Born

  

                                                    Written by Garth Ennis
                                                    Art by Darick Robertson



  *polite notice! this review contains major spoilers


I'll start off by doing Punisher Born or Punisher Zero to give it its unofficial title. Set in Vietnam it sets out to show you what made the Punisher the unstoppable killing machine he is today as well as show the atrocities of war.If you've seen any great Vietnam movie you'll feel right at home in this book, the art is beautifully grim and you can easily imagine Martin Sheen from Apocalypse now or Private Joker in Franks squad and it’s no coincidence that Born follows inner dialogue of Steve Goodwin the other protagonist he does the typical thing of being the readers eyes in this he has hopes and dreams and horror at his surroundings he thinks if that the Punisher is the best shot at surviving his tour even though he is horrified by Castles actions, one example is Frank murders a rapist who's in his squad instead of reporting it he keeps quiet because he knows he has to sacrifice some of his own morality to survive.

 Castle is on his third tour, by this point by the time he gets to Valley Forge he has all the skills he needs for his mission. As expected he's in his element can turn any base round and although he isn't running the base he's in the background making sure things work so his soldiers can fight. In the beginning  he ensures none of his troops die, of coarse by the end like any great horror movie they all die one by one but at least it fun watching.

This personally is my least favourite Punisher book as it tries to imply that Frank has made a deal with the devil to sacrifice his family so he can keep killing and for a character and book series that so grounded in reality it’s like a spit in the face to the fans, yeah the whole premise that one guy can spend years on the run, with the authorities not stopping him and who seems to suck up bullet wounds is a bit far fetched but the Garth Ennis's writing is so good you naturally just believe in the character. Born is the exception to this.

  It was at this point Frank got sick of the 'your momma so fat' game

This story isn’t what they advertised, they seemed to imply that you would get to see the Punisher slowly turn into the man who goes on to mass murder his way through the criminal underworld if anything by the time you see him in this he's even more insane,for example you see him murdering people for bad decision making, there is almost no conscience in him only his black and white philosophy which is a bit of a shock when you read the later books in the series, but at least those actions could be justified as they are mostly forgivable either through self preservation or the people he kills are truly evil not just stupid.

By the end you are no closer to understanding why he is the way he is than you are before you started reading, if you want that deeper understanding of the character your better off reading The Tyger (which I'll cover later) where you see him as a kid, that's not say its a bad war story it's great at showing the insanity of war and how it doesn't take much for a man to turn into an animal, the feeling you get is Frank is already at that point before he was even in the army.

 

 

 

                                                       Punishers wife and kids
                   

If I'm honest I would have given this book a miss if it didn't have tie in with some of the other books in the series, just start with the far superior In The Beginning then by the end if your interested go back and read it, you wont be missing anything.