PunisherMax: Frank's Second to Last Friend

[espanolbot]

Frank is recovering from the severe beating he received at the end of the last storyarc, where a giant former hitman turned Amishy farmer broke both his hands with a sledgehammer in addition to running him over with his horses. (Yeah it makes more sense in context, the hitman is actually oddly tragic in a lot of ways...).

Anyways, while Frank is out of commission, Wilson Fisk has completed his rise to the position of Kingpin of Crime in New York City, a position he got by carefully manipulating Frank into attacking any potential mobsters who could stop it from happening.

Not being able to kill a criminal who is so openly corrupt grinds Frank's gears, which, coupled with his injuries and the fact that he realised that he'd forgotten it was his son's birthday some days ago, doesn't improve his temper when dealing with his doctor, who is an old friend from his Vietnam days.











Frank breaks off the plaster on his hands (don't worry, there's a reason why he won't have to worry about his fine motor function in a couple of storylines) and goes off to shoot Fisk. Unfortunately, it turns out that being a billionaire supercriminal who can afford to buy his own skyscraper can also afford to have the windows made of material that can deflect anti-tank rounds, so other than scaring the crap out of the Kingpin it just announces Frank's position to his henchmen (and new assassin Bullseye) who manage to drive off the injured Frank, and injure him even more so in the process.

Frank manages to call his doctor friend to stitch up his new wounds.

Comments

[ensiform]

This is some really top-notch writing. A shade of realism, some deep human interaction and a good sense of what drives the character. I gotta start getting this.

[espanolbot]

The last few trades, Kingpin, Bullseye, Frank and Homeless, are all collected and published. :)

[silverhammerman]

Frank's hairline looks weird in that first page, it doesn't looks slicked back, it looks like a short version of Jim Carrey's hair from Dumb and Dumber to me. The rest of the art is solid though, and I'm sure it's been said before, but Steve Dillon was born to draw the Punisher.
This character interaction was great too, and gives a perfect sense of the character relationship. And I love Frank's perpetual scowl, he looks like he could give Judge Dredd a run for his money.
I don't think anyone posted scans of the series finale back when it happened, and if they did, I missed it. So.... someone post some pages or give me a link please.

[espanolbot]

I'll try and post some of the next storyline, which deal with Frank's life between arriving back in the US and the Day In the Park. Which I kind of found more interesting than the whole vendetta thing Vanessa Fisk had against her husband after he basically killed their son, and Elektra acting as a go between between the two.

[cricharddavies]

First of the second set of scans seems to have been yanked by the host.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Indeed... I wouldn't mind seeing the other page.

[espanolbot]

Yeah, fixing. Sorry, Imageshack seems to have it in for blood lately, as they kept taking down the first page of my Dini/Ross Joker post from a few days ago as well.

[mortimerwclankitybritches]

Wow.... I seriously dislike Punishermax for the most part, but I gotta say these two scenes were pretty damn awesome

[lbd_nytetrayn]

So, why doesn't he have to worry about motor functions in a couple of storylines?

And is this in-continuity with the posts we saw recently where Frank was the sole survivor of his Vietnam unit? Seems not, given the reunion bit spoken of here.

[espanolbot]

It is in continuity, the doctor just wasn't present at Valley Forge. They knew each other from Vietnam, where Frank took part in three tours of duty, but Frank wasn't in the same unit for the entirety of his stay, with VF just being the last one. :)

And Frank didn't need to worry about his fine motor functions because the series comes to... a very definite end when Jason Aaron finished his run.

[blackruzsa]

Kudos to the writer. This is good and deep without being too obscure and over-your-head.

[halloweenjack]

This is not too bad. I wish that Dillon would draw Frank more like a sixty-year-old (which is about how old he'd have to be, at least), but the writing is pretty fine.