Comics Fondle

I was going to start with imagining the aneurysm Paul Levitz got when he read issue seven, thinking he’d already canceled the book at that point, but then I realized it was the book he canceled the series over. Or at least the story-arc he canceled it over, issue six being the last issue. It […]

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A friend told me about this Punisher arc, saying Ennis finally figured out how to use Barracuda right. He does. Instead of going for laughs (either with or at Barracuda–Ennis problem before was setting the reader up to laugh at Frank, which isn’t right), he makes Barracuda a monster. An alter ego to the Punisher… […]

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I guess critics had some problems with The Last Enemy, but I really can’t imagine what. (As I wasn’t asked to participate in Heidi MacDonald’s year-end online comic personalities review, I didn’t say “other critics”). The Last Enemy is exactly what it ought to be, a sequel to the limited series, continuing, developing and resolving […]

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So, Barracuda is much better than “Barracuda,” the story its a sequel to, which ran in Punisher MAX. Maybe not, actually. That story was Ennis’s first disappointing arc on Punisher MAX (after “The Slavers,” though, anything would have been a disappointment… but “Barracuda” was definitely more of one than it had to be). The limited […]

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When I got done with the second issue of Wormwood, I got thinking it was that romantic Ennis I’d been waiting since Unknown Soldier to read again. To some degree–a good (quality-wise, not quantity-wise) degree–it is. But Wormwood is more. Wormwood is a personable Garth Ennis, it’s a Garth Ennis one would have a Guinness […]

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