The Punisher Showdowns: Wolverine #1 // Review
Frank has brought an uzi to a knife fight. Literally. At a bar. It's OK. Frank is good with guns. Not that he needs to be. A spray of bullets empties out at point blank range. Naturally, the target is quite dead. There's another one, though. And he's going to prove to be much more of a problem for Frank Castle in The Punisher Showdowns: Wolverine #1. Writer Tom Waltz and artist Bruno Büll tell a one-shot story that feels like it’s about 40 years too late. The overall premise is a lot of fun. But it really would have been more of an appealing sort of a story if it were to have emerged from the alley at some point in the late 1980s.
The other thug takes a hit of something. It's a drug that's going to give him superpowers. Frank tries to tell him that taking the drug is a death sentence. Of course, Frank just killed the other guy with a knife. So maybe he's doing his to try to save his life. It's not going to work, of course. Three Adamantium claws shoot through his chest from the other side. So he's dead too.
Frank and Logan team up for a journey into the darkest part of the seedy underworld of Marvel Manhattan. There is a new drug on the streets that gives the he was a superpowers. Naturally, it's going to mess with them enough, but not many are going to survive. Frank and Logan both are looking into it separately. But they're going to have to work together if they're going to be able to work out who is responsible. Illicit drugs. Lots of brutality and bloodshed. Feels like something perfectly set for the 1980s. Particularly when both of these characters were arguably at their peak of comic book popularity. Decades later at the same kind of strange.
Büll execute the energy on the story quite well. There might be moments of slightly stiff action, but there's quite a bit going on around the edges of everything that seems to be quite well-rendered. The framing and patient of the action feels brisk on the page. On both of the title characters come across as being very appealing. Büll has a salad understanding of what works with these characters. And though it's not necessarily terribly inspired, the artist execution of the script makes for a solidly entertaining 40 pages.
It's fun. It is a bit difficult to completely buy into the brutal action without some level of fanatic complexity underneath it. It's a really quick read at 40 pages, which is kind of weird given how much potential the idea has of really getting into some weird territory. The entire team on this book firmly avoids any kind of depth or complexity. And that's perfectly fine too. It's just a good mindless fun with a couple of characters who really do have a potential for something much deeper than what's appearing here.
