Comic Summary XI (Punisher MAX #1)

I don't know if somebody had an artistic Vision or if this is just some slapdash thrown together crap. I sincerely hope it was the ladder. Because this is one lame comic book.

Punisher is sitting in a garage tormenting some goon. He's trying to extort information out of him so he can figure out what the mafias next move will be. He's told eventually with some ''persuasion'' that the mafia is having a sit-down with what remains of their criminal organisations.
The conversation they're having has to do with the Frank himself. For in this comic story The Punisher has been hunting down the mafia for almost 30 years. There's practically nothing left of them. One guy comes up with the idea of turning one of the street myths into a real life character. That being the fictional Kingpin.
As a means of distracting The Punisher from the actual mafias activities. Most of the mafia isn't interested in this plan as it could possibly create a figurehead who would run all the major families without their say so.
However they quickly change their minds after Wilson Fisk (the man who will become the Kingpin) pops the eyes out of a mobster's skull the mobster in question was bad-mouthing the mafia associate who came up with the idea in the first place. It also helps that The Punisher showed up at their little get together in order to gun the lot of em. Thus scaring most the mafia into submission and killing anybody else.

It's the proper definition of middle of the road. It's uninteresting, uninspiring, basically drawn and surprisingly lacking in vocabulary. Every third or fourth word is just the F word used time and time again.
That kind of dialogue can work if you know what you're doing with it. Martin Scorsese has proven this time and time again. But the writers of this comic book are no Scorsese.

Instead it just comes off as a conversation between a couple of dumb teenagers. There's no real difference in dialogue between any of the characters. The Punisher has a slightly altered vocabulary so at least he comes off a more unique. But you can only do so much with a subpar Punisher. He's barely in this comic, only prominent in the first couple of panels, he pops up as a background character during an action scene towards the end. He's also shown talking with this one mobster whose eyeballs have been popped out of his head.

Now none of this would be a problem if this was a comic in the middle. Just a filler issue to make sure we get from one plot to the other. But this is your beginning comic. And what's supposed to be a whole new line of Punisher stories. But it's completely uninteresting, I can't see anybody wanting to read this story.
Even the Kingpin himself. A guy who is supposed to be Larger than Life both in personality and in physical stature is just so disinterested in here. He's just a big Broody man who's being used to create the persona of the Kingpin. Now it's pretty clear that as time goes on he will eventually get rid of the other Mobsters either by his own hand or more likely by the punishers before he becomes the boss of all these different mafia families.

And there's nothing really there to draw me in. There's no true Charisma to him. And trying to give him a happy-go-lucky family as a sympathy point just seems baffling to me. Kingpin is a man who doesn't have any real love or respect for anybody outside of himself.
If anything his family should be very dissatisfied with him. Claiming that he spends too much time with his work and never pays his family any mind. Only to have them inevitably killed and have the Kingpin himself seem almost disinterested in the matter. May be plotting revenge on the would-be Assassin as a sign of retaliation to show that he isn't week what a show that nobody touches the Kingpin and gets away with it.
It should have been a nameless character who took on the Persona of Kingpin. Or if you still wanted to use an established character from the Punisher Universe why not go with ''The Russian''. He'd fit the criteria. In fact that's initially what I thought was going to happen. The mafia was going to create a fictional Kingpin only to discover later on that there's a real Kingpin and it's ruled by the real Wilson Fisk.Who may have killed off the mafia thugs then decided to deal with the Punisher himself.
Or the mafia sets it up so Frank Castle going after a fake Kingpin only to discover that he's really going after the real Kingpin. Which gets the real criminal boss to go after the mafia himself thinking that they had set the Punisher on him as part of an assassination attempt. There's so many different options you have of a story like this. It's a shame that none of it was really into that in this particular one.

I just can't believe that the Punisher has been fighting crime for over 30 years in this universe. He's drawing is if he's in his mid-to-late forties at most and The Punisher never seem like the kind of guy who started shooting up Mobsters in his mid-twenties. He always came off to me as a guy who lived his life for a good 10 to 15 years after the Vietnam War and then had a tragic accident or murder involving his family. And this said I'm on the path to become the unlimiting serial killer who goes after the scum of the Earth.
That just doesn't seem right. They don't draw The Punisher as old in this comic. He's the same age he is and most of his other stories.
This age issue comes down to artwork. Whoever Drew The Punisher didn't bother to make him look older or give him a more unique look. They just drew the typical guy they saw from every other cover and said 'Good enough.'

Finally there's the name of this comic. Punisher MAX not to be confused with a different Punisher MAX made by Garth Ennis. Who story is also about Frank Castle who's getting up there in age. but that series was far better pencilled. There's a lot more artistic design there and it really feels as if it exists in its own universe.