In this week’s installment of Ask Chris, I stay the hell away from the questions I got about sex in super-hero comics, and instead devote my time to lighthearted frivolity. Specifically, in the most shocking turn of events ever, I write about Batman and the Punisher going to a bathhouse, and provide a no-prize worthy explanation of what the heck happened to those metal you see whenever someone draws Wolverine’s skeleton.
Remember before I sold out, when I used to write (allegedly) funny pieces about old comics I was reading in my spare time? Well, today at ComicsAlliance, you can relive the glory days of 2008 all over again as I write up the two-part Acts of Vengeance tie-in where the Punisher fought Dr. Doom!
It isn’t the craziest story of the run by a long shot — that honor goes to Baron’s racebending swan song — but it is bizarre, involving everything from robots to jetpacks to a Faberge egg. Hopefully people will enjoy the post, because this is the sort of thing I’ve been itching to do more often.
In this week’s installment of Ask Chris, I once again indulge in my pure, unadulterated love of Frank Castle by rounding up some of the best toy incarnations of the Punisher, which are hilarious even by just existing.
Also, I apparently neglected to link to last week’s column, so on the chance that you haven’t seen it yet, I seize the spirit of the times by answering a question about my favorite reboots in a way that I’m sure pleased everyone and certainly wasn’t hilarious only to me.
A while back, I got an Ask Chris question wondering why cover blurbs had fallen out of fashion, and my only answer is that publishers realized that they had already done the greatest ones that could ever be done. Today, to back that up, I’ve posted a gallery of my favorite cover blurbs ever.
Really, this article could’ve just been about how amazing Punisher War Journal #19, but there’s some classic stuff in there, including a run of entries by the Heavyweight Champion of blurbs, Jack Kirby!
Only the longest of long-time ISB readers will remember my original references to the Box of Punishment, in which I read every single Punisher comic I could find (which was pretty much all of them except Punisher 2099) in the span of a month. Who knew that experience would come in handy six years later?
Well, it did, because today at ComicsAlliance, someone asked how to read a character’s entire run, which once again gave me the opportunity to talk about the folly of renting a jetski to the Punisher. Kiss that baby goodbye.
Today at ComicsAlliance, I’m preparing for the bone-crushing finale of Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon’s first arc on PunisherMax with a look at the weirdest Punisher villains ever created!
Yes, from babysitters trained in the art of lucha libre (or as I call them, luchaupairs) on down to Garth Ennis’s human tanks, I’ve once again proved that reading 300 Punisher comics in two weeks is probably my most marketable job skill.
In the same story he kills a bunch of dudes at once by dropping a giant Christmas tree on them. The ’90s were a strange time.
—Punisher Holiday Special #1, 1993