Review by Frank Plowright

So when the Hulk returns to Earth mad as hell for having been shot into space in the first place, and sets about devastating the USA, what part can the Punisher play in stopping his allies? The answer to that makes for a fun opening chapter to Hunter/Hunted.

Unlike the continued narrative of Goin’ Out West, this is a selection of Punisher stories with very thin connections. The longest of them is the title story in which a frankly bonkers Kraven the Hunter decides he’s going to create a zoo via capturing every villain named after some form of creature. You’ll be surprised how they start totting up. The first of three chapters is drawn by Cory Walker, who’s a decent artist, and has a fine time with the Rhino, but he’s not at all suited to the Punisher himself, which really is fundamental. However, Walker’s cartooning is preferable to Scott Wegener’s distorted figures, inconsistency and lack of regard for backgrounds. It resembles the cheapest 1980s animation. It’s not Fraction’s finest hour either, a rat run holding pattern with a few moments foreshadowing of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Bridge putting together a team to trap the Punisher.

Every volume of Fraction’s Punisher so far has featured stories in which Frank Castle barely appears, and Howard Chaykin draws two of them very nicely here. ‘Survivors’ is a character study taking a look at the few villains who’ve escaped the Punisher’s bullets earlier in the series. They’re not in a good way, and the villain formerly known as the Gibbon, absent from Kraven’s earlier hunt, finds himself at a turning point in a grim reinforcement of who he is.

Stuart Clarke has been hanging around with the Punisher and supplying tech since the series began and for those who don’t know Fraction and Chaykin recap his past before explaining how it impacts on his present. It’s another loser gets to lose story very well told.

The title story is a let down, the first of the series so far, but the remainder is up there with the best of the series so far, so very much a game of two halves. Jigsaw is next, or Fraction’s entire run in bulky paperback as Punisher War Journal by Matt Fraction: The Complete Collection.