Punisher War Journal #7
Marvel Comics
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Ariel Olivetti

Let’s face it, the cover alone is almost reason enough to rush out and buy this book. Captain America’s pushing up the proverbial daisies and who steps up to fill his skin-tight costume? Frank Castle. That’s who. Punisher War Journal #7 is the end result of months of Marvel storylines dating back to the Civil War maelstrom. It all began with Frank secretly helping out Captain America’s anti-registration team which then led to him teaming up with Cap for one of those good, old-fashioned covert ops type of deals. Then Frank and Cap had a falling out and before they could make up (as if they ever would), Cap caught the business end of an assassins bullet. Having lost his favorite hero, Frank Castle went to his costume designer, had some new gear tailor-made, put a big skull and star on his on his arm, picked up some cool new guns and shouted Ricky Bobby’s battle cry of “It’s me! America!”

All bad jokes aside, Matt Fraction continues his wonderful run on Punisher War Journal. For a long, long time the Punisher franchise had fallen into a rut of killings, explosions and alcoholism without ever really managing to build up the complexity that a lot of people have felt the character deserved. Well, Fraction seems to be trying to fix all of that. In this latest issue, the Punisher squares off against “Hate Monger” — your typical neo-Nazi madman who also thinks he has the right idea of how to fill Captain America’s shoes. In the midst of it all, Fraction takes time out from all the fighting and bloodletting to give the reader some interesting information about a very hot political topic: illegal immigration. It’s good to see Fraction doing what comics have always done, tell us about society. The end result is a smart book…even if it does feature a few dumb bad guys.

On pencils, Ariel Olivetti continues to push the envelope of the muscle-bound hero. In this issue, Frank Castle and Hate Monger look so steroid injected it’s a wonder they’re not both in the later stages of Mad Cow disease. Olivetti presents a strange case: on the one hand, his artwork is genuinely good. His use of color is outstanding and he actually manages to give each character a unique, distinguishable face as opposed to the carbon copy characters that show up all too often in books these days. But, his drawback is the excessive physiques of his heroes. With each issue Frank Castle seems to be packing on another five pounds of muscle and my biggest fear is that he’s only about seven or eight issues away from painting himself green and shouting “Punisher Smash!” Hopefully, Olivetti’s finally reaching his muscularity limit and things will taper off. If not, somebody needs to get Hulk on the phone and tell him he’s to get his big, green keister into the gym…that Castle guy’s been hitting the protein shakes hard!

Overall: 8 on 10. Solid story. Solid art.