Punisher #2
August 1987
Cover art by: Klaus Janson
Story: Bolivia
Writer: Mike Baron
Art: Klaus Janson
What is very enjoyable about the Punisher here, is that it is still early in his story telling career, so there is a lot of fertile ground to cover I think. Frank has knocked off a major cocaine distributor in New York City. He did this to convince the supplier down in Bolivia he did this to take it over for himself.
The pilot who flies him down is an old 'Nam comrade who got crossways with Frank during the war for selling medicine on the black market. The pilot, Hoyle, mistakenly has his name on the Memorial Wall in DC. The man running the operation is an old South Vietnamese general that was also believed to have been killed. General Tranh thinks Frank might have been put here by either the CIA or DEA, so he gives him a pistol and orders him to kill Agent Valencia of the Bolivian Drug Enforcement Agency. Frank uses his superpower to determine the weight of all things to know that the general only gave him one bullet in the pistol. In other words, I'm not buying that line of bull. Frank and Valencia make a daring escape into the jungle.
They later sneak back into the compound and arm themselves. Castle spray paints a bullet proof vest with his well known skull symbol. Which makes more sense to me as something he would do, as opposed to the screen printed ones he is usually running around in. It also looks more menacing to me somehow.
The Punisher blows up a building on the plantation to draw their pursuers back to them. He plants himself on top of a building to pick them off as they return. Valencia enters Tranh's mansion to deal with him. Punisher wins (killing Hoyle in the process who was piloting a helicopter). Valencia doesn't. Tranh captures him, and kills him in front of Frank before he can be stopped. Frank then goes berserk and ends up killing everyone. Blowing up the compound and getting away with 2 million bucks.
The epilogue show Frank at the Vietnam Memorial Wall thinking about how sometimes he makes corrections to it. He then vows that he is done! Yeah right. We know that ain't gonna happen.
I think the Punisher is a pretty divisive character. You either like him or you don't. I like him in small doses myself. I'll collect his series for a while and then drop it, and then come back. This Frank is early in his career more or less, and I did enjoy seeing him interact with people from his old Vietnam days. The inner monologue was neat as well, as he questioned whether he was doing what he does to avenge his family or if he simply had a death wish and wanted to die. A good comic.
The interesting bit about this comic (to me anyways), is this was part of a decent size run I got from my old LCS as he was going out of business. I think at this point he was selling all of his comics at a quarter a piece and the guy just left his employees in charge. When I was there the guy minding the shop just really didn't care any more since he was losing his job. He was in the back playing games and would just tell people that he trusted them on what they were buying and told them to just leave the money.
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