Punisher MAX - The Slavers #3

[history79]

7 pages of 22

Comments

[lucean]

I both agree and disagree with this point. I remember there being an undercurrent for that, but in a way it wasn't different from the general 'crime goes on' undercurrent, all the while the only person who was able to strike even that superficial hit was Frank and his brutal killing, as any kind official sources were just utterly incompetent in handling it.

And even with Jen, the only way she achieved in the story was giving the information to a brutal killer, who went and killed everyone while saving the women. She herself was shown to be completely inefficient in actually addressing the issue or getting anyone from official sources to participate despite apperantly having pretty accurate evidence and linkages on what was happening.

[stolisomancer]

The authorities weren't incompetent: they were disinterested. Cristos specifically has a cop on his payroll to make sure he has to deal with niceties like law enforcement as little as possible (and that cop is slick enough that the moment Frank Castle pokes his head into Cristos's operation, the NYPD suddenly develops an anti-Punisher task force.

The point of the scene as shown in these scans is that a lot of Americans don't want to engage with these issues at all. They're outside our "monkeysphere," to quote David Wong, and none of that is on Cooke's head. Ennis is writing about an actual situation, and an actual societal reaction to that situation. He didn't make this shit up off the top of his head.

In a story with these kinds of themes, the fact that Cooke is trying, and will keep trying, and is still alive at the end of the story to keep trying, counts as a victory. Frank actually respects her, in his way.

Short version: if you haven't read the full story, read it. It's in TPB and might even be in your local library system. If you have read it, I think you're misreading it and its themes if you think it's in any way contemptuous of Cooke.

[lucean]

I have actually read the storyline in question as well as most of Ennis's Punisher MAX run. And I am aware this is a real problem that sadly receives very little attention and the people dealing with are underfunded and underappreciated.

My point was general to Ennis's writing, with Cooke being not the worst example of it, but still an example. The thing is, I do actually think Cooke and what she does is extremely admirable. However, because of Ennis's writing style and preferences, what she also does is highly ineffective. Yeah, she's still alive and fighitng, but she personally didn't really achieve anything here, the Punisher did by brutal violence. In Ennis's work, anyone trying to achieve anything without violence is always ineffective and truly worthy of respect only after they understand the need for the violence.

[stolisomancer]

In Ennis's work, anyone trying to achieve anything without violence is always ineffective and truly worthy of respect only after they understand the need for the violence.

Except no, not at all. There's a thread in his work going all the way back to Hellblazer that violence is a red herring; it may be satisfying, but it gets nothing done. Jen Cooke's solutions are more constructive than Castle's, and while she can do nothing about Cristu's operation, she is viewed as equally competent in the narrative ("They do it their way, I do it mine."). Castle can kill the slavers, but he can do nothing for their living victims; that's Cooke's job, and she does it as well as can be expected.

Go forward into the Widowmaker arc, which is about how the desire for revenge and the cycle of violence almost literally poison Jenny Cesare, and how just seeing Castle convinces Budiansky to drop his gun and go home, ready to live in peace with his wife. In Kitchen Irish, the same theme is delivered as blatantly as could be imagined, when the British soldier accompanying Yorkie says he feels nothing after killing the man who killed his father.

In his Hellblazer arc, a would-be radical's attempts to start an open race war only succeed in getting virtually everyone he knows killed by the police, and nothing else changes either way. In The Boys, even Butcher admits in the end that his approach is worthless, to the point where his violent tendencies are treated as a serious illness both in his miniseries and in the main series ("...it looks tasty, but in the end it's fuckin' self-defeatin'").

Ennis finds many of the stories he likes to explore in people who are accustomed to violence, but it is never treated as an end in itself, and those who are unwilling to put it aside, when given the opportunity, come to bad ends. There's a great deal of his work that's pretty facile and doesn't demand or require any further reading than the surface (Preacher wears most of its themes right on its sleeve, for example), but when he's more restrained, he's also more subtle.