Review: A Zombie Frank Allows Others To Come To The Fore In ‘Marvel Knights: The Punisher’ #2
by Olly MacNamee
Summary
Frank may be out for the count and zombified in this second issue of this Marvel Knights series, but that only allows the other characters to shine, even if they’re all, for the most part, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Nonetheless, a tense, taut issue with plenty to enjoy for all the Frank Castle fans out there.
Overall
10/10With Frank Castle a brain-dead zombie slave and enforcer for Latin American Godfather, Armando Molerro, this makes for a rather strange, but impressive issue of Marvel Knights: The Punisher by Jimmy Palmiotti and Dan Panosian. In effect, The Punisher is a backseat driver in his own title, but that better allows the two creators to flesh out the story and build on the characters introduced in the first issue, with the addition of the strangest double act you’re likely to come up against in comics in the shape of the expendable Everett Ross and Agent Sas.
But, I digress.
We witness the blank canvas that is Agent Ross transform into his latest undercover identity, with Sas looking on and giving orders when needed. And in just a few scant pages, I feel like I know him and can relate to him. Which could prove problematic for me as a reader, given the violent nature of this book. Could it be a case of bye-bye, Everett Ross, I knew you but briefly?
But then, by the end of this issue, I feel like I know all the cast of characters filling this cross-border caper. Fernanda Molerro, the crime lord’s wife, walks and talks like your classic femme fatale, and yet she reveals a softer side to herself that you wouldn’t have expected. Albeit one that is covered up quickly enough when she focuses her bile on Frank Castle. No, he’s someone she has no sympathies for.
As well as building on who and what was introduced in the debut issue of this Marvel Knights series, we get to see The Punisher do what he does best and with brutal and bloody style.
In just one issue, we are invited to see the cast of this murderous melodrama as more fleshed-out, fully-formed characters, albeit at the expense of Frank Castle’s freedom. And it only helps craft characters we care for, or already despise. With Fernanda Molerro, something of an enigma, given her sympathies for a long-term employee found stealing from the company, and then her bloodlust for Castle to be dead.
Drama, drugs and death. The holy trinity of any Punisher storyline, surely? And wait till you get a look at the final page reveal. Rather the jaw-dropping moment that only complicates matters further.
Marvel Knights: The Punisher #2 is out now from Marvel.
