This is a good cover, but it's a little plain. The Punisher holds out one of his pistols, lit dimly by a street light. The variant sees him tangling with a fur coat sporting Russian among a gaggle of hungry alligators.
We open, as always, in 1935, where Dutch Schultz is in bed at Roosevelt Hospital in Newark. He looks like he's been shot a few times. He's been spouting gibberish ever since they brought him in a few hours ago. Something about a boy, a big guy, and French Canadian bean soup. Some cops want to talk to him, evidently investigating the shooting. Schultz says something about being in the bathroom when the boy came at him, but the cops dismiss it as more nonsense. That's when Detective Soap enters the room. Tossing the Punisher's mask onto the face of one of the cops, he knows exactly how it all happened.
Hours previous, it's evening at the Bronx Zoo. The Punisher narrates that tonight's the night. Today Dutch Schultz joins Barracuda and Jigsaw in Hell. Today he finally deals with her, the mysterious third assassin. He walks up behind a woman sitting on a bench, confirming that he received a message from her when she asks. She looks straight ahead throughout their conversation. The Punisher pulls on his mask and grabs one of his pistols. The woman says it's nice that they can finally settle this matter — this meeting's been a long time coming. The Punisher agrees as he lines up a close range headshot to end this once and for all.
The woman stands up, turns around, grabs the gun, and punches the Punisher right in the nose. "What is old saying? We meet at last." The Punisher's reeling from that hit, but he's extremely confused to find out this chick was the Russian dad had told him about the entire time. People start clearing out of the zoo around this point, and frankly, so would you. The Russian lands a monstrous kick to the Punisher's gut while he's on the ground. She says that she heard about what happened to Jigsaw and Barracuda. "You know what they say... never send man to do woman's work." The Punisher's still not quite over the fact that he's fighting the Russian, who is both alive and a woman, right now. Crazy world, huh?
In desperation, he tries a Groin Attack. The Russian laughs and explains that sort of thing doesn't work anymore, thanks to Frank, Sr.'s grenade trick. She lifts the bench she had been sitting on over her head, and clarifies that she's actually thankful for this. Tossing the bench at the groundbound Punisher, she says she rather enjoyed getting in touch with her feminine side. She grabs the Punisher by his collar, but is soon foiled when the Punisher sets off a gas grenade and does a classic Smoke Out. "Where you go? You playing hard to get, handsome?" Damn, this is getting even more bizarre, isn't it? The Punisher says after that beating, he just wants to get out of there.
Over at the police department, a uniform cop tells Detective Soap that there's two guys brawling at the Bronx Zoo... and one of 'em's wearing a mask. Soap tells the uniform to get his coat. Back at the zoo, the Punisher's not feeling so good. He's coughing up blood. His ribs are probably broken... maybe even a punctured lung. He woozily ambles through the zoo, thinking that he should get away and regroup before this gets any crazier. That's when he runs into a loose tiger. The Punisher's a quick thinker, grabbing one of his hand grenades and stuffing it into the cat's mouth. After the messy explosion, he regrets having to do that. But it was him or the tiger, and - Oh, Crap!.
He sees several other animals out of their cages. Elephants, zebras, leopards, giraffes... Then he notices the Russian cuddling with a gorilla. She compares the two of them to King Kong and Faye Wray. She quotes the most famous line from that movie - "It was beauty killed the beast" - as she snaps the poor creature's neck. His head's spinning: he's dealing with an absolute psychopath. Worse than Barracuda, worse than Jigsaw. He sees something rush past him. A rhino that missed its charge. He reminds himself to keep his head in the game as he hurls a grenade at the beast. It's like pops always used to say - get distracted, and get dead.
The Punisher soon finds that dead gorilla at the door of the reptile house. On that door, a message is written in the ape's blood, "Come up and see me sometimes." An invitation. Speaking of getting dead, injuries or not, he isn't about to turn this one down. He walks in, and the Russian gets the drop on him, breaking a glass snake habitat with his face. The Punisher grabs a snake and tosses it at her, causing her to comically scream and panic in terror. While she's distracted, the Punisher lands a knife in her chest and knocks her into the alligator pit. But she's not going down alone, grabbing his jacket and pulling him in with her. "What gentleman. Trying to break my fall with your head." "Yeah, I'm a regular Clark Gable."
The two of them break from fighting one another to deal with the encroaching gators. The Punisher grabs his knife from the Russian's chest and uses it to gut one of them. Then he gives them the runaround, shooting wildly at them as he ascends the ladder out of the pit. The Russian's still down there, grappling with several gators at once - their combined efforts eventually tearing off her left arm. She screams in pain as the Punisher climbs out, the gators seeming to finish her off. Once up top, the Punisher rests against the rail. That's it, he thinks It's... over? Maybe not. A gator flies over his head and crashes at his feet. He turns around to see a one-armed Russian standing on the rail, holding a dead gator by the neck.
"You think... that was end of me, big boy? I been through worse. Much worse." The Punisher isn't listening, shooting her repeatedly as she continues to stride towards him. "I been machine gunned. Stabbed. Mustard gassed. Run over by tanks. Blown up by grenades. Flamethrowered." He keeps shooting, reaching for his other pistol to go Guns Akimbo. "It take more than this to kill me", she says as she takes dozens of bullets to the chest and one to the head from just over a foot away. "More than...", she trails off and slumps to the ground, dead. Now it's over.
Later, the cops arrive. The animals are herded back to their cages as Soap takes a cursory glance around. He doesn't know what happened, but he's got an idea. That's when a uniform finds the Russian's body. He calls Soap over. Looks like he was right all along - the corpse is wearing the Punisher's mask. Hours later, at the Hub Social Club, Dutch Schultz is furious. Dewey's closing in on him, the Five Families of New York's Commission has been laying down a bunch of ground rules for everybody's benefit (including who you can and who you can't kill) and he's taking it out on his men as usual. He heads into the bathroom. Two mysterious men appear at the door. In the can, Schultz whines about being told he can't kill a US Attorney. He says if you ask him, there isn't a man who can't be killed.
The Punisher... no, Frank Castelione, Jr. appears behind him, covered in blood and gun at the ready. "You know what? I say you're right." Meanwhile, those men, hitmen Charles Workman and Emmanuel Weiss, carry out their contract, wasting all of Schultz' men. Workman checks the bathroom to find Schultz already shot multiple times, mumbling about "Castle's son" and a "big guy" who shot him. Back outside, Weiss asks if he did Schultz; Workman says it's done, and they leave. I mentioned before that Dutch Schultz was a real gangster. Well, remove the Punisher and these are the real exact circumstances of his death. In reality, Workman really did do the dead.
At the precinct, Soap confers with Thomas E. Dewey. He's the one who came up with the name "the Punisher", after the radio show. He imagines the masked vigilante took at least a little inspiration from it. Dewey remarks that it's a fantastic story. A Russian transvestite war vet terrorizing the underworld for years under the radar and eventually managing to get Dutch Schultz himself. Dewey says Soap will get a commendation for busting this case, and tells him not to tell the public about the Punisher for fear of mass hysteria. He's got Workman in custody, so they'll be pinning this one on him. This is clever, because Workman's story has changed a couple of times in real life, making it more plausible that he didn't actually do it.
Dewey leaves, and Soap's contemporaries congratulate him. One wiseass asks how the Punisher rubbed out Schultz if he was found dead in the zoo hours before, but Soap just smiles. "C'mon boys, we're going out to celebrate. Or haven't you heard? This case is closed."
Frank Jr. stands at his parents' graves. He says it's over with... but now what? Does he keep going after big name mobsters? Because there's plenty of those still running around. Soap called him the Punisher. So does he keep punishing for the rest of his life? Is he in too deep to do anything else? Frank Sr. doesn't have an answer for him. Later, Frank, Jr.'s walking down the street when a stray newspaper is blown his way by the wind. Looking at it, he smiles. "Well, pop, I guess I got my answer after all.", he thinks, tossing the paper in the trash and continuing on his stroll. The page he was reading featured a large picture of Adolf Hitler...
End of Punisher Noir.
I have to admit, this one was a blast. Somehow it managed to be extremely "real" (featuring real historical personalities in key roles) yet still be very "unreal" (the Russian's entire existence). It's not my favorite or anything, but it was a very solid read. Also, we're left to assume that Frank, Jr. becomes the Soldier.
Anyway, coming up:... again I have difficulty deciding. I'm considering Iron Man Noir, since besides Deadpool Pulp it's the only one remaining that I haven't already read. Since I'm saving Deadpool Pulp and Weapon X Noir for later, that means it's between Iron Man, Daredevil, and Wolverine. If you've got any preference, drop a comment.
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