Review by Frank Plowright
When crime novelist Gregg Hurwitz was recruited by Marvel’s early 21st century Max imprint it seems he wanted to write the Punisher at the time Garth Ennis had sole control of the Punisher’s destiny. No matter. Hurwitz took a more obscure vigilante with guns, transferred the methods of operation to new character Mike Trace, and we have the Foolkiller, murderer of those he believes fools using the law to escape justice.
A gratuitously grim opening sequence sees loser Nate McBride hospitalised after being beaten for skimming money from a gangster when collecting the bag. His wife and younger daughter are raped and killed, and threats are made against his other daughter should he not repay the money within a month. For a long while Hurwitz leaves readers to presume some level of decency about Nate stealing the money to pay for his remaining daughter’s heart transplant.
Almost every kid with responsible parents has at some stage endured the lecture about how something is not big and clever. Well, with Fool’s Paradise Hurwitz and Lan Medina delight in the presentation of Exhibit A. This is the Punisher for voyeurs, with the gruesome violence explicitly rendered by Medina, often very stiffly, but leaving little to the imagination. Hurwitz adds to the “adult” element with copious swearing in the dialogue, even the c-bomb and the n-word just like real gangsters speak on the street! Hell, yeah man! Fist bumps all round!
Trace’s background occupies the second chapter, himself a fool, and the remainder is spent hunting down the gangsters McBride worked for. Hurwitz is only interested in the plot, not the characters, who’re one-dimensional, all either killers or victims, sometimes one transformed into the other. That can work, and often does with the Punisher, but only if there’s some element of tension, and that’s not provided by McBride’s sick daughter. In the wrong hands there were silly elements about the Foolkiller of old, but in discarding them Hurwitz tosses the baby out with the bathwater. Two elements now separate Mike Trace from Frank Castle, his use of a sword instead of guns, and a new schtick taken from Batman’s enemy Two-Face with lives dependent on the toss of a coin. Seasoned crime readers are going to figure out what’s happening with it.
All the unpleasantness could have serviced a good story, but this is poor, unoriginal and not worth your time. Unbelievably, though, this toxic stew generated a follow-up in White Angels.
