Killing em' with kindness. Honest.

It’s been awhile since Punisher: War Journal was a title. When it first premiered in 1988, it gave a then-unknown young penciler named Jim Lee his first steady title with a big character. Years later, Jim Lee is hobnobbing with Frank Miller, and PWJ is back, with Ariel Olivetti fresh off his run on Legends of the Dark Knight and ready to usher Frank Castle into the world of Civil War…

Ariel Olivetti’s pencils are, well... um... they’re... pretty. But they don’t work for this character. Frank Castle’s personality and world demand a grittier style, like Leandro Fernandez’s. There’s a scene where Frank pays a visit to the geriatric Tinker, and Olivetti’s drawing makes the moment look more like a sadistic children’s book than a comic. The book isn’t entirely bad—it’s competently drawn and there’s a cool fight scene between the Punisher and a few hapless S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (bloodless). However, Ariel Olivetti gives his characters a very refined, polished look, and that won’t work for a gun-toting, stubble-faced avenger like Frank Castle.

Matt Fraction’s writing, on the other hand, is well-suited to the enterprise of reintroducing everyone’s favorite violent vigilante. He recreates a moment from the recent Civil War #5 with the kind of chilling, noir dialogue that makes Frank Castle’s internal monologue a guilty pleasure to read. He also gives Spider-Man one the best one-liners (not written by Brian Michael Bendis) of the past few months. If the writing continues to be this entertaining, the series will be worth it for Punisher fans and crime comic fans alike.

Worth the money? If you’re a Punisher fan, yes.