WRITERS: Greg Rucka
ARTIST: Mirko Colak
COLOR ARTIST: Dan Brown (1-16), Jim
Charalampidis (17-20
LETTERS: VC’s Joe Caramagna
COVER: Hitch, Neary and Mounts
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Ellie Pyle
EDITOR: Stephen Wacker
EDITOR IN CHIEF: Axel Alonso
CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER: Joe Quesada
PUBLISHER: Dan Buckley
EXEC. PRODUCER: Alan Fine
Release Date: May 9th, 2012
Published
monthly by Marvel Worldwide, INC.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS:
Price – $2.99
(32 Pages,
single-issue, color)
INTRODUCTION: (From page 1)
The Omega
Drive is back in the hands of the Man
Without Fear, leaving The Punisher
with a problem. For months, the criminal syndicate known as The Exchange has been steadily growing
in power and influence, and for months, Frank Castle has been biding his time,
recovering from the wounds he suffered at their hands, preparing his
counterattack. He is not alone in this, as Marine
Sergeant Rachel Cole-Alves has launched her own vendetta against the people
who stole her husband, family, and friends from her on her wedding day. This
led, at first, to an uneasy alliance with Castle, an alliance that ended the
moment Cole tried to take the Omega Drive for herself.
Meanwhile,
NYPD Detectives Oscar “Ozzy” Clemons and Walter Bolt have found themselves with
the unenviable task of trying to track The Exchange, a job made all the more
difficult by The Punisher’s penchant for leaving bodies of the guilty face-down
in their own blood wherever he goes. To complicate matters further, Bolt—until recently—has
been serving as Castle’s informant within the NYPD. Partly out of fear and
partly out of guilt, Bolt, until now, has gone along.
Now, Castle
plans on resuming his assault on The
Exchange, but to do so, he must prepare the battlefield, and that means
limiting the variables. The most dangerous of these has proven to be Cole
herself, not due to any threat she might pose to Castle, but because of the
threat she poses to herself. Having vanished after betraying him, Castle now
turns his eye to finding her…
WRITING:
Rucka is
back hard at work after his collaboration effort with Mark Waid for “The Omega
Effect”. Rucka cleverly tells the Castle’s story by telling it through the eyes
of Detective Walter Bolt, who is being interrogated about an incident that
happened the night before in downtown New York. Rucka uses the flashback
convention very well in this issue to explain the Castle interaction while Bolt
is being interrogated at the police station. Even though this issue is
dialogue-heavy, Rucka entertains the reader by telling a larger than life
super-hero story of The Punisher versus The Black Talon, a necromancer that
raises zombies up to terrify New York city.
Rating – “A”
ARTWORK:
Mirko Colak
comes in and takes over in this issue for Marco Checchetto. Colak does a nice
job at drawing interactions between characters in a setting where there isn’t a
large amount of action taking place. Facial expressions seem to be the
highlight of his drawings and it helps the Rucka’s dialogue to come across
smoothly. Two things that I personally missed with Colak’s drawings for the
issue were the darker tones in each panel that Checchetto is good at and the
Punisher’s skull being different.
Rating – “B”
STORY:
The story
really serves to drive in the fact that Frank Castle is on a new mission…to
find Rachel Cole-Alves. She betrayed him and he now wants to get answers as to
why and how she is going to either get in the way or come back by his side to
assist him. Frank easily takes care of the threat in downtown New York while
attempting to get intel from Detective Walter Bolt. The story is rather simple
but it is entertaining and transitions well to the upcoming arc of The Punisher
tracking down Cole-Alves.
Rating – “B+“
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE:
The issue isn’t
extremely entertaining but it does a decent job at keeping the reader engaged.
The dialogue flows well and the decision for Rucka to tell Bolt’s story through
the flashback convention, while being interrogated is an interesting one. Not
all issues can be full of action and can move story forward at a lightning
pace. Sometimes it is essential to have an issue here and there that provides
backstory or setup for things to come. In that regard, this issue performs that
purpose admirably.
Rating – “B”
OVERAL RATING OF ISSUE: “B+”
