The Punisher #37 (November 2006)



"Man of Stone, Part 1"
Artist: Leandro Fernandez
Colorist: Dan Brown

Summary: Rawlins, now sporting an eyepatch, meets wiith a Russian contact in a bar. He sees it's Zakharov and doesn't look pleased.

Frank is hunting a crack kingpin named John James Toomey. He's been so cautious that the authorities brandned him an urban legend. There are no photographs, no evidence, nothing. Frank decided the only way to get to him was to lure him out, using himself as bait.

A small time hood named Dingo brought him in. He saw Punisher climbing up the fire escape of his apartment building so he grabbed a frying pan and smacked him. In reality, Frank saw Dingo with his buddy's girlfriend and took some pictures. Dingo was willing to do anything to keep his friend from seeing the photos. The negatives are with a lawyer, if Frank dies they get mailed to Earl. They struck a deal.

Toomey holds a gun to Frank's head. He doesn't pull the trigger though, he just smacks him. The Russians have a big contract on Frank and he wants to collect. Frank makes a mental note to investigate it as he pulls the razor out of the duct tape thats binding his hands. Freed, he grabs Toomey's gun and shoots everybody except Dingo. Toomey tells Frank he should have shot him when he had the chance. Yeah, he should have. Lights out Toomey. Dingo dances around kicking the corpses bragging about how he's going to be the new boss. Then he realizes Frank is still there and says he'll be leaving town and getting a job. Frank shoots him, just in case.

Rawlins' meeting has not gone well. He's hanging naked upside down from the ceiling. Rawlins has information for sale. It's free now, just for Zakharov. He tells him that the silo incident at Suhdek two years back wasn't terrorists. Zakharov tells him it was Americans and tells his right-hand man, Dolnovich, to castrate him and dump him in the street. Rawlins says he set up the hijack and he gets cut down. Zakharov tells him Moscow wants to know, they are cowards who are terrified of the idea that Americans were involved in the attack. Zakharov pushed the issue and now runs a training camp. Rawlins tells him that the hijacking was just a diversion, the real mission was to steal the virus. Nick Fury set the silo mission up but didn't know abou the hijacking. The man on the ground was Frank Castle, the Punisher. Dolnovich knows him. The Generals who started the incident can't go after Castle because he has Rawlins' spilling his guts on tape. For that the Generals sacked him. This information is not enough to save Rawlins' life. Zakharov wants Castle. Dolnovich has two cousins in America. The Punisher has killed men for thirty years and nobody can stop him. They need to bait him. Rawlins knows someone who he will try to protect. He has a list of six names, sex ex-Taliban who O'Brien is currently trying to kill.

In Afghanistan O'Brien holds one at gunpoint. She reminds him who she is, he tells her shes a whore and should be ashamed of herself. She tells him she already killed three of his buddies and kills him, leaving the crying 13-year-old on his bed.

Three days and five men after the Toomey situation Frank meets with the man who set up the contract: Alex Rastovich, Leon's cousin. He meets him at Coney Island. Alex admits that he set up the hit but he has information to trade. His Russian contact told him to back off the Punisher and drop the contract. The contact, who is associated with Russian gangs and works with top level mercenaries, told him that the same source is looking for a woman in Afghanistan named O'Brien. He says they're quits now. Frank asks why, it was someone else who cancelled the hit on him. Alex looks back at the beach and sees kids playing. He asks how Frank can do this.

On an Afghani street O'Brien is wearing a burka and closing in on her target. A white operative disarms her and theres a struggle. Another comes into help and they cuff her. They realize shes a Yank and know Yorkie isn't going to be very happy...

Observations: This issue is full of twists. Rawlins is back! Zakharov is back! O'Brien is back! Yorkie is back! Even the Leon Rastovich plot from #13 is back! This is the beginning of the 7th arc out of 10. Ennis has laid his foundation and starting to pull things together. While The Slavers and Barracuda were standalone stories, this one promises to be a sequel to Mother Russia and Up Is Down Black Is White. The Generals dumped Rawlins and are scared to make a move on Frank (which is why the last two story arcs were standalone). O'Brien is finally seeking revenge on the Taliban who kept her as a sex slave. And Zakharov has been given a ridiculously pathetic assignment for someone of his rank and career.

The best part might just be Frank wiping out Toomey. It was an incredibly risky move but it's always cool to see Frank come up with this stuff.

Fernandez is back on art duties for the fourth and final time, inking himself once more, and it looks as great as ever. His Frank is looking meaner than before and he really gives him that cold hard stare better than anyone else on the book.

A

Timeline info: It's been two years since Mother Russia and Coney Island looks deserted. That sets it pretty firmly in late 2006, almost a year after Barracuda.
Frank's kills: John James Toomey, his thugs (4), five unnamed Russian gangsters and Alex Rastovich, totalling 11.
Frank's injuries: Pistol whip to the head

The Punisher #38 (November 2006)



"Man of Stone, Part 2"
Artist: Leandro Fernandez
Colorist: Dan Brown

Summary: 26 phonecalls to military contacts and no leads on O'Brien. He still has a lot of friends in the forces and in the thirty years since Vietnam a lot of those friends have risen to high places. "Drag a gutshot man aboard a Huey and thirty years later he won't give a **** what names the media calls you." Frank remembers hearing about S.A.S. involvement in Afghanistan. A longshot but he calls Yorkie anyway and asks if the name O'Brien means anything to him. What a coincidence, Yorkie was just about to shoot her in the head.

After the British soldiers subdued O'Brien two SUVs came rolling down the alleyway and opened fire. The S.A.S. soldiers shot back. O'Brien sees Rawlins in one of the SUVs and screams for a gun to shoot him. Dolnovich retreats. He tells Rawlins that eight of his best men were just killed and that the General would have his head.

Zakharov looks over the city (which I assume is Kabul). He comments on all of their wasted hard work and tells Dolnovich and Rawlins that they failed. Dolnovich demands to know why Rawlins didn't tell them the ex-Taliban were under S.A.S. surveilance. Rawlins didn't know, but he suspects they're working with the Americans and they were assigned security detail once they started getting killed. Zakharov tells Rawlins to think quickly.

Yorkie gets the word from Washington: O'Brien needs to be killed. This is a personal, no need for interrogation. Execute her immediately. Oh, and the Rawlins guy she was screaming about? If they ever run into him they're to obliterate him. The S.A.S. boys look a little down but Yorkie tells them O'Brien is one of them and knows the score. He takes her for a drive.

Dolnovich is hanging Rawlins over a cliff when he gets his idea. He suggests using Zakharov to lure Castle to Afghanistan, since they can no longer use O'Brien. Kabul is packed with reporters, if Zakharov walks through a hotel lobby it'll be global news thanks to the atrocities he committed here in 1987. Castle is smart enough to put it together and come running. He's an American, Americans fight their wars in other countries. Dolnovich is worried about what Moscow will think but they have no one in Kabul to enforce their orders, Zakharov's men are loyal to him. And once they have Castle Moscow will bow to him. It is worth the risk. Dolnovich doubts it but Zakharov sets him straight: "U.S. forces launched a covert operation on Russian soil, killed dozens of our soldiers, stole our property and we allowed it. My mother and father fell at Stalingrad, your grandfather was a tank-rider when our army turned the Nazis back at Kursk. Did they spell their blood so our motherland could be ****ed and thrown away like a whore?"

Yorkie asks O'Brien if she wants to say a prayer. Nope. He's seconds from shooting her when his phone rings. He starts yelling into his phone, saying they're quits and he's off his Christmas card list. He hangs up and tells O'Brien theres a change of plans: He'll drive her to Kabul, then give her the keys to the Land Rover, then bash himself over the head and they'll go their separate ways. She asks why, he asks if the name Frank Castle means anything to her. As they drive off he asks her why Americans like Benny Hill.

Frank sees the footage of Zakharov in Kabul. It's not a trap, it's an invitation. Zakharov solved half the puzzle. Frank had wondered what hardass sent dozens of men to be killed by him in the silo. The other half was solved by Yorkie: Rawlins was there and had made a move at O'Brien. Rawlins had sold him out, Zakharov wanted him.

As he packed he mused on what the British learned on the North-West frontier and what the Russians learned a century later: You go to war in Afghanistan and everybody dies.

Observations: Lucky timing for O'Brien. Seconds from getting killed the plan changes and she gets the news that she's going to be reunited with her one-time lover.

Of course, it's the Generals behind her execution. Who else would want O'Brien and Rawlins that dead without any interrogation? Since this is the sequel to Mother Russia it's nice to see thme have some sort of presence, even if this arc is about the Russian consequences of the operation.

Zakharov's goals come into sharper focus: He wants to force Russia to recognize the American attack. He looks at the land where he committed mass murder and regrets the waste of time. He wants the Cold War back. He might be as devoted to that war as Frank is to his (In Mother Russia the parallel was drawn between Zakharov and Nick Fury. It's outside the realm of this thread but FuryMAX shows that the feeling is mutual between the three of them). Last arc he said he does not want nuclear war. Is it because he doesn't want to slaughter millions? No, it's because he doesn't want the war to end.

After seeing Rawlins be such a snake in his last appearance it's amusing to see him suffer repeated mistreatment from Zakharov and Dolnovich. Dolnovich beats him up whenever he can and it's a lot of fun.

B

The Punisher #40 (January 2007)



"Man of Stone, Part 4"
Artist: Leandro Fernandez
Colorist: Dan Brown

Summary: Zakharov has the reporter in his hanger. He doesn't like his book. Dolnovich decapitates him with a large knife and tells Rawlins he's hoping that he'll do something stupid, wiping his blade of Rawlin's shirt as he says it.

In the mountains Frank and O'Brien set up a dozen claymore mines while O'Brien tells Frank about Rawlins' history. His father was a field agent in Cairo. His mother was a local girl he ditched when he went back home to Texas. Half of Rawlins' contacts were inherited, including his friends in the heroin trade. 10 years prior, just after they'd married, Rawlins tooks O'Brien on a mission to retrieve a stinger missile the US government had decided to take from the Mujahs. It was a ruse: Rawlins had stolen a load of heroin. Their chopper took fire, Rawlins was told to dump the cargo or they wouldn't escape, Rawlins kicked O'Brien out of the chopper. She landed in a river and was captured. After she escaped she went looking for him but he was deep undercover and no one would cooperate. She went back to work and waited for her shot at him. O'Brien wonders why she went for Rawlins in the first place. Castle says she's into bad boys. She agrees. There had been nice guys but she felt guilty about bringing them into her life. She stuck with guys like Rawlins and Tommy. But she knows that it's pointless to go with a normal person, they couldn't understand what she and Castle go through. Frank stops her and tells her that they are here on business. He owed her a favor, now they're finishing off a mutual problem and nothing more. As he walks away O'Brien whispers that it might be close enough.

Zakharov and his men are approaching the mountains by air. Zakharov knows that Castle allowed his men to tail him, to lure them into a trap he's undoubtedly set in the mountains. Dolnovich asks why they even need Castle when they have Rawlins. Zakharov says Rawlins is useless. He's the same sort of parasite that ran the K.G.B. His confession would be worthless, it would just turn up as a conspiracy theory. The Punisher is infamous and his confession would attact the public's attention and call for investigation of the Sudhek masscare. 49 bullet-riddled bodies explained as a helicopter crash (I'll have to revise my figure). Dolnovich asks why they keep Rawlins around if he is useless to them. Zakharov says that he knows Castle and O'Brien and may prove useful in that regard.

At the base of the mountain Frank stands alone facing the helicopters. When the helicopters approach he runs for the hills. The troop transport touches down and deploys. Rawlins asks where O'Brien is. She fires a stinger missile from a handheld launcher and destroys the gunship. Frank opens fire on the distracted infantry. They retreat to the mountains and Frank detonates the claymores, killing all of them.

Dolnovich had those men with him for two years in Chechnya and is furious with Rawlins. Zakharov doesn't care. He radios Frank. He tells him that nine slick south-west there is a village called Hazar, population 400. Sundown tomorrow Frank is to meet him there or the village will be burned off the face of the Earth. Frank looks up and sees the bomb under the chopper. Incinerates everything within 1000 yards. Stupid of him not to expect a backup plan. He knows Zakharov will do it. They need to come up with a plan.

At sundown the next day he approaches Zakharov with his hands up.

Observations: We get the full extent of O'Brien and Rawlins' history. The opium trade in Afghanistan is a very real thing. The country is the largest producer of opium in the world and the country is dependent on it. The Taliban outlawed opium cultivation in 2000 but in 2002 they were deposed and the ban was lifted. A popular conspiracy theory is that the CIA is using American forces to guard opium fields and smuggle it out of the country for profit. By having a CIA agent heavily involved in the Afghani heroin trade Ennis is certainly referencing this theory and it adds a nice wrinkle of realism to the story. O'Brien mentions Tommy Monaghan by name, confirming her to be Kathryn McAllister from Hitman.

Frank's trap for Zakharov is a great one. It reads like a play on Zakharov's village scheme, with Frank as the Mujhad. Instead of fleeing at the sound of choppers Frank stays and fights. Instead of having the village killed Frank kills the gunship. And instead of the Muhjad being lured out of the mountains to the deaths Frank forces his enemy into the mountain to their death. But Frank made a mistake Zakharov didn't: He underestimated his opponent. Now Zakharov is holding a village hostage and Castle's whole plan is screwed.

Dolnovich's hatred of Rawlins grows, even though this time Dolnovich is the one who screwed up by not confirming O'Brien's location. He's still a butt monkey but he's starting to weasel his way out of it.

Overall theres a good balance of heart and action this issue. B

Frank's kills: At least 4 soldiers by SAW, at least 16 by Claymore.
Timeline information: O'Brien and Rawlins were married in 1996, which is when she was captured by the Taliban.

The Punisher #42 (February 2007)



"Man of Stone, Part 6"
Artist: Leandro Fernandez
Colorist: Dan Brown

Summary: Dawn. A shadow crosses Dolnovich and Zakharov. Zakharov tells Dolnovich not to fear, for it is only Death come to take them. Zakharov tells Frank that Rawlins took Dolnovich's papers (Dolly has finally bled out). Theres a flight for Moscow leaving in a week. Castle must kill him. They are soldiers, Rawlins is a parasite. The world is awful and Rawlins would have it this way forever. He says he always thought Americans were soft but sees it differently now: When you have something to lose you have further to fall. Frank slams a boulder on Zakharov's head to put him out of his misery.

Four days of hiking over a desert made of bones to get back to civilization. He finds Yorkie's men and gets himself captured. Yorkie has been fired due to his screw up with O'Brien. Frank apologizes and offers him credit on Rawlins' eventually death but Yorkie declines. He's tired of war and tired of sending young men to their deaths. As a final favor he gives Frank a file on the last two ex-Taliban O'Brien was after. He also gave their security details the night off. Frank thanks him.

Yorkie says that there have been times where he let slip his acquaintenceship with Frank. They ask why he's the way he is and Yorkie says theres no explanation. Yorkie says that he can't bring himself to do to himself what Frank has done. He says he was in Afghanistan on 9/11. The soldiers were very happy about it because it meant they would have something to kill. Five years on the war suits a lot of people down to the ground. There was a time where Yorkie would have been one of them, now all he sees are dead civilians covered in dust. Yorkie asks why the British army is in the country. Frank tells him to take care of himself and leaves.

Frank assassinates the two ex-Taliban. Calling them a rapist is like getting mad at a bad dog when it bites your hand. They're raised to believe it's OK. You still put the dog down but the one you're after is the one who let them loose to begin with. O'Brien asked two things of Frank: To be with her when she dies and to kill Rawlins. He follows Rawlins into an airport bathroom and locks the door behind him. Rawlins tries his trick with the folding knife but Frank has Dolnovich's machete and lops his hand clean off. Rawlins begs to talk to O'Brien and explain things to her. Frank says she's dead. She died right when he was starting to like her. Rawlins cowers in a pool of his own blood on the men's room floor.

Observations: Zakharov's dead. He deserved it. Dolnovich's dead. I don't think he deserved it. The ex-Taliban are dead. They definitely deserved it. And now Rawlin's is going to die a very messy death. Boy is that sweet. It's twisted that the only way Frank can express his feelings for O'Brien (whatever they may be) is by killing people but it's tender in its own grisly way.

Zakharov's comments ring with irony and the same lack of self-awareness Frank briefly demonstrated in The Slavers. He and Frank both want the world to remain a bad place because as soldiers their entire lives revolve around war. And as O'Brien started to discover last issue, once you have no more war to fight what do you do with yourself? The parting between the two characters is interesting. Zakharov speaks to Frank as an equal while Frank blesses him by sparing him a slow and painful death. Even though Zakharov massacred hundreds of innocent people, on some level deep within himself Frank is OK with it because he understands what drives it.

Yorkie also understands it but he cannot lower himself to that level and he no longer wants to be a part of it. His story of his troops silently celebrating 9/11 is sickening but it makes sense in this world Ennis has constructed. These people join the military so they can kill things and they don't care where those things come from. As Yorkie said, you don't join the mob to earn college money.

It's been a very dark arc that casts a critical eye on the War on Terror. I haven't gone into a lot of it because it's represent less in the actions of the characters and more in the tone, the smaller details in the dialog and setting and in the theme. People go to Afghanistan to kill things, including themselves.

A rating for the issue and the arc.

Frank's kills: Zakharov, two ex-Taliban and Rawlins.
Frank's tally for the arc: 37

Next: Frank faces the woman O'Brien could have been as he deals with the consequences of his actions.

The Punisher #44 (April 2007)



"Widowmaker, Part 2"
Penciller: Lan Medina
Inker: Bill Reinhold
Colorist: Raol Trevino

Summary: On the front steps of a suburban home Frank tells Ann Larsen that he knows she and her husband has been making porn with her children. He wants it to be easy for them. He tells her to invite him in. Carl, the father, tells Frank he needs a warrant but Frank says he has everything he needs. John Richey told him that they shoot the films in the basement, which is where they keep the master copies. He tells him to call their kids down, social services will pick them up. It's the only good thing they'll ever do for them.

Frank walks the parents into the basmeent. Carl tries to explain but Frank tells him to shut up. The basement is set up with a bed and a camera on a tripod. Carl says he wants a lawyer but Frank says they're not under arrest. He unbuttons his coat and draws a silenced pistol. They realize who has them but it's too late. Ann is shot through the forehead, the back of her skull blowing out. Frank tells Carl to be quiet so he doesn't alert the children. Carl is shot right through the mouth.


Detective Budiansky is with a therapist. He had responded to a call about a school shooting. The cops were told to stay outside, the school had been sealed and was waiting for tactical. They could hear gunshots and screams. There were two did kids on the front steps. Budiansky ignored orders and went in. As he came up to the gym he heard giggling. A boy with a pistol and a submachine gun was standing amongst bodies and hostages. Budiansky opened fire and killed him. His therapist asks how he felt to shoot a child but Budiansky feels no guilt, as the boy grew up the instant he started shooting. The therapist questions why he went in along. He maintains to that therapist that he's not a rogue cop and isn't trying to live an action movie fantasy. She tells him that he judged himself the only one capable of handling the situation, that his judgment superceded protocol and determined a child should be killed. Budiansky maintains that he acted only because no one else could.

He starts to push back against the therapist. He's a detective, he knows when he's under attack and knows that she's being passive aggressive. She asks why he came to her, he says he was ordered to. His captain is angry that he disobeyed orders but because he saved kids he can't really hurt him. He blocked the commendation and banned him from the press but Budiansky doesn't care so he got assigned mandatory trauma therapy. Budiansky denies that he is traumatized. What he saw troubles him but he can handle it himself. He rejects the logic that experiencing something traumatizing automatically makes one traumatized and suggests that telling people that prevents them from dealing with their problems. He accuses her of only collecting stories for her next book. He found the last one to be spurious. And based on the look on her face she didn't expect him to know the word, revealing herself to be a racist (Budiansky is black).

The widows are looking through Frank's file. Lorraine wonders why people don't shoot him when he's at their mercy. Shauna interprets it as an insult to her husband. Their argument is interrupted by Annabella calling out Barbi for not reading the documents. Turns out shes illiterate, or at least heavily dyslexic. Being useless on the research front, Shauna suggests Barbi go sleep with an arms dealer she knows.

A man comes up to the scarred woman and asks her if shes Jenny Cesare. They went to high school together. Jenny tells him that shes not who he thinks she is and that for his own safety he should stay the hell away from her.

Budiansky is in the bath having a beer. His wife is furious about how he's being treated, it bothers her more than it does him. He says she just feels helpless. He says that last night The Punisher took down a child poorn ring. He says the killing at the school was so easy to him and wonders how far from the Punisher he really is. His wife tells him thats nonsense and pulls him out of the tub.

The widows have found a lead on The Punisher. They've found The Slavers in his file. The signs are pretty clear: A damsel in distress will make him stop thinking clearly. Barbi doesn't understand how Frank could be a knight-in-shining-armor when he beat a woman against a window for a half hour but Annabella says she wouldn't have stopped at an hour given the chance. They decide to set a trap and use Bonnie as their bait. At the next table over Jenny listens to the whole conversation.

Observations: Now we've got a fourth player. Detective Budiansky maintains he isn't a rogue movie cop but his behaviour is pretty straight Dirty Harry: Find a situation where people are told to hold back at the expense of lives, break protocol to go in, shoot the bastard (thats my policy) and feel zero guilt. Of course, his therapist thinks he's crazy for that last bit. She can't understand how someone could shoot a kid and not care. I think the answer is pretty clear: It's hard to feel any pity for someone as evil as a school shooter (eerily, this issue is cover dated April 2007, the month of the deadlist school shooting by a single gunman in the U.S.).

It's also difficult to feel any pity for the sick monsters who rape their three children. Last issue Frank chose not to torture the distributor and here he chooses not to torture the producers but a part of him definitely wants to. If Budiansky is feeling too close to the Punisher for not feeling guilty over a shooting, he can rest assured that Frank is maintaining the gap by slipping further down the rabbit hole. He feels himself becoming a sadist.

The humanization of criminals continues. The child pornographers aren't Eastern European gangsters, they're a suburban family. The widows are vengeful but they have their limits, being just as disgusted by the slavers as Frank was. The murderer at the high school is just a kid. And the poor raped children, Frank knows that their traumatization will do damage and send them into crime. But the scary part is Frank won't let that knowledge stop him. The reason for bad behaviour doesn't matter to him. He pities the children now but if he's around when they start to turn bad he will kill them. His rage against God might not just be anger at Him allowing it (going back to his childhood refusal to acknowledge a common origin of good and evil) but for setting the children on a path that will lead them into Frank's crosshairs. It's a theological version of "Why do you make me hit you?"

In other matters, the identity of the woman is confirmed. She's Jenny Cesare, meaning she is related to Annabella and that relation has to tie into her vendetta. She is aware of her own violence, aware enough to warn an old friend away from her before he gets himself beat up mid-coitus.

B

Frank's kills: Ann and Carl
Timeline: The cover for this issue features Frank's wanted poster. His DOB is blacked out but the promotional art gave his birth date as February 16, 1950. Even though it's blacked out in print I'm going to assume this is canon, as his birth year had previously been established as 1950.

The Punisher #45 (May 2007)



"Widowmaker, Part 3"
Penciller: Lan Medina
Inker: Bill Reinhold
Colorist: Raol Trevino

Summary: This issue flashes back and forth in time. I'm summarizing in chronological order.

Jenny is parked outside Annabella's mansion (which I guess is the Cesare compound or what?) listening to the conversation via a bug under the coffee table.

The widows are trying to figure out of the logistics of their plan. The need to find a target Frank will hit, figure out how to get Bonnie in there without being seen and keep her from getting hurt in the shoot out. Barbi offers to have sex with Tony Pizzo. He's had a crush on Barbi for years and he's running his own crew now. Shauna is starting to see the advantage of having a full-blown hussy around.

Sometime later Barbi is in bed with Tony. She starts kissing his butt (figuratively!) and tricks him into opening up about his business. He says all the bosses went down when Punisher hit the Cesares and the last three guys who tried to take the crown got blown away. Every time they put a guy up as boss they need more guys around for protection and the whole thing gets wasted. The East Coast guys are mostly dead so they have to import new muscle and they don't cooperate, which leads to the Punisher hearing about it and blowing the whole thing up again. But now they have a new plan. He swears Barbi to secrecy and tells her they're bringing in Pat Migliorato, the boss of Reno. Day after tomorrow they're going to pick him up from Newark and drive him into the woods to talk where the Punisher won't find them. Some of the guys in his crew are imported jerks but he doesn't have a choice but to rely on them.

Two days later Barbi meets Tony outside a restaurant. His guys are inside eating, getting ready to go pick up Pat in 20 minutes. Barbi leads Tony into an alley and distracts him with some services. Lorraine and Annabella keep an eye on them while Shauna stuff Bonnie in the trunk of a car with some bulletproof vests and a tire iron to open the lid with.

That night Tony, Pat and the boys are driving through the woods. They've got four cars plus a van with Migliorato. They hit a fallen tree and the rear car gets nailed with a rocket. Trapped, the wiseguys get out to face The Punisher. Frank detonates the mind he put under the snow and blows two more cars up. Frank moves in to clean up the rest. Frank shoots a couple and moves behind a burning car. While the mobsters shoot where they think he is he sneaks around behind them and blows them away. The straglers bunch together and get hit with a grenade courtesy of the grenade launch slung under Castle's rifle.

Bonnie gets out of the car. She tells Frank (who gives her his coat, what a gentleman) that she was Migliorato's entertainment but was treated like luggage. She says theres a house run by a Romanian. Some of the girls are hookers, others are imported slaves. Frank asks her where the house is. It's in the Bronx. He tells her to stay put and wait for the cops. She wants to see the slavers get whats coming but Frank says she won't see it either way and tells her to come if shes coming.His car is a mile away through the woods. She asks if he'll just spray the house with gunfire but he's not doing anything until he sees it. Shes worried but he tells her to calm down, nobody dies that doesn't deserve to.

The house is backed by an open field. Frank asks why they leave it unguarded, the cops could just waltz in. She says they're paid up and the guards spend most of their time sleeping. Theres no better time to hit it than right now. In the house the other widows can't believe Bonnie tricked Frank. They're all armed and Shauna takes aim.

Observations: After a longer-than-normal buildup the story gets going. Officer Budiansky is completely absent and Jenny Cesare is only in two panels shadowing the widows. The focus of the story is on the Punisher's destruction of Tony Pizzo's crew and the widows setting up that betrayal. However, Frank isn't a narrator here. The story still takes a fairly objective viewpoint, focusing as much on the widow's action as it does on Frank's. Barbi is showing some hidden depths. While Bonnie was devoted to her fatso husband and Barbi is the trampiest character since Mary Jane Watson, Barbi is a crafty character while Bonnie is a ditz thats useless as anything other than bait, the opposite of the usual portrayal of these archetypes. Shauna is the first to admit Barbi is useful, even though there have been racial tensions between the two characters. Why is Ennis doing this? These characters are obviously doomed (by this point it should be obvious that the villains in a Punisher MAX story die, the only question is when and what heroic characters go with them). It's actually kind of amusing, theres a little soap opera going on with these girls while they're planning the murder of our lead character.

The issue draws a lot of its interest from its structure, which quickly cuts back and forth between the widows' planning and the Punisher's execution of that plan. If it weren't for that the issue would be good but kind of unbalanced. Ennis has used a lot of cutting before but here it's through almost the entire issue. It reads really well.

Punisher's trap for Rizzo is really cool, but it also has a problem: Frank didn't know that there would be an innocent (as far as he knows) girl in one of the vehicles. She could have easily been killed and that would have thrown his entire world into disorder. A slightly sloppy move from an otherwise studious character.

B

PS: That cover is one of my favorites.

Frank's kills: Tony Rizzo's crew including Pat Migliorato. The five vehicles have five passengers each for 25 deaths.

Intriguing. Is that part of this run?