Review by Frank Plowright

By 2006 the Punisher seemed to have been transferred permanently to the Marvel Knights line, where apart from the initial misguided experiment as an angel cum assassin, he’d thrived. It was a surprise, then to see him not only restored to the mainstream Marvel universe, but with Matt Fraction revelling in what it had to offer.

This selection encompasses Civil War, Captain America, plenty of supervillains, most on the minor and feeble end of the scale, the Hulk’s alien allies, and stories that barely even feature the Punisher. Between all that Fraction supplies a longer tale that wouldn’t look out of place among those Marvel Knights stories. The Punisher first takes on the Hatemonger’s neo-Nazi organisation in New Mexico. Originally providing the bulk of Goin’ Out West, it’s squirmingly uncomfortable for the appalling rhetoric boldly stated by people who completely believe in racial superiority, mistakenly assuming the Punisher is one of theirs. The reality is different. It’s a decent thriller not told as well as it might have been, with the foreshadowing Fraction uses to supply a shock chapter ending forcing him into flashing back and forth throughout when a chronological telling would have been better.

Ariel Olivetti supplies the art for ten of the twelve chapters, working digitally and providing considerable contrast between his characters, who can be slim and nerdy, but are primarily brutal and weighty. His Punisher’s a veritable brick powerhouse, and while digital art dates rapidly, this still holds up by and large. Leandro Fernández takes Olivetti’s bulky look and supplies a confident pen and ink version for the final chapter, while Mike Deodato’s single chapter is elegant naturalism personified.

Fraction veers between a tongue in cheek version of the strong silent thug, and some dark places. Don’t be put off by the Punisher all-but absent in some stories. Those are among the best in the collection, with a greater element of chance to them. Overall the Punisher’s return to the Marvel universe is solid reading, and a creative success. One might have thought a second volume wrapping up the remainder of Fraction’s Punisher War Journal would be forthcoming, but there’s been no sight of it since 2019, so it’s probably not going to happen now.