Writer: Garth Ennis; Artist: Howard Chaykin; Colorist: Edgar Delgado; Letterer: VC's Cory Petit; Editor: Axel Alonso; Editor in Chief: Joe Quesada; Cover Artist: Tim Bradstreet
Barracuda has invaded the home of Yorkie Mitchell in England, having severely injured Yorkie and killed his wife as he searches the house safe for leverage against Frank Castle. He finds what he's looking for and prepares to kill Yorkie, who explains to Barracuda that Castle is the most dangerous man who's ever lived and if he goes against him Barracuda will die like everyone else who has tried. Barracuda laughs and executes Yorkie.
In New York City, Castle awakens from a dream, in which his family had lived and he'd grown into an old man content with his life. To shake off the effects of the dream, Frank travels to land he'd purchased into the remote region of the Poconos to take in some target practice and reflect on his weapons of war. Meanwhile, in California, Barracuda walks into a day care and kills a woman working there.
Two weeks later, Frank is in the ceiling of a high-rise hotel suite, watching a meeting of many different mob bosses from across the city. Eventually, the mobsters realize that none of them called this meeting, which causes Castle to hesitate from his assault. Suddenly, Barracuda steps out of the elevator with an M-60 machine gun and begins killing the mobsters. Frank notices a claymore mine in the ceiling, forcing him to jump down into the room as he realizes Barracuda has wired the floors above and below the suite with explosives. While Barracuda continues killing the bosses, Frank tries to find an exit, only to be hit by an exploding claymore in the stairwell. Barracuda finds him and renders him unconscious, then takes him to the roof where he escapes across a zipline with Castle.
Later, Barracuda has Castle tied to a chair in a run-down tenement building. Barracuda explains how he had been looking for a way to get his revenge when he received an e-mail from an unknown benefactor that contained a list of Castle's known associates. One of those on the list was Yorkie, who had learned of a secret when he had written to the sister of Kathryn O'Brien to express his condolences on her death. O'Brien's sister wrote back, asking if Mitchell knew how to contact Frank Castle. Barracuda leaves the room for a moment, and when he returns he's holding a baby, the daughter of Kathryn O'Brien that Frank had fathered without his knowledge.
Review:
It's the 50th issue of Garth Ennis' MAX run, featuring both the return of Barracuda and some dreadful artwork by industry legend Howard Chaykin.
The MAX series had been running through the wrap-up of Ennis' dangling plots and this one was no different. Barracuda returns following the end of his mini-series and we see the result of Kathryn O'Brien's one-night-stand with Castle way back in the book's second year, giving us one hell of a cliffhanger ending with the reveal of the Punisher's baby daughter. I admit that I didn't see that twist coming, it had never even occurred to me that O'Brien had given birth between her appearances because in comics (and most serial fiction, to be honest) sexual hook-ups never have any consequences. Well, this one certainly did, with a twist so logical yet so surprising that no writer had done it with Frank in the past. Castle is a character defined by the death of his wife and children, so introducing a new child into his life and handing her fate over to a horrible villain is gut-wrenching for both the character and the reader.
But outside of the cliffhanger, does the rest of the comic really rank up there as worthy of the 50th issue? Honestly...no, not really. The first half of the comic is there to kill time and pages with an absolutely unnecessary dream sequence of the Castle family were they still living today. We've seen this kind of thing before and this scene does nothing new with the idea save for implying that to Frank it wasn't a good dream at all, but a nightmare. Slightly more interesting is Frank's trip to the woods to target shoot for several pages, allowing Ennis to narrate through Frank his opinion on various firearms. I did find some of the information interesting, sure, but it does nothing but eat up pages. Finally, halfway through the comic (which is afforded an expanded page count due to its anniversary status), we get to Barracuda and his plan to capture Frank. It's a typical, entertaining shoot-out sequence of the kind Ennis writes in his sleep. Perfectly solid, except for that one glaring problem...
The artwork! Yes, yes, Howard Chaykin is a comics legend and a pioneer of the 1980s independent comic scene due to his work on American Flagg. I know he has his fans, but I am absolutely not counted among them. Chaykin was doing quite a bit of work for Marvel in the mid-2000s, which led to his extended run on Punisher War Journal with Matt Fraction not long after his work here, and I'm sure in theory he seemed like a good fit for the character. The problem, however, is that Chaykin's rendition of Frank Castle looks like every other goddamn main character the man has ever drawn. People complain about Steve Dillon drawing the same characters over and over again, but he has nothing on Chaykin's abuse of "character typecasting". My biggest problem with Chaykin's presence, though, is that it feels absolutely unearned. This was a series that strongly adhered to a revolving pool of artists that stayed consistent during their individual arcs. The MAX series was built on the backs of Lewis Larosa, Leandro Fernandez, and Goran Parlov; so why wasn't Parlov, the artist for the rest of "Long Cold Dark" and the illustrator of both previous Barracuda stories allowed to draw the 50th issue? I have no idea, but I know it makes for one hell of a jarring transition while reading the collected edition of this story when it goes from Chaykin's scratchy mess to Parlov's cleaner, more stylized work.
All in all, this was kind of a disappointing issue, and with it falling directly after the extremely lackluster "Widowmaker" arc it didn't bode well for the end of Ennis' run on the series. Of course, "Long Cold Dark" and the series' actual end DID turn out to be excellent stories, things just got off to a very rocky start here with # 50.
Grade: C+
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