Customer Reviews

Wolverine/Punisher Volume 1 TPB

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The wolverine/punisher limited series of 2004 presented here in one volume is a slighty disappointing affiar. Thats not to say the story of a sect of criminals building thier own secret santurary to escape the punisher and his like is not an interesting one , its just that its dragged out over a series of issues when just a couple could have done the job. Of course there is the usual fight between wolvie and pun, but its been done before and far better too .(This is the third limited series they have had together never mind the guest apperances in each others monthly books!!!! ) So unless the reader is new to the pair they will have seen it all before ! On the plus side you cant really not get excited about the two hardest bas***ds in the marvel universe coming together to fight a whole town full of "crims". With out spoiling it to much, the story too, does not always unfold in the expected way which adds a welcome twist to the proceedings. All in all if your a fan already you will have seen it (mostly) all before, but if your new you could enjoy the plot and the welcome(odd) bit of humour.

The premise for this sounds intriguing, Wolverine and the Punisher go to the jungles of South America to find a criminal, but one hero wants to kill him while the other wants to protect him. Sounds good, right?

I'm sorry to say that this is a really weak book. It has one of the worst villains ever, Napoleon, complete with the full Frenchie-poo outfit. The Punisher has some god-awful lines like: "This is your Waterloo." ((groan)) The book is totally predictable. Punisher and Wolvie start out at odds, then have to team up to get out of the criminal infested town of Erewhon (the world's most obvious anagram).

The artwork is decent, that's why I'm giving this book a couple of stars.

If you like the Punisher, check out Garth Ennis' stuff. "Welcome Back Frank" and "In the Beginning" are both very good. If you're a Wolverine fan, check out "Origin." Astonishing X-men and Ultimate X-men are my favorite team books with him. I'm not a big fan of the solo Wolverine series.

These team-up books never seem to work. Oh well, there are plenty of great graphic novels out there to choose from.

Happy reading!

Remember the countless team up's Marvel would put together back in the 90's featuring the "dark" characters of the Marvel Universe? They mostly consisted of teaming up Wolverine, the Punisher, Ghost Rider, Venom, etc. in relatively lame various mini-series' that were so limited on character and such and more focused on the properties of the characters involved. This recent team up of Wolverine and the Punisher is similar to the aforementioned mini's, only this time poor Peter Milligan (X-Statix, X-Men, Human Target) gets the task of writing this TPB. The unusually gifted writer concocts a tale here featuring Wolvie and Frank going to South America in search of a criminal. Wolvie wants to protect him, and the Punisher wants to kill him (naturally). This all ends in both characters engineering a daring escape, with little point to it all. It's a shame that Milligan has to resort to work like this, even though there are a couple of good action moments, and the art throughout is solid. Fans of either character may want to give this a look, but you're better off with any recent Wolverine work by Mark Millar, or the various TPB's of the Punisher by Garth Ennis.

This is my second experience with Pete Milligan cut loose on the Marvel Universe and I must say, he sure seems to have fun mocking everyone's expectations. While his X-Force stories built upon the foundations of the superhero genre and turned it upside down into a satire/study of the celebrity culture, what he does here is basically take all stereotypes he can find in the lore of the main characters, throws them into the cauldron and mercilessly exposes all their faults, pretty much openly mocking them.
So you have Frank Castle, the Punisher, hunting criminals almost dumbly in his single mindedness and Milligan gets Wolverine to play the guy who opposes Castle's obsessions, trying to defend a guy the Punisher had set sights on. The guy is headed towards Erewohn, a mythical sanctuary for criminals on the run deep in the Amazonian jungle.
They unknowingly reach the place and the biggest lunatics of the place are sicced on them. The introductions and nicknames are a shameless parody of 90's comics. Wolverine gets entangled in a dumb ass damsel in distress story (I have personally lost count of the love stories of his that have gone wrong). Nonetheless, Milligan feeds the reader bits and pieces of good psychology, sociology and characterisation, so that you eventually kind of regret he was simply cashing in the paycheck and spitting in the face of the average comic fan. Not that that's bad thing to do, actually quite the opposite! No wonder this is vol. 1 and I have found no trace of a vol. 2...
As for Lee Weeks's art, it's pretty solid. Weeeks is a very good pro, reminiscent off classic artist Paul Gulacy. The covers of the single issues, reprinted here, are a doozy too, up to the inevitable but regrettable Greg Land one.
It's a nice read, but I wouldn't spend too much money on it. Probably for completists of these characters only.