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Tweak says, "Killer Tofu! "

espanolbot (espanolbot) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-29 19:31:00

Entry tags:

creator: garth ennis, series: punisher week, title: punisher max

Punisher Max: The Tyger
Spoilers

In order to get things under the page limit, I'm going to have to cut down the story somewhat. Personally I reccommend that you track down the actual trade or issue because it's really worth it in my opinion.

It's 1960, and the place is New York City.

Frank is visiting a friend of his, called Lauren, and talks for a bit with her brother who is in the Marines.

The "thing in the yard" involves a scab worker getting set on fire, which Frank's father may or may not have had a hand in, as the guy had taken the job of one of his friends who had been badly injured falling off a ladder.

Sal may have been Frank's inspiration for joining the Marines, amongst other things.

Not well known Frank fact: he used to like reading and writing poetry.

Only Blake's religious views were somewhat whitewashed by Frank's teacher, which doesn't lead to very good discussions.

On the way home they see a friend of Lauren's, who has an "unfortunate accident",

Later, these are the local Mafia outfit. They own the neighbourhood, pretty much, including the construction firm Frank's dad works for.

Lauren then takes Frank to a natural history museum, where he sees things like models of dinosaurs, bears and sharks. The Tyger comes back to him when he sees them, but Lauren catches him off guard by kissing him and hurrying off.

Frank doesn't talk to Lauren for a few dads after this, as he doesn't really know how to cope with her being sweet on him, what with him being twelve or so and her being one of his oldest friends.

To take his mind off of it, he goes and talks to the brother of the girl who committed suicide, and he reveals she had been made pregnant by the Rosa kid but hadn't wanted to have sex with him. This puzzles Frank, as he doesn't even know what sex is at this point, let alone how he could get someone pregnant against their will.

It being the early Sixties in a Catholic neighbourhood, the dad places the blame squarely with the girl, prompting her to commit suicide.

Frank's next poetry class rolls around, and he sees Lauren for the first time in ages, only to find that she's upset,

After this, Frank hears his parents talking. His mum mentions that Lauren was the latest in a long line of girls who have had sex with the young Rosa, some of whom were made pregnant.

When Frank's dad responds "Well they should have kept their thighs shut" Frank's mum looses it, yells at him about how they were raped and asks him why he and the other neighbourhood men are willing to burn someone half to death being a scab worker, but aren't willing to do something about something like this.

Frank's dad quietly says that they did, and after they had seen how Lauren's dad was now slowly drinking himself to death, they had gone around to the Rosas' cafe and asked "respectfully" if they could talk to the head of the Family to get the younger one to stop. The rapist's dad responds by getting his men to hold down one of Frank's dad's friends at random and breaking his fingers with a shotgun butt.

Frank's dad then explains that the reason why they don't do anything now is that they're too scared to, even though he was at Iwo Jima during the War he is too ashamed to "defend their women" and that shames him.

It's implied that the reason why the father's are coming down so hard on the rape victims is that that's the only way they can express their anger over the crimes, as taking out on the guy who actually did something wrong is out of the question.

Hearing all of this, Frank makes up his mind.

Waiting until his parents are asleep, he takes his father's gun and goes to the Rosa's cafe with the intend of shooting the Rapist.

Turns out that Lauren's brother paid some girl to set up the trap in case you were wondering,

After the rapist's father heard about this, he promptly died of a heart attack, and the new mafia guy was too busy with other things to come looking for who killed the young Mafia guy.

The next time Frank saw Sal, he was in Vietnam. Sal had resisted all attempts to get a promotion so that he'd stay in country and keep fighting, which he did until he was killed.

Frank, cutting to early in his career as the Punisher, remises about Lauren and Sal, and thinks that people would just blame Vietnam on what he does.

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jlroberson
2009-10-30 08:22 am UTC (link)

Severin never really gets his due because, I think, of these reasons, and I think you could say the same about Mort Drucker, or even Jose Luis Garcia Lopez. He was dependable and regular and did lots and lots of work, and so his style became so easy to find that it becomes kind of invisible--defaults, in the mass mind, to generic. Think possibly of how you might have viewed Swan vs. Kirby in your mind as a kid and that might illustrate the tone I think Severin's work took on. Particularly after he started working at CRACKED. It's also that his work, while he was capable of exaggeration, still has a very old-fashioned(in the good sense) finished, almost too-solid illustrative patina that is so professional that sometimes it fools you; it doesn't occur to people that they're looking at something someone drew. He doesn't call attention to his style the way another equal-level craftsman--who is still thought of as very individual--like Aragones or Davis does. The latter of which really did become commercial art, but somehow never became seen that way. Consider that Severin, at CRACKED, would stuff panels full of stuff just like Elder or Wood. Except when he did it, it's more of a "meh" effect. This despite Elder having once been a collaborator of his. But in Elder's case, that's to do with his, you might call it, anti-style, which tries to de-emphasize its own personality and talk through another style. But Severin lacked that anarchic level of energy that leaps out of Elder.

It's like, he was looking at it as a kind of commercial art much of the time anyway. Part of that is, indeed, making the style an invisible tool to another end. So by his lights that was success.

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thehefner
2009-10-30 08:34 am UTC (link)

Well put.

It's funny, though, I first took notice of Severin at CRACKED when I was a wee sprat. Not just because of his art--I recalled he was always extremely adept at depicting celebrities--but because he frequently got shout-outs throughout the issue, as if the CRACKED staff were all remarking on how he was one of the few artists of note on the mag. At least they, it seemed, were aware of how notable he was/is.

And yet, as I've grown up, what you've said holds true for comics in general. And it's a damn shame.

You know what it is? Guys like Serverin and Garcia-Lopez are the Jeff Bridges of comics. They're that kind of excellent where you don't realize how excellent they are because it seems so natural, not flashy or attention-grabbing at all.

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	halloweenjack 2009-10-30 03:52 pm UTC (link)
	Also well-put. It was a great story, but the art really sold me on it. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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