I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comic plus a hard cover collection:

  • Supernatural: Beginning’s End – 3
  • Sergio Argonés: Groo – The Hogs of Horder – 4
  • The Weird World of Jack Staff – 1
  • Grendel: Behold The Devil (HC)
  • And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

  • “Punished: Dark Reign” by Rick Remender and Jerome Opeña
  • This is the first Punisher book I’ve read since 2002 or so. I have to say that, generally, I find no reason to read “Punisher” comics any more often than that. They are kind of all the same. Well, there are good Punisher comics and bad ones but none stray very far from the thin concept of the Punisher fighting crime and punishing the guilty. I picked up this volume to check out what Remender was doing with the character since I have liked Remender’s “Fear Agent” comic.

    What he’s doing with the comic is telling a pretty good Punisher tale. Filled with action, bloodshed, death, and violence the Punisher dishes out his brand of justice. There is not much more to a Punisher story than that and that’s what happens here.

    In the first issue Punisher pointlessly fights the Sentry (a character that annoys me) which I guess is the “Dark Reign” tie in with that multiple-comic crossover of the same name. After that issue Punisher picks up a new ally who is good with technology and they fight crime together. Their main enemy is the crime boss known as the Hood.

    Opena has also worked on “Fear Agent”. He does a solid job here though I find his scritch-scratchy style distracting at times. He draws and tells a story well but he doesn’t always finish a drawing to my satisfaction. That’s probably because they printed right from his uninked pencils. That didn’t always serve him as a lot of the time. Where there should have been solid black there was grey scribble. That makes things look sloppy and not thought out. It’s looks careless if you will. But still I liked the artwork overall.

    So there you have it. A solid Punisher comic that is like a lot of the other solid Punisher comics that are out there. No need to read them all but one every now and then is good. I have to warn you that this volume ends in the middle of a story. That was a little annoying.