http://books.google.com/books?id=ygcO6WyqrYkC&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=bolan+not+flash+gordon&source=bl&ots=L1jD6iVG19&sig=F2i5flYkwnnYhIJOYsFOVB9GoEY&hl=en&ei=NwLxSfCGIoTgyQWa1ZDIDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2

More poetic than REH? I suggest you read some of his verses.

Life is a lamp with the glimmer gone,
A dank and a darkened cave;
Yet still I swear by the light of dawn,
And not by the grip of the grave.

- “Hope Empty of Meaning”

Huh? The Tom Jane film had a big white skull that was pretty prominent. They even explain why he’s wearing it, even if it wasn’t really necessary. I can agree with you if you’re talking War Zone (where it was so faded that you probably wouldn’t notice it) and the Dolph Punisher (which cut out the skull motif entirely). But in the Thomas Jane film the design was pretty much exactly the same as one of Tim Bradstreet’s covers.

But then I liked the Jane film for the most part. It certainly had some fairly noteworthy flaws. The biggest being John Travolta as the villian, not that he was bad, per se, it just seemed that they wanted a big star to be in their movie but didn’t actually stop to think any further then that. He was just generic mob boss guy. The other flaw was that Tampa Florida is not really fitting with the Punisher universe. The rest of it I thought was rather enjoyable. Not great, but a decent flick, and better then I expected. I would have liked to have seen what the same crew as Jane film could have done with a bigger budget, a better filming location and an R rating.

If you think about it, a *lot* of movies have the format of the Thomas Jane Punisher movie: “Hero’s family murdered, hero seeks and achieves revenge by killing lots of bad guys.” And that’s pretty much the end of the story. What’s strange and interesting about Frank is that he *keeps going* after that. By this point, he’s presumably killed every single person who had even a tangential connection to killing his family. And he’s smart enough to know he’s not really “eliminating crime” or anything. And yet he keeps going, and *that* is pretty interesting!

I saw it for free and felt like it wasn’t worth the money… well, that’s not quite true. There were a couple of chuckle moments that made it not a complete waste of time.

That tells you something, though. If the best part of a Punisher movie is the humor, they are missing the point. The action was all shock and no substance. The dialogue was BRUTAL and none of the acting was good enough to overcome it (if that were even possible).

The Thomas Jane version was just not very good. This one is insultingly bad.

One thing I feel certain about is that the timing was horrible… following Iron Man and Dark Knight is a tough enough spot for a Punisher movie but with the holidays around the corner what did they really expect?
“Just finished up our x-mas shopping babe, what say we go watch Frank kill a bunch of folks?”

And the cover to issue 1 of the ongoing series has always been one of my favorites, the sheer OTT-ness of hanging by a rope outside an upper floor window pointing a bazooka at someone sets the stage for every decent Punisher story that followed.

What really cracks me up is that Gerry Conway claims to this day that he’d never heard of, let alone read, Don Pendleton’s Executioner books at the time he created the Punisher. I have a lot of respect for Conway but this stretches credulity to the breaking point. CYA at its boldest.

I’ve never understood that either… especially since you literally could not pass a paperback spinner rack in the early 70′s without seeing DOZENS of those books. If Gerry Conway bought a paperback book at any venue other than a specialty bookstore in those years he’d have seen a half-dozen Executioners, Destroyers, etc. “Never read one” I can believe, but “Never heard of”?

It seems a little odd considering how many OTHER tribute/homage/whatever things Marvel has done over the years. The Squadron Supreme was a lot closer to home and everyone was always upfront about where THEY got stolen from…. not to mention all the various things Chris Claremont appropriated for the X-Men over the years (The Hellfire Club, Alien, etc., etc.)

Although I will admit that judging from what I found on the late Don Pendleton’s own official website, his family is extremely litigious. No quotes or images, not even for “other web sites,” so I was careful not to get any of my images from there. I was annoyed at not being able to quote Pendleton though. The things he had to say about his creation makes one wonder if he’s talking about the same Mack Bolan we all know, despite being the primary source on the stuff.

Now, all we need is someone to also state that, WITHIN the Marvel Universe, Puni’s no big deal. Stories like “Punisher kills the Marvel Universe” are so absurd I can only tolerate them by thinking of them as jokes. Seriously: If, say, The Avengers wanted to bag Puni for good, they would. We all know that.

That’s true, but it doesn’t bother me so much because it’s usually occurs in a rare story or a What If? But this concept bothers me more at DC with Batman, this idea that he could singlehandedly stop the whole DC Universe at will, even all at once, with just a little “prep time.” This concept bothers me more because it’s a conceit they indulge in almost monthly and has now become a given. I miss the old days where it was pretty much a given that if Batman and Superman ever went at it, Batman would pretty much not stand a chance.