“Wow.
It was a couple years ago maybe that I read a Nova reboot, and I was complaining about the fact that superheroes can never be old dudes. It’s always a teen, navigating the world of superpowers, homework, and gulp, girls!
I’m sorry, I had to take a break to shit in my own pants, sit in the shit, and think about the disappointment that life can be sometimes.
Ah, but it turned out, my old man comic existed all along.
Jason Aaron’s Punisher is an old, desperate, broken man. I think it’s a look at the Punisher we always should have seen.
Punisher is one of those characters who’s a good concept, visually stunning, and contrast-y to the other characters in the Marvel Universe, but who just hasn’t seen a lot of really great runs. You’d think he had, but really, there are a handful of really great Punisher reads.
For me, this one goes behind Garth Ennis’ first run, the one that ended before the Russian got breast implants and things got wacky.
It’s not an optimistic book by any means. It’s fatalistic, sad, and it’s a character that pushes the reader’s limits of empathy. But goddamn does it work.
I was reminded of Rorschach from Watchmen, a character willing to go to the limit and never surrender.
By the way, I just recently read this stupid, pretentious thinkpiece about how Ted Cruz was a maniac for saying that Rorschach from Watchmen is his favorite superhero. What a pile of shit. I mean, Rorschach doesn’t have superpowers, so there’s something there, but this guy was just talking about how Rorschach is a bad guy, and therefore can’t be your favorite superhero. And in fact, that might mean you’re a crazy, bad person.
[for the record, fuck Ted Cruz]
I say nay. Because, to me, superheroes can be aspirational, but they don’t have to be. I don’t have to like everything a hero does, and I don’t have to like the way he does it, to still really enjoy the character.
Watchmen was a book filled with non-aspirational characters. Dr. Manhattan lost his humanity. The Comedian was nuts, and probably the one best equipped for the real world. And Rorschach, despite being a bad dude and pretty crazy, had strong convictions. The man wasn’t a quitter, even when he was totally outclassed.
I think that’s the kind of hero we get with Punisher here. He’s so damaged, so fucked up. He’s running himself into the ground, fighting 20 year-olds with his 60-something body that’s pretty much running on willpower at this point.
It’s a different kind of story. Defeatist in a way. A downer in the way that I think we miss in the movies.
I’m always looking for things that comics are doing that we don’t see in their movie counterparts, and downer, non-aspirational, truly dark stories are one of those things. I think the darkest movie we’ve gotten from Marvel is Deadpool, probably, and that’s far from dark. DC has gone darker, but it feels so artificial because they don’t really take it all the way. They edge up to the darkness, then pull back. As much as Dark Knight had a dark tone, it was a superhero movie through and through. The Joker was dark, and the Dark Knight was heroic as fuck.
I’m waiting for the Marvel movie with this tone. I wanna see it. Because I think you can tell a really powerful, really different kind of story. One that doesn’t involve saving the world with a dance sequence. “