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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
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You didn't see the worst he could do, trust me. If you want to see how bad he can get, check The Boys or The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe. I personally also loathe Preacher, but apparently some people like that one so I guess it's a matter of taste.
edited 9th Feb '16 2:29:50 PM by Theokal3
Ennis is the most baffling writer to me in the universe. Even more than Frank Miller, who wrote the most influential Daredevil and Batman stories of all time and the first volume of Sin City before he jumped off the fucking cliff into crazytown.
To me, almost every single thing Ennis has written that I have read has been nothing but garbage. But then he writes Superman and it's perfect. It blows my fucking mind.
My various fanfics.True, Ennis can write Superman very well. I was more thinking about the way he enforces Muggles Do It Better and "Superheroes are useless".
If you haven't read it, I would recommend reading Hitman. It's one of his best works - it takes a bit of time to get into it, but once all the characters are introduced, it is so very, very good. (I wrote an article
about it in case you want to know more.)
Ennis also had some great work on Hellblazer. One of the most classic stories of Hellblazer, if not the most classic, Dangerous Habits (a.k.a that one Constantine gets lung cancer) is by his hand.
He also seems at home with the Punisher, and as long as other heroes don't wander into the plot, he can stay decent. Welcome Back, Frank in specific is pretty great.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Best Punisher story ever.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.From what I'm gathering, he just needs to be in his element. The Ghost Rider story I read (Road to Damnation, for the curious) was very bleak, but it felt like something that fit that character.
Speaking of which, I'd love to get a Ghost Rider adaptation from Marvel but it's kind of left in a weird place because it'd be more at home with Netflix and the similarly bleak lineup, but he's just too expensive a character for a TV budget.
edited 9th Feb '16 2:54:04 PM by wehrmacht
Just so people know: usually Frank Castle goes after mobsters or people who are worse than him (which is how you can root for him, even though he kills a lot of people). In The Slavers, he goes after a sex slavery ring and at one point the narration goes: "It was in that moment that I realized something. A dull, blurred feeling that I’d had since this whole mess began, all of a sudden crystal clear. It had been a long, long time since I hated anyone the way I hated them."
It also helps that Ennis never posed Castle's crusade as anything other than simple hatred and revenge. He wasn't trying to help people. He just hated the people he killed.
edited 9th Feb '16 2:55:10 PM by alliterator
I wouldn't even say hatred, necessarily. As he mentioned in the quoted text, what set the Slavers apart is the fact that they actually inspired such an emotion from him. Most of his kills are cold and mechanical, slavishly following his crusade.
Being caught in the crossfire of a mob shootout, Castle's family were killed by random, violent crime and not any specific villain or cartel. In response, he declared war on the abstract concept of random, violent crime. His entire life is lived on autopilot, his soldier identity pursuing the next set of enemy combatants.
The biggest misstep I would say Ennis made was giving Castle a sexual partner - a mistake repeated in a much worse way in Daniel Way's Thunderbolts, where he was given an outright love interest. Given his character, I don't feel like Castle should really be capable of that anymore. He's too hollow.
edited 9th Feb '16 3:23:40 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.To be clear: his entire family was killed in the crossfire between two mobster gangs. To keep from just going completely crazy (or perhaps that's what he did), he dedicated his life to killing criminals and mobsters and bad guys. This, as he said, "makes the world sane" for him. Except for some moments (like during the "Up is Down and Black is White" arc) when he has a dream about killing everyone and his family is lying there saying, "We're still dead, Frank."
I wonder what he must think as he watches Harry Osborn et al et al come back repeatedly.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersSome stories raise the theory that Frank is just extremely blood thirsty and just used his family's murder and the whole thing of fighting crime as an excuse to have a everlasting war he could kill as many people as he pleased.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Heh. In Irredeemable, the Superman expy (the Plutonian) confronts the Batman expy in the very first pages...and burns him alive. The one who gives trouble to the Superman expy is actually the Fourth Doctor expy. (Yes, Irredeemable was weird, as well as awesome.)
edited 9th Feb '16 2:30:06 PM by alliterator