essential Punisher!

With the exception of Wolverine, there's little doubt that of all the great Marvel Bronze Age creations, the Punisher has been the most successful. Erupting onto the scene in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, the Punisher was a quasi-villain of sorts, then a reluctant ally, before becoming a new kind of Marvel "hero". 

The Punisher was created by Gerry Conway and designed by John Romita, inspired doubtlessly by Don Pendleton's The Executioner, a paperback avenger who was popular in those days of Dirty Harry and Death Wish. 

When we first meet Frank Castle, he's a large and powerful man dressed in black with an enormous skull emblazoned on his chest. He's presented as a modern agent of death for those who commit crimes. He works in concert with Spidey's enemy the Jackal at first, convinced that the Web-Slinger is a criminal, just as J. Jonah Jameson had been preaching for years. By the end of the story the Punisher doubts that and ends his alliance with the Jackal. 

When he next returns, he teams up with Spidey (sort of) to stop the Tarantula, a pirate of sorts who has taken it on himself to waylay a tour boat. Ross Andru does a superlative job of rendering the Punisher, making him imposing and threatening, yet retaining that nobility which elevates (sometimes only slightly) him above the thugs he chases. 

The Punisher next shows up in Giant-Size Spider-Man and once again works with Peter Parker's alias to bring down slaver Moses Magnum, who operates a concentration camp of sorts in the jungles of South America. 

Frank Castle gets his own feature in Marvel Preview which sports a stunning cover by Gray Morrow. In the comfort of the black and white magazine world, the Punisher is free to be even more aggressive than the Comics Code will allow in the four-color environment.  In a grim story by Conway and artist Tony DeZuniga we learn at long last what motivated the Punisher's war on crime as we see in flashback the murders of his family. 

The same team returns to tell another rough and tumble Punisher tale with the assistance of Rico Rival in the pages of Marvel Super Action. Sharing the book with The Huntress (eventually to become Mockingbird) and Howie Chaykin's Dominic Fortune, it seems clear Marvel is testing the waters for a possible Punisher magazine. Bob Larkin's cover is powerful stuff. 

But that was not to be, and the Punisher returns to his role as an occasional guest-star in the Spider-Man books. In one notable two-parter he contends with both Spidey and Nightcrawler, the member of the recently minted New X-Men. For the first time a writer other than Conway handled the character as Len Wein handled the chores. Reliable Ross Andru was still the artist. 

That same talented duo brought out another two-parter sometime later when Punisher and Spidey work together to save J. Jonah Jameson from the clutches of the Hitman. Turns out the Hitman was a felllow soldier from Frank Castle's past. 

Frank Miller gets his first chance to draw the Punisher on the cover of an issue of Captain America in which the enemy of crime comes up against the Living Legend. Needless to say, that Cap and Castle don't get along and his approach to fighting crime even reminds some of the Nazis. When he almost kills a cop, the Punisher allows himself to be arrested. This comic was written by Mike Barr and drawn by Frank Springer and Pablo Marcos. 

But that doesn't last as he's out and about when he joins Spidey yet again to battle drug pushers and the mob that supports them. Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard are the talents who bring this team-up to the masses. 

In Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15 Frank Miller draws a script by Denny O'Neil which pits the two heroes against Doctor Octopus who is scheming to ransom the city by killing five million citizens using the pages of the Daily Bugle itself. Once again the Punisher is arrested at the end of the story. 

That arrest seems to take as we find Frank Castle in prison when his team-up with Daredevil begins. This is another rugged tale by Frank Miller which focuses on the drug PCP and its pernicious effects. Matt Murdock struggles to save the innocent while the Punisher works overtime to bring down the guilty. At the end of this intense tale, the Punisher is again captured. 

The next time we see Frank Castle he's escaping jail yet again and goes on a rampage against drug dealers. This time he has to contend with not only Spider-Man but the mysterious Cloak and Dagger as well. The Punisher seems to lose control of himself in this story which pits him against the Kingpin, punishing with extreme prejudice people who commit the most innocuous of crimes such as littering and jaywalking. He is finally brought down in this trilogy by writer Bill Mantlo and artist Al Milgrom with help from the always reliable Jim Mooney. By the end of this story like so many before he's headed back to prison. 

This collection wraps up with the very first Punisher color comic book limited series. The five issues are written by Steven Grant and the first four are drawn in magnificent form by Mike Zeck and John Beatty. Mike Vosburg steps in to wrap things up in the fifth and final installment. The story is a wild one with many twists and turns as Castle battles his way out of prison, gets recruited by a secret cabal to fight crime and discovers the terrible truth about his supposed allies. Allowed to be the focus of the story, this limited has a real potency, and proved to this comic book fanboy that The Punisher could carry his own comic. Soon he would, in fact, he'd become the star of two. 

(Romita's original design)

This impressive Essentials tome brings together over a decade of Punisher stories and allows the reader to see how the character was developed over the years. At first, a character with the mission of the Punisher was a hard sell for a Comics Code world, but as the years passed and the audience for comics became more sophisticated (according to some) the true nature of the character could be explored more fully and robustly. 

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The Radio Adventures Of Doc Savage!

The Radio Archives collection of The Adventures of Doc Savage is an eight-disk collection, and features two Doc Savage stories adapted for serial radio performance in the 1980's on public radio. The two stories adapted were The Thousand-Headed Man and Fear Cay. First up is the seven-episode saga of Fear Cay proved ideal listening for hurtling down the highways. 

Fear Cay was featured in the eleventh issue of the original Doc Savage run and offers up a cracking tale featuring Doc and all his five aides along with Pat Savage his cousin. These six find themselves confronting a gang of vicious thugs who are trying to get hold of a mysterious prize on a lost island in the Caribbean. There is also a strange old geezer who claims to be 131 years old, and who gets around quite quickly for someone of such age. There's plenty for all the aides to do with Monk, Ham, Renny, Johnny, and Long Tom all getting some decent exposure. The action is spread around well, despite the pacing being rather relentless.

The producers of this program drew pacing inspiration from the classic Republic serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel and it really works. There are some great fights and some ferocious gun play. The characterizations are crisp, and I had very little difficulty telling the players apart, despite there being a large cast of folks to keep track. The plot is classic Doc, with a battle raging in the streets of NYC before shifting to an exotic locale. There is weird mystery and plenty of raw pulp beats to suit any Doc fan.

I frankly didn't expect these to be as good as they are. Many of these later radio shows can be a bit bloodless, clear copies of an art form that once thrived but now is all but gone. This seems to be more than a mere copy, but a true revival done by real pros who are adept at the business of crafting radio drama. The quality made me very eager to dive into the second adaptation. 

That second adaptation is of one of Doc Savage's most famous stories for a host of reasons. This story is an exceedingly popular one, and it was chosen by Murray partially because it was also the story singled out by movie producers back in the 1960's for a proposed Doc Savage movie starring Chuck Conners. The project did not develop ultimately but did result in a Gold Key comics adaptation. I took a look at that comic here.

 

The story from 1937 pits Doc and his assistants against a gang of thugs seeking a mysterious treasure in far-off Asia. There they find a hidden ancient cult which seeks to keep its secrets with the sacrificial deaths of any who happen along. It's a whopping good story, with lots of chances for action and many opportunities for Doc to show off his physical skills.

The radio adaptation is pretty close to the original but does alter the last part of the story somewhat by adding Renny as a partner to Doc as he uncovers the mysteries of some distinctive temples. In the novel Doc prowls alone, but it was decided that giving Doc someone to converse with would make the discoveries seem more natural to the listener and less artificial. It works quite well for me as Renny is a favorite of mine and gets too little attention in the adventures. This adaptation is a bit shorter than "Fear Cay" and I think that helps the pacing a bit. There is no sense that the story lags even a little bit. If you haven't sampled these, I highly recommend them. They are first rate entertainments. There is also a disk with interviews of the creators of the radio dramas about how they came to be made. 

The was once upon a time a Doc Savage radio show way back when Doc was just getting started. It was produced in fifteen minutes episodes. They were broadcast across the nation in the piecemeal way that radio operated in at the time. Sadly, the recordings are lost, but the scripts have been preserved. They were gathered and published several years ago by Moonstone in Doc Savage - The Lost Radio Scripts of Lester Dent. The folks who did the radio show in the 80's briefly considered using some of these, but they found the length insufficient for their needs and I think the creators were anxious to adapt their favorite stories. These stories are curiosities in script form and better than not having them at all for Doc fans. 

For the record both this book and the cover of the radio plays feature artwork by Bob Larkin. Great stuff indeed!

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Iron Fist - The Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu!

The early 70's was an era of black and white magazine expansion at Marvel. They'd had some success with monsters in titles like Dracula Lives and Tales of the Zombie among others. They'd had a runaway smash hit in Savage Sword of Conan. So it's perfectly logical they'd try out a magzine dedicated to the Kung Fu fad. So was born The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. In many of the stories from that series Iron Fist played an important role. This volume collects those up plus some other stuff as well. 

From The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Special Album Edition we get a yarn with teams up in a manner of speaking Shang Chi, The Sons of the Dragon and Iron Fist. Each of the separate heroes gets a story which is part of a larger scheme concocted by Fu Manchu. Chapter one features Iron Fist in a story written by Doug Moench and drawn by martial arts comic legend Frank McLaughlin. Iron Fist is the character at Marvel the most like McLaughlin's Judomaster and these pages evoke that vintage Charlton comics. The second chapter is by Christ Claremont and Herb Trimpe and features the Sons of the Tiger (Lin Su, Bob Diamond, and Abe Brown), and the finale features Shang Chi in a story by Moench and artist Mike Vosburg. John Buscema supplies a page to the front and the back of this story about drug shipments and whatnot. 

The tenth issue of DHoKF features another Iron Fist tale drawn by McLaughlin but this time inked by Rudy Nebres and sadly Nebres rather smothers McLaughlin's work. The story Claremont has Iron Fist fight an early version of the Steel Serpent, yet one more refugee from K'un-L'un. We are also treated to a reprise of Iron Fist's origin story by Moench and artist Don Perlin. This is useful since before Iron Fist's origin has been spread across the first four issues of his adventures. 

No new material inside this reprint annual, but that is a tasty Nick Cardy cover featuring Shang Chi and Iron Fist kicking butt. 

In a story by Bill Mantlo and artists Pat Broderick and Terry Austin Iron Fist actually meets the Sons of the Tiger as they battle a freakish villain named Snake-Eyes who uses his gang to try and steal a radioactive isotope from a hospital. 

Chris Claremont is back to take the writing reins and Rudy Nebres is the artist for what is the beginning of a six-chapter story which has Iron Fist battle for the safety of a young woman named Jade who is set upon by a hostile crowd. 

Over the course of six issues Iron Fist finds love and is drawn into a weird dimension where the dead of K'un-L'un reside. His mission is to save Jade's soul which has been stolen by an evil villain. To do that he must fight relentlessly against many foes including surprisingly his own mother. 

Doug Moench and artist Nebres team up Iron Fist and Shang Chi yet again as they battle against a baddie who is seeking to bring together forces to bring down Fu Manchu. It's all pretty complicated as they are forced to fight against one another in an arena. 

In a story primarily focused on The White Tiger (a hero who combined the amulets worn by the defunct Sons of the Tiger) Iron Fist joins forces with the Tiger as well as Shang Chi and new hero Jack of Hearts to battle the Corporation and its agent Stryke, in a ferocious battle on a ship. Joe Staton handles the artwork on this one with the writing handled by Bill Mantlo. 

The last several stories in this collection feature Iron Fist characters Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, known collectively as Daughters of the Dragon. I took a look at those stories here not that long ago.

 

This is dandy little read. The core of it is the six-part tale which is not as good as it ought to be. I am a Rudy Nebres fan, but his storytelling was a bit exotic in this story which sprawled across dimensions regularly. The highlights of this collection are the Frank McLaughlin art on Iron Fist, the Joe Staton story (love his art always) and the Daughts of the Knight material.

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