According to Google it's Will Eisner's birthday today. If you're not familiar with Eisner, he's one of the original visionaries of comics — his most famous creation, of course, being The Spirit. The Spirit gets pretty goddamn noir sometimes, and directly inspired Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's Greyshirt, which I love to pieces (and will likely liveblog sometime after I'm through with Marvel Noir). Will, this one's for you.
Oh, and here's my "favorite" review
of this issue that I've been able to find so far. If you don't read butthurt, I'll translate: "BAAAAAAAW WHY ISN'T THIS EXACTLY THE SAME AS GARTH ENNIS' PUNISHER BAAAAAAW IT'S ALMOST AS THOUGH THEY TRIED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH THE MATERIAL BAAAAAAW."
Anyway, the cover's pretty tight. The Punisher's pointing a revolver right at you... and you can see little skulls in every chamber. At least, that's the variant; the normal cover has one of this issue's villains, which I'm not going to spoil for you just yet.
As we begin, it's 1935, and some cops survey the scene of a massacre. One of Dutch Schultz' bars, full of his men, is wrecked - the guys, naturally, all dead. The cops lazily kick around theories about rival bosses and inside beefs, when Detective Soap arrives on the scene. One of the others sarcastically compares him to Elliot Ness as he does his thing. He notices a burnt body, which the other cops had written off as the work of a molotov cocktail. "Where's the broken glass? Why hasn't the floor been burned, too? More like a blowtorch to me. And when you finally get your head out of your collective kiesters, check the bullets in the bodies of these men. Guaranteed they're all the same caliber, from the same kind of guns. A mob didn't do this. A man did."
The other cops rag on him and his ridiculous underworld vigilante theory. Around the precinct they call it "The Case of the Loch Ness Mobster." Soap leaves, having gathered the information he needed. The Punisher watches him walk away through binoculars. He later writes in his War Journal that Soap is becoming a problem, and he might have to "take care" of him soon.
Now we're back to 1918. Frank Castelione takes a train to England, and will take a boat back to the US from there. As he lay on his bed, someone prods him and asks for his ticket. Frank mumbles drowsily that he already gave his ticket, but the guy isn't taking no for an answer, grabbing Frank's collar with one hand and forcefully tossing him against the opposite wall. From there, he lands a vicious punch to Frank's face, which he then smashes against the window. Now that he's got Frank's attention, he clarifies that "ticket" thing. "I mean ticket like, 'I punch your ticket.' Get it?" He was trying to tell a joke, essentially, which fell flat due to poor English.
Poor English? Well, it turns out Frank's tormentor is none other than the Russian. "This is the guy the Ruskies would send in instead of whole armies." The Russian is a big, big man, with tattoos on the undersides of his forearms (that, being in Russian, I can't read), and a scar running down most of the right side of his face. Frank narrates, his narration captions looking like pages from a journal, that by the end of the war the Russian was taking merc jobs from all sides... and it had nothing to do with money. This Psychopathic Manchild just liked to kill people and break things. Frank figures he pissed off somebody bad to get this guy after him, but he never managed to find out just who.
The Russian dumps luggage on Frank, who pulls a knife and stabs his aggressor in the foot. The Russian chastises him for such impolite behavior; no ticket and he pulls a knife? He thinks Frank should leave immediately - so he tosses him out the window he'd used to bust Frank's face earlier. He looks outside to see where his victim landed, only to get a little surprise when Frank kicks him in the head, having clung to a rail near the roof. The Russian follows him up top, and admits that he likes the more open, yet more dangerous environment. Once they're both up there, the Traintop Battle begins.
The Russian gets his hands on Frank and puts him in a bone crushing Bear Hug. "Why so unfriendly? Come closer. Much closer." Frank gets in a headbutt that knocks out one of the Russian's teeth. The Russian throws Frank to the ground and stands in anger. "Svinja! You ruin my beautiful smile!" The train's coming up on a tunnel, so Frank tries to keep him occupied by quipping that he knows a great dentist back in the Bronx. Too bad the Russian's not (quite) as dumb as he seems, ducking the tunnel entrance and bragging about his status as a "smart cookie." Frank says that since he stuffed a grenade down his pants, there's a few other "cookies" he should be worried about. As the Russian panics, Frank knocks him off the train with a kick right out of SPARTA! An explosion roars through the tunnel just as the train leaves it. That was close, Frank thinks/writes. Too close.
In 1928, it turns out that was a story Frank had been telling Frankie. That was the closest Ruth's Angel of Death had ever come to getting him throughout the entire war, and it was all his fault. Why? Because he wasn't prepared. You have to be Crazy-Prepared if you're gonna get through this world, because you never know what life'll throw at you next. Frankie rolls his eyes, saying the story was more interesting the first hundred times. Panning back, it turns out we're in Frank's "workshop" where he keeps all his souvenirs from the war. That, and a large collection of knives. Frankie says he's missing the Punisher radio show and wants to do what Frank said they'd be doing. Frank takes his skull-gripped pistols off the wall. "Okay, storytime's over. Now we get down to business."
He's set up some targets; after that incident last issue where Frankie scared the thugs off with a gun, Frank wants his kid to know how to use one if the situation ever comes up again. Frankie's excited when pops hands one of the pistols to him, but Frank wants him to remember that this is serious. Frankie aims it like his dad taught him, two handed, and fires at the target. He's pretty good, just missing the bullseye. Frank's proud of his boy for being a quick learner. Using the other gun one handed, he hits the bullseye dead on and tells Frankie he's not quite there yet. Now, they're gonna try it again.
At the Hub Social Club, Dutch Schultz is in a bad sort. He's arguing with an underboss about his rival "Lucky" Luciano wanting to talk about the crackdown they've been suffering through lately when one of his men comes in. He wants to talk about Dutch punishing the guys who can't get Castelione to give up protection money. We see a box on Dutch's desk with dozens of severed fingers in it. The underling, Weinberg, says it's getting out of hand. Take Lou for instance, who lost too many fingers to hold a gun. They have him serving drinks downstairs but he can't even manage that. Dutch sends for Lou, who now has two fingers on each hand, and shoots him in the head as soon as he walks in the room. "Problem solved."
Anyway, Dutch admits that what he's tried so far to get this Castelione chump to pony up hasn't been working. That's why he's gonna call in some of the big boys. One of them is Barracuda, major enforcer for Bumpy Johnson in Harlem. Barracuda, a massive black man with an impressive beard, is Bumpy's "club closer" - when a rival club starts taking his business, he sends in Barracuda... and he's the only one who walks out alive. During this little sales pitch, we see 'Cuda enter a club and smile. Then we see him walking out of the corpse-strewn building. Another is Jigsaw, Al Capone's best hitman. People say Capone keeps hiring Jigsaw because his horrifically cut-up mug is so ugly it makes Scarface feel better about himself, which may be partially true. But if there's a way to kill a man, no matter how protected, Jigsaw will find it. Over this narration we see an informant playing cards with cops, the building surrounded by blues. The snitch's throat bursts open as if cut by an invisible blade. Jigsaw sulks in the shadows outside.
Three days later, Jigsaw and Barracuda meet up outside Frank's apartment building. They both agree that it seems a little unnecessary to bring in both of them against just one guy, much less call in a third killer as Dutch saw fit to do. They burst into Frank's dark apartment; he's been waiting for them. "Dutch sent in the big guns, huh?", he says as he opens fire. "No problem. I got some big guns of my own."
Across town, Frankie's running with the local street urchins again. They're all wearing masks - they're going for a big score tonight. They tend to keep Frankie out of the loop, so he's surprised to see that their "big score" is a church. They bring in a lot of money from collection, and there's no guards in the place. Frankie's hesitant. One of the boys says he shouldn't care, being Jewish, but Frankie says he's more unaffiliated. Still, it simply feels wrong. He says he's going home, and one of the kids calls him an anti-Italian slur and an anti-Jewish one, causing Frankie to go back, sock him in the jaw, and leave.
At Frank's place, it doesn't look good. Police are parked outside and detectives are looking over the scene, including out pal Det. Soap. Soap concludes that there were two assailants, they came through the front door, one was a freaking giant... he notices a long blonde hair and smells perfume. There was a woman there, too. That's when Frankie gets home. He sees his father dead on the ground. Frankie was gonna tell him he quit the gang, he was just about to tell him he was right. Frankie weeps over his father's lifeless body.
End of issue #2
