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 Incompleat Howard - Volume Four!

Howard the Duck - The Complete Collection Volume Four is the focus of this last lingering look at Marvel's most famous fowl. This is a wide-ranging collection of stories from Howard's career as he wraps up his black and white magazine phase and moves into that unenviable position of occasional guest-star. He also jacks out two more issues of his color series though all of the work is pretty much by divergent hands in both the arenas of writing and artwork. 

 

Howard the Duck #8 features one of Howard's most famous adventures, that of "Ducknight Detective". But first there's a story titled "The Grey Panther" by the regular team of Bill Mantlo, Gene Colan and Dave Simons. This yarn finds Howard and Beverly working in an unusual old folks establishment which we learn has nefarious schemes to rob the young of their vitality for the sake of the old, and all of this overseen by a mad doctor who dubs himself "The Grey Panther". Of course Howard and Beverly defeat this plan and escape. After that harrowing escape they visit a sunny Florida beach whee they meet an industrialist named "Spruce Payne" who hires to them help promote his products in the attire of two bogus superheroes -- Duckman and Duck Girl. This photo op gig though gets real when the men hired to play bogus villains Jokester, Puffin, and Quizling turn out to be baddies for real and are working for another villain named The Maller. When Payne goes missing it falls to Duckman and Duck Girl to save the day, which of course they do in a manner of speaking. This story by Mantlo is illustrated by Marshall Rogers who had won great acclaim for his work on a certain "Darknight Detective". This issue wraps up with anothe installment of "Street Peeple". 

In the ninth and final issue of the Howard the Duck black and white series we find our friend Howard and his best girl Beverly in New Orleans, and of course in the comic book world that means voodoo. 

Howard and Beverly become embroiled in a scheme by the third  Black Talon to bring a powerful "Duck Diety" back into this realm. He actually succeeds but thanks to Howard the duck god is less than impressed with Talon's ways and ends up punishing his own worshipper for acts of cannibalism. This story and the next one are by the regular Mantlo, Colan and Simons team. The second Howard story is a really signifcant one and has our devoted couple confronting aspects of themselves in motel mirrors and Beverly comes to the conclusion that she and Howard need to go their separate ways, at least for a time. In a game-changing move the story quietly comes to an end with Howard perhaps realizing at long last how precious their relationship was. Bill Mantlo now left Howard as the regular writer and is replaced on the third story by Steve Skeates who had been writing some offbeat episodes of Howard for Crazy magazine. The story seems to be a send up of The Big Sleep with Howard functioning as a mopey and bickery Philip Marlowe of sorts. He confronts a strange family, which the most strange is a two-headed bloke who turns out to be something else entirely. An article by Steven Grant closes out the issue and reprises Howard's history and implies that he will be returning to the color comic world. 

While all of that is going on Howard does indeed show up again in a color comic, specifically Marvel Team-Up #96 where he is still operating as a taxi driver and ends up in New York City helping Spider-Man defeat yet another deranged goober who celebrates the status quo. In fact he takes that name and wages a war on all fads. Quickly this war becomes a fad in itself and Howard and Spidey have their hands full. This story was written by Paul Kupperberg and drawn by same. 

Howard's next stop is in Bizarre Adventures #34, a color issue of the black and white magazine which features Christmas stories. In this Howard adventure by Steven Grant and Paul Smith the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life gets turned on its head when an angel in search of his wings tries to show a forlorn and suicidal Howard how his presence has made life better for those he has met. But it seems Howard's friends would've prospered quite nicely without him, in fact probably better. So forlorn the angel himself seeks the balm of the final embrace. 

When Howard the Duck #32 finally showed up on the racks it had been seven years since a color Howard title had been published. What prompted it? The movie coming from Lucasfilm, the folks who brought you Star Wars. (More on that later.) In this story we meet Howard (still wearing pants) when he meets Ceci Ryder, a lovely female trucker. In a story by Steven Grant, Paul Smith and Vinnie (Is-there-a-character-I-have-not-yet-inked?) Colletta the duo head underground to find a culture dedicated to reaping financial benefit from America's beautiful resources. It's led by a were-gopher and the pair a just able to survive and perhaps slow down  the scheme. When it's over Howard's back in Cleveland. 

Howard the Duck #33 sports a handsome Brian Bolland cover which makes me think of Uncle Scrooge. Over six months after the last issue the shine on Howard the Duck is tarnished after the movie doesn't deliver on the sales expected. This story is most interesting though for one reason in that it's the work of Val Mayerik, Howard's other creator and the first time I know of in which he worked on the character with a writer of his own choosing, a friend of his named Christopher Stager. In the story Howard gets rich by winning a contest and Beverly returns but leaves again when his personality is even nastier than it was before when he was mostly broke. A Dr. Clive offers Howard a chance to make more money and get companionship with his scheme to create life in the form of a female talking duck. But it costs Howard all his money and when she turns out to be a big-mouth spendthrift he takes off hooking up with another Walt Disney lookalike to skip out of town. The story is framed with Howard being interviewed on tell-all television show. It's not the greatest story really, though I found Mayerik's artwork quite fine. 

Now skip forward four years to 1990 and Howard shows up again in the hands of Steve Gerber. This time it's as a guest-star in the pages of the offbeat Sensational She-Hulk series (issues #14-17) featuring artwork by Bryan Hitch and Jim Sanders III. She-Hulk looks fantastic, but Howard seems a little off model to me and his pants are gone again. It's wild misadventure with She-Hulk and the former Blonde Phantom along with Howard battling the schemes of Dr. Angst who hasn't been seen since the Howard the Duck Treasury many moons before. He's causing cosmic trouble by bringing to Earth an endless array of mini-universes all trapped in tiny box-like shapes. Howard and She-Hulk end up in one dubbed the Baloneyverse and it gets worse from there. Dr. Angst escaptes jail and seeks out his old partners Tillie the Hun, Sitting Bullseye, The Spanker and The Black Hole. All of them have had a 90's redesign and they battle a She-Hulk who has gone gray and savage before becoming merely gray. The action of this hair-raising yarn is told by a big bald guy dubbed "The Critic" from a sect of the cosmic Watchers. He also gets involved together the heroes with the help of the Golden Age anti-hero The Terror stop Angst's plans. This is mostly a She-Hulk story (as it should be) and Howard is present but not so much signficant. 

When next we meet the Duck he shows up in the back of the venerable reprint comic Marvel Tales co-starring with another animal hero, namely Spider-Ham. Written and drawn by Paul Kupperberg the story is only a few pages long and the characters meet but do little to stop a plot by Duckter Doom. Frankly it left me confused. 

When next we encounter Howard it's now 1996, nearly a quarter century since his unexpected appearance in Adventures in Fear #19. The story is drawn by James Fry and Chris Ivy in that hyperbolic style so commonplace in the 90's and Steve Gerber steps up to write what I assume is his final Howard the Duck yarn. 

A lot has happened since Gerber began writing Howard the Duck stories. At one point he left Marvel and embraced the Direct Sales market with projects like Destroyer Duck, a character and debut comic book created  as part of Gerber's lawsuit to gain some ownership in Howard. It's a convoluted story that and to read about it in detail I recommend checking out this link. 

Anyway in this story from Marvel we have an unofficial crossover with Howard and  Spider-Man and the Circus of Crime with Rich Larsen's Savage Dragon and Destroyer Duck. It's a ramshackle story featuring some of Gerber's more offbeat contributions to the MU such as the notorious Elf-With-A-Gun and the Turnip Lady. KISS even gets a quick cameo of sorts. Sadly it's mostly a stunt with shadowy figures in Spider-Man Team-Up #5 and Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck #1 meeting but not officially. For more on this check out this link.  

The collection wraps up with a bevy of black and white short stories by Steve Skeates and Pat Broderick done for Crazy Magazine back in the 70's. Frankly they aren't very good and not really in the tone of Howard as far as I can tell. Broderick's art is fine though. Also we get a cover gallery featuring Marvel's adaptation of the ill-fated movie among other things such as Howard's appearance in Marvel Age. 

And that as they say is that. I'm closing my series of posts with a bit of art by Frank Brunner done for  Gerber's Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck one-shot which gives the world Leonard the Duck and echoes the delightful cover he made for Howard the Duck #1 so long before. My closing thoughts are really questions. Why is the Howard the Duck movie regarded as being so terrible? I think the answer is that it didn't make a beaucoup of money as anticipated so it must have been bad. It's often ranked as among the worst movies ever made and that's just rubbish. It didn't do well in the marketplace and it has deficiencies but it's not that bad. Also why is Howard the Duck when he appears in later Marvel productions only identified as created by Steve Gerber when Val Mayerik even by Gerber's own admission technically created him. Sure they both deserve credit and since it's just a matter of credit and not profits why doesn't it happen. I'm unclear. All in all Howard the Duck was a wonderful comic with great artwork that caught a moment in the zeitgeist which elevated it. Being part of the Marvel Universe means never having say you're really dead, so I expect Howard will always return. So get down with that!

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Omega The Unknown!

After the demise of the Man-Thing comic, Steve Gerber was still operating on all cylinders and his most famous follow-up was Howard the Duck, the creation for which he is most remembered today. But at the same time that he kicked off Howard's meteoric career he launched another series titled Omega the Unknown, with the help of Mary Skrenes and veteran artist Jim Mooney. In point of fact this is the comic most like Man-Thing featuring the same artist and writer team and presenting a protagonist who is mute and unusually susceptible to his surroundings. Omega the Unknown is a comic which lives up to its title and is rather inscrutable even today. 

The story begins on a distant alien planet where the enigmatic figure who will be called Omega the Unknown battles against an armada of invading sentient robots. His world seems destroyed but he is able to escape. On Earth a young boy named James Michael Starling is roused by his parents and they leave their home but a car wreck ends with the boy orphaned and his parents seemingly having been robots all along. Quickly he finds himself in hospital where his unusual nature arouses the curiosity of the doctor and nurses. The same robots that invaded Omega's planet have followed him to Earth and now they attack the boy but Omega's timely intervention saves the day, though weirdly the boy is able to fire beams of his own in his defense. There is clearly a connection between James Michael and Omega. 

In the second issue things heat up as James Michael gets used to life outside his parents isolated home and Omega has to confront the fury of the Hulk. Omega also meets an old man who takes him in and calls him "Sam". 

Electro had acquired one of the alien robots that had followed Omega to Earth and he tries to get Omega to help him with reviving it. James Michael moves in with Ruth, his former nurse and her roommate Amber who is a streetwise photographer for the Daily Bugle. 

The complexities of public school afflict James Michael and some of his new friends who have to navigate savage bullies and incompetent teachers. Gerber's lack of respect for traditional education permeates much of these early issues of James Michael's life. 

Omega for his part comes into conflict with El Gato, a local warlock of sorts and crime boss. Despite some shape-changing qualities on his opponent's part, Omega still wins the day. 

The brutality of life for the elderly gets a highlight when the savage Wrench mugs old women and men for their cash. Omega is at last able to stop him, but not before some dies. 

One of James Michael's friends is brutally beaten and his life hangs by a thread. On the Omega front the Blockbuster, a villain from Captain America's magazine shows up to raise a ruckus. Omega gets public criticism when he fails to stop the villain from robbing a bank, though Omega does save lives. 

Omega finds himself in battling Captain Marvel villain Nitro in a story by Roger Stern and Lee Elias. 

Omega finishes his fight with Blockbuster though the intervention of a villain called Foolkiller creates new problems. 

In the final issue of the run James Michael's friend dies of his injuries and is buried. After the funeral James Michael decides it's best to leave town and along with his friend Dian. They head back to the boy's home. Omega battles against Ruby Thursday and her demon Dibbuk, but events unfold in such a way that he is shot and seemingly killed by police. And with that the series closes with a promise of more secrets revealed in issues of The Defenders. 

When the story finally shows up in the pages of the The Defenders the writer is Steven Grant and the artist is Herb Trimpe. Valkyrie and Hellcat with the assistance of the Wasp assist Ruth and Amber along with Rory to find James Michael and Dian. Meanwhile Omega is not exactly recovering from his wounds all that well. 

In the frand finale Moondragon shows up to fix things somewhat and we learn at long last that the alien robots are actually the makers of both Omega and James Michael. Each was a progressively improved model of being in which the doomed aliens hoped to invest the welfare of their dying race. But the plan was messed over when Omega came to Earth and triggered the events that forced James Michael to activate his powers sooner than expected. His powers are staggering and it is only the intervention of Moondragon and the Defenders that James Michael comes to finally understand his dangerous nature and or the sake of his friends destroys himself. But as the story closes Moondragon takes both his body and Omega's are dropped off in space heading into the sun. 

With solid but sadly sometimes unexciting work by the totally professional Jim Mooney this book has a visual style that feels at odds with its offbeat themes. If the intent was to create an utterly realistic setting in "Hell's Kitchen" for the characters to boil in it fails a bit in that the environment doesn't look really any different from generic NYC which adorns most Marvel books of the era. Gerber and Skrenes start the ball rolling with a very subtly done first issue but never recapture that magic as the strip gets burdened by too much of the traditional new-Marvel superhero trapping such as recognizable villains and guest-stars. This book needed really to exist outside or at a distance from the MU to be fully effective. Still it's an interesting read, if you're prepared for the sudden stop. 

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