The Condor's arc is over and Frank Castle is back in New York. After some vacations he goes back to his bunk and finds out one of his weapons was stoled and he tries to find out who has it.
The way this story was written it makes the perfect chance for non Punisher readers jump on board. It has a great resume of what happened in the past 12 issues.
This story is full of classic elements when Frank goes all detective to find out about his missing gun. Particularly i really liked this story, it's compressed and even explores a bit of Frank's humanity in the way he interacts with all the characters of this story.
There are funny moments in this story when we see Frank's intimidating a little kid because of his "lost" gun and the way both characters talk ended like a parental advice. In the last pages of this issue Frank even intervenes in a domestic fight.
This story doesn't have the non stop action or the huge body count that Cloonan used to present us in the current run but all is good for the sake of good storytelling and it was a good change of pace.
The art of Kris Anka was pretty good. I really liked how Kris designed Frank Castle, in the first pages we can clearly see his face and details but when he is interrogating some characters about his gun, his face was drawn with a huge shadow covering his eyes. It was a great touch.
Matthew Wilson deserves some shout out too for the ambient he colored, sometimes too much vivid colors but when Frank Castle appeared the colors toned down becoming a little darker. It was a great detail and i really like it.
Once again Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire pretty much nailed the cover on this one. It's funny to see how the Punisher is portrayed in this cover with a not so innocent resemblance of Jon Bernthal.
Overall rate: 8 / 10
posted by Ivo Santos (@ivomgs)
