Comicon Advent Calendar Day 8: A Very Punisher Sort Of Christmas

Welcome once more to the annual festive feast of Christmas comics that is the Comicon Advent Calendar, 24 days of comics with a seasonal theme….

Most of the time, the Advent Calendar is all about the great Christmas comics out there. But just occasionally, it’s fun to look at something that really, really, really shouldn’t have happened.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Punisher MAX X-Mas Special by Jason Aaron and Roland Boschi from 2008.

Now, the Punisher’s a particularly difficult character for me to find any love for. Sure, the Garth Ennis tales were good because of how Ennis just went over the top with them, but the whole sheer miserableness and nastiness of the concept just never sat right with me.

As for the Xmas Special, well, Aaron’s undoubtedly a great writer, but here, well, let’s say I wasn’t particularly seeing that greatness come through in what is, to be frank, a particularly nasty for the sake of it Punisher tale, shoehorning Christmas into a story where the unrelenting body count is the be-all and end-all.

The set-up is simple. It’s Christmas in the city, and the bad guys are setting up to murder all the babies freshly born, just so they can make sure they get that one special baby due to be born at this time of year. Into the hospital comes a husband and wife, she heavily pregnant, only to find themselves, with nowhere else to go, in a stable. Yes, the symbolism isn’t exactly subtle.

The twist, of course, is that the pregnant couple are mob boss Johnny Castellano and his wife. The bad guys are the competition, dispatching assassins to off a maternity ward of babies because they know Castellano’s wife is meant to be giving birth, with some difficult to imagine idea that offing the baby Castellano would somehow end the Castellano crime family.

Throw in three wise guys and a pimp called Shepherd on the trail when the initial plan goes south, all thanks to Frank Castle’s involvement, and we have a very Punisher Christmas tale.

And by that, I mean something that just drips with nastiness and violence for the sake of it, the massacre of the ward full of babies being a particular moment of WTF.

Anyway, Frank gets Castellano and his wife out in time, off to the stables to give birth, only pausing in acting as the midwife to blow a few more bad guys away in a flurry of blood and brain bits. But hey, Christmas, right?

By the end, the baby is born, all the bad guys have met their bloodthirsty ends, and Frank’s delivered his Christmas message, which inevitably involves him killing anyone around him in the spirit of making the world a better place.

And if you didn’t see the ending, with the Priest who was drowning his sorrows in the first few pages ending up with the innocent child, coming a mile off, you’re probably suffering from too much egg nog.

But anyway, after 30-odd pages of violence for the sake of it bolted onto a Christmas-ish theme, everything ends with Frank walking away, all being good with the world… except for the babies who’ve been killed, the senseless tragedy their parents will walk into, and the glorification of gun violence that we really don’t need, especially not at this time of year.

Damn, it’s a grim, grim thing, something needlessly dark, nasty, and playing into all the worst that the character entails. Aaron was no doubt thinking he could do something allegorical with the Christmas setting, but ending up writing a comic that’s all about the reader getting their jollies through seeing bad guys and babies massacred.

If I had to find something to like, Boschi’s artwork has some nice touches, the angular stylings of his figures reminding me a little of the likes of Jordi Bernet and the like. But all in all, no, not my sort of Christmas comic at all, more an example of the ways some Christmas comics just get it so wrong. But hey, join us tomorrow for Christmas comics that we do like! Or look here for more advent goodies in the Comicon Advent Calendar.

PUNISHER MAX; XMAS SPECIAL – BY JASON AARON AND ROLAND BOSCHI, COVER BY CHRIS BACHALO, COLOURS BY DANIEL BROWN, LETTERS BY CORY PETIT