DMZ Book 10: Collective Punishment (#55-59)

"What ever happens .  Whatever the city looks like when the sun rises... we are still residents of the greatest city in the world" - Radio Free DMZ

Back with more DMZ.  It's America..  By the time these stories take place it's been nearly ten years since a movement arose in the mid-west known as the Free States.  Disillusioned by a government more interested in fighting wars overseas than taking care of its own people they seceeded from the Union and set up their own government in Montana.  Immediately they came into conflict with the U.S. government and a Second Civil War began.  With so much of the U.S. army serving abroad and the Free States enjoying much popular support the U.S. was pushed back to New York.  It was there that a ceasefire was finally negociated, but the island of Manhattan remained stuck between the two and with around 400,000 people left trapped there after a botched evacuation, people attempt to live their lives as best they can in the DMZ.  The series has been following journalist Matty Roth as he spends several years working on reporting stories of the goings on in the place, but the series has also looked around at the lives of other people who live there too and these five stories are all one-shots, snapshots of lives spent surviving in an American warzone.  Recent events have made the U.S. break the ceasefire and they have been bombing the DMZ every day for a few weeks as well as making aggressive moves aimed at the Free States Army based in New Jersey in preparation for a major push through the DMZ and the resolution of the war one way or another.  These stories take place as the bombs fall and tensions rise to unbearable levels as we say goodbye to characters we've got to know as the series has gone along. Brian Wood is still the sole writer but each chapter has a different artist.  It's the only volume co-creator artist Riccardo Burchielli didn't draw anything in.

FIVE HOURS UNDER FIRE: Artist Andrea Mutti.  We start with a U.S. army soldier called Cal Foster dispatched into the DMZ undercover.  He tries to call for extraction but Liberty News is reporting that in "anticpation of what can only be described as a massive military operation" all cell service and power has been shut off and then he drops his satellite phone and breaks it.  Directional EMPs have been used too.  Liberty News then shuts down because of an executive order. Cal finds shelter in the underground.  He follows the rails and comes across a crowd of people, one of whom is Zee Hernadez.  She demands to know "who the hell are you?"

Zee sees though Cal right away.

We then get to read Cal's thoughts.  He is a member of the "New American Military.  Officially I'm not called anything at all".

Cal: "I'm no Trustwell mercenary. I'm not exactly Special Forces.  I've never been issued anything  remotely resembling a uniform.   We're encouraged to scrounge on the battlefield.  We're  encouraged to act like locals.  Like illegals.  Like terrorists."

He arrived in the DMZ three weeks ago to make what is happening, happen.  He thinks that this is the "big one" and when the smoke clears the war will be over and he'll be left cleaning up what remains. 

He thinks the civil war is a "waste of fucking time".  People have too much of a sense of entitlement and think the world should bend for us.  "We've lost our identity as a nation, is it any wonder we're here now?"  He sits down and Zee comes over to him and asks if he is OK.  She kneels and addresses him quietly that she knows who and what he is. She checks him over asking is he's here to kill someone, "how long before you start lining us up against the wall an shooting us?"

He tells her she has an attitude for someone in a hole in the ground. Then he pushes her hand away.  She asks if he or she should tell them who is bombing them. He says they know who's bombing them, "do they know you picked the targets?" she responds.  He stares at her then asks who she really is.  Zee says he'll never know. 

Zee: "If I've learned anything about people like you - tourists in this city - it's that you don't have the faintest idea who any of us actually are."

He asks her to teach him.  She says she has rounds to do.  He asks why she doesn't accuse him out loud and "let these animals tear me apart?"  She just says he doesn't understand them and leaves him sat alone.

Cal in a quandry.

He thinks to himself how he is trained not to give his identity away.  He spent the last three weeks assimilating yet a "crazy bitch" saw right through him.  "Who is she?  Who is she working for?" He's done his mission and the bombs are falling. Now he wonders how he can kill Zee and get away, does she have access to his files.  "Do we even have files? We must. At any rate she knows" he starts thinking himself round in circles.  He hefts his rifle, then a blonde woman with a prosthetic leg makes a "shush" motion at him.

Cal: "Civilians. Traitors. Insurgents. Human shields. Terrorists. Martyrs. There's nothing noble about any of this bullshit is there?"

He thinks how the military are thought of as part on the problem.  That by removing the soldiers the violence will stop. It is a fantasy that "demonises the professionals and absolves the guilt of the so-called innocent".

The war has rewritten the rule, trying to apply conventional modes of behaviour to the most unconventional war the planet has ever seen is "naive".  He's twenty-six years old and was a high school kid when it all kicked off. He wonders if he'll celebrate his 30th birthday with a gun strapped to his chest.

The generators then cut out plunging the room into red emergency lighting.  The woman with the prosthetic leg comes and sits next to him.  She asks him why he carries a gun.  He mumbles that every has one in the DMZ, but she insists she does know a lot of people walking about with assault rifles.  He stammers "I... I have to".   She says no one has to, they might want to, but they don't have to.

Cal does a runner.

She asks if he is Trustwell.  Which he says he isn't. She responds that for Trustwell war is business which is why they carry weapons.  But the U.S. and FSA don't have to.  He demands to know what the hell she is talking about.  She says she is babbling but she likes him and thinks he is "one of the good ones" and wants him to throw his gun away.   He flashes back to shooting various people.  Then returns to the present as the lights come back on.

She puts her head on his shoulder but this makes him get up abruptly.  He apologises to her and runs off after she calls after him.  She implores him to stop, but as he runs he says "I can't".  And that brings this chapter to an end.

GHOST PROTECTOR: Artist Nathan Fox.  We are in Chinatown. Triad boss and rulet of Chinatown the elderly Wilson is having a lavish meal.  Sitting with him is a body guard. Wilson tells him to go home to his family but the bodyguard says he has none. "Me neither" sighs Wilson, "just this soup here".  He tells the bodyguard, name of Woodrow, that he is family and invites him to eat with him.

Wilson: "It is a shame Chinatown dies tonight".

Woodrow: "If you survive boss. Chinatown will never die.  You are Chinatown".

We then flashback to three days ago.   A Huey helicopter is brought to him and a man comes out saying it is an honour to meet Wilson.  He is offering the vintage copter to Wilson in exchange for a meeting with him.

Bribing Wilson.

Inside they talk, the man says that there is twenty-million in gold packed into the Huey.  He says to Wilson he is going to be direct.  The American army is massed around half a mile away.   They have the "moral right, the mandate, the will and the support of planet Earth in this invasion".  He wants Wilson to agree to evacute Chinatown otherwise they'll all be slaughtered in the bombing that's going to come.

Wilson says he doesn't need money he has enough.  The man says it's all worthless paper money, he's "burned through his gold stash".  Once the U.S. army come rolling through if Wilson doesn't agree to the evacuation, " you and everyone you know and love will rot to death in a detention camp on the other side of the planet.  You have three days".  And the man leaves Wilson alone to think it over.

Wilson:  "How did this come to pass? When did I get old? The Living Saint of Mott street, some called me. Others, Ghost Protector".  What will they call me now?  This is an impossible situation... one I did not see coming... am I expected to just lie down... after walking so tall for so long?"

He gets angry  and thinks they wouldn't crush an entire neighboirhood merely because they didn't run on command.  He tells his guards to torch the chopper so the man who gave him the ultimatum sees the smoke.  Then dump all the gold in the river, "make sure they can see that too".

Next day he wakes up in the company of a young woman. His guards phone to tell him to look out the window.  He does so  and sees the whole population on Chinatown standing outside.   At first he is angry with them, but as he gets changed and goes down he realises, "I am an old, old man.  Time to call it a day".

Wilson demonstrates his power.

He stands facing the crowd and bellows, "KOWTOW!" and everyone falls on their knees and bends forwards facing the ground.  Wilson walks through them and hands an umbrella to an old woman, he tells her to take everyone who wants to go across the bridge and they'll be safe.  But he won't be coming with them.

Three days later, bombs are falling on Chinatown.  Wilson drinks his soup and looks out of the window and thinks to himself, "I was merely her caretaker. I had a good run.  But she will outlive us all".  And a bomb falls on where he is obliterating him bringing Wilson's story to an end.

Farewell Wilson.

AMINA, MOTHER OF ONE: Artist Cliff Chiang. Time to check in with Amina.  A rather lost young woman who was going to be a suicide bomber but was saved by Matty.  We last saw her living rough, but when we meet her now she seems to have improved her life in the meantime.  She's making coffee for herself in a nice flat.

She is listening to Radio Free DMZ, still broadcasting thanks to an EMP shield.  She peers out of the window and sees a baby in a car seat sitting alone out in the open in the middle of the street.  She rushes down there and picks the seat and baby up and takes them back to her flat.  Just in time as well, a bomb falls where the baby just was.

Amina finds a baby.

The baby stays fast asleep even as the explosion rocks the room. Amina holds the radio to the child's ear and realises it's deaf.

Amina: "... I know you can't hear me, and this is probably a really weird thing to say... but enjoy the silence.  It's a bad night out there".

As she sits holding the baby she thinks about her past, from a middle class girl headed for NYU or Columbia to a radicalised and manipulated terrorist.

Her parents died early on in the war, who she used to be died with them.   After her failed suicide bombing she "died" again, "my identity was compromised and destroyed, sacrificed by the ego of a stupid boy named Matty who didn't even know me".  She lost two years living rough, but after she voted for Parco she signed up for a housing program through the Delgado Nation and the architect Jamal.  They found structurally sound buildings for people and hooked them up with water and power.  She got lucky and was given a home in an old printing works.

Amina: "I came back, gradually, back into myself. Despite groups like Trustwell, the Free States, or Matty Roth's best efforts.  I spend my days and nights alone but I'm never lonely. And then... this happened and everything changes again".

She curls up with the baby on her bed, then hears a noise.  Three intruders enter, but she kills them with a shotgun and then pukes.

A fiercce Amina takes out three intuders.

She thinks how home invasions are nothing new especially since the Parco Nation security bailed.  The baby triggers an extreme survival response in her.   As she cleans up the blood she ruminates that there are too many children in the DMZ, one baby is one too many.   "We've gotten pretty good at turning a blind eye to the horrible shit that happens out there in the world.  Perhaps doubly so at home." 

She stand cuddling the kid, and wonders why she was to only one who went out a grabbed the kid. She remembers how indiscriminate violence can do funny things to a person's psyche.  It can cause extme paranoia and you begin to think everything is out to kill you. "Once you decide that what's the point?  What's the point of anything?" she thinks and starts bathing the baby.

Amina: "I came back from it by some miracle,  and if this sweet thing's mother can't take care of her child maybe this is my karmic duty?Not to jugde a despairing mother's decision, but simply to help? or maybe I'm redy to stop being alone alll this time".

Later, while the baby sleeps, Amina looks out of the windiw a hears a woman shouting "where is she?"  Amina sheds a tear.

She goes outside with the baby slung round her armed with a shotgun.  There are a few other gun toting gang members with her.  Amina demands to know why the mother left her baby in the road.   She thinks that it's hard not to become radicalised in this city, so why did she choose to come out. She could have stayed in, moved away and taken the baby and built a home in the new part of the city.

Amina: "I could have registered with the Red Cross or some NGO charity, maybe even got out of the city.  I hear mothers with small children sometimes get special permission."

The mother holds a gun to Amina's forehead and demands her child back.  Amina asks her why she left the baby.   It all pours out of the woman,  she couldn't stand every little thing in the universe threatening her.   She lost her hearing two months ago because of the bombing and cried for nine days straight.  "I just can't protect her from any of it anymore" and she slumps to the ground, head bowed.

Amina hands the baby back.

The men threaten to shoot Amina, she ignores them and shows the mother that the baby isn't crying.  She hands her back saying she fed and bathed her.  The woman holds the baby tight and says to Amina "you don't think I deserve to be a mother, do you?"  Amina says the baby needs its mother and that she knows what she almost lost.  As they leave, we end this story with Amina thinking:

Amina: "I've gone to hell and back, sold my soul a few times over, and somehow came out the other side intact.  How can I judge anyone?  None of us was meant to live this sort of life. The scars and psychic damage will be with us forever, as will the guilt... and the respect."

A DECADE ON THE WALL: Artist Danijel Zezelj.  Another catch up and farewell to one of the more peripheral characters an aging street artist called "Decade Later".  We see him in a hoody walking through the ravaged streets.  Silently he gets out some spray paint and paints his tag onto a wall and walks off.  We flash back to him being taken to the U.S. army Shea Stadium prison, "I was arrested for bullshit reasons, framed by old friends who refused to accept my neutrality".

As he is placed in a cell, he thinks how his way of coping with the war, paintng, hitting parties and walking the streets as normal, "being an artist: real world rules need not apply.  Then they bashed all my teeth in.  And broke me completely". He had to suffer endless trips to the dentist to remove the shattered remains:

Decade: "The injections.  The pain due to the injections.  The vibrations from the bone drills. The coldness of the implants. The constant taste of blood... all horrible.  The worst thing is no one spoke a word to me the entire time.  Not a single word.  I gave them everything they asked of me.  And they just kept taking".

He confessed everything he knew, made guesses, speculated, embellished stories, while leaving himself out best he could.  Confirmed every rumour, every urban myth, offered to take them to people. 

Decade Later, tortured by the US.

"In short I cooperated... as long as I talked, they didn't torture me." They did test him once by giving him a pad and pen.  He drew a picture of the streets of Manhattan on his cell wall and got beaten half to death for that.  Once he got out of the infirmary he refused to clean it off.  They starved him for a week until a "disgusted" doctor checked him out and he was given liquid but no food.

He didn't die though. They were shipping off prisoners and emptying the prison.  Decade was considered to be no longer a threat and he could either leave Manhattan altogether or return.  No contest, he wanted to be returned to the DMZ.  The business with Parco, the nuke and the impending invasion doesn't put him off.  As he walks the steets he thinks, "the city is my home.  The city is my career.  It's always been that.  It's always been everything".

After they broke him he feels he owes the city, his friends and everyone he betrayed and if he ends his days bleeding out in the street "I'll happily pay that debt".   When he was in his cell he stared at the drawing he did, it became his identity.

Decade: "It might well have been a self portrait. Erasing it would have been giving up hope. Hope and faith and my history and what I've pledged my life to".

He walks into a gallery and prepares himself to continue what he started with that drawing in his cell.  The gallery walls are empty of paintings, he pulls out some black marker pens and starts to work. In a cartoony style he chronicles his whole history in one massive room spanning mural.

Pleased with his work he leaves tossing his pens aside and we end his story with this final thought, "The city is my DNA. The buildings are my bones.  The streets are my veins. And even if they break me and bleed me dry, I'll carry it for decades to come".

His work of a lifetime.  Will anyone see it?

MATTY'S WAR.  Artist David Lapham. We finally return to Matty, back in the DMZ as a Liberty News jornalist again.  He walks through the streets trying to avoid bombs, thinks to himself "have you heard? The war's ending".  Apparently everyone is saying the war is going to be ended soon.

Matty: "Time to heal the country, get it back on track. Where've you been?  Change is in the wind.  Can you feel it?  It just smells like fallout".

He is on the ground again to document the glorious transition from war to peace, "the eyes of the nation and the world are on me now.  I'm the last person who deserves this".

He enters some underground tunnels and knocks on a door with bundles of cash in his hands.  Two women open it and say "It's Matty mother-fucking Roth" and "come to save us all."  He is allowed inside where a crowd of people are huddled together.  He holds up his bag with his Liberty News laptop, broadcast software, maps, his badge and lots of cash.

He hands the bag over to them and holds up his phone saying it works despite the blackout, "anyone want to call their families on the government's dime?"  One of the men is an ex-Ghost of Central park who left because of ideological differences.   Matty wonders if he has something to do with it and will the guy smash his face into the wall.

Matty back in the warzone.

The anger passes, he tells Matty that it was never going to work out for Soames.  When things returned to normal a well armed militia led by an ex-FSA soldier who sold an atomic bomb was always going to cause problems.  But Soames fucked it up anyway, "hope he rots in hell" he says.  Matty says Soames is alive and the man shows anger again.

Matty mingles some more, a woman asks for his press badge which Matty says she can have "might be more trouble than it's worth though". She says she can handle it. She walks off and a huge man, one of Parco's old guards looms over him demanding to know where he is. Matty stammers that he's probably dead.

The man asks if he is bugged and Matty says the bag probably has one and the phone has GPS.  The man asks if he is "gonna fuck us royally like before?  Any more of my friends gonna die because of you?"  Matty calls the man "Del" and says he hope he won't screw anyone over.

Del: "Shit... I always believed you.  Always in way to deep to be faking.  Always too cool to be running some kind of scam. Take this.  It might not be here and it might not be tonight, but it's only a matter of time before someone takes a shot at you"

And he offers Matty a pistol. Matty considers it and Del's words.  He did it all because "it was fun. I believed it all". Because of that attitude it's got to come back on him, maybe a bullet, maybe something else.  "But I gave up the press pass for a reason, and I feel like this reason started the first time I picked up a gun" and he refuses to take it and Del wanders off.

He goes and washes his face when a deaf girl comes up to him,  She was Julliard student who had her eardrums blown out on Day 204. She plays guitar by feeling the rhythm of the strings in her chest and Matty sits and listens to her play.  He wonders if she knows who he is, "but she's not asking for anything.  Except for the company."

Matty enjoys some music.

He goes and watches the people using his laptop and sharing out the money.  A man sneers they are vultures.    Matty said he did give it to them.   The man says that "you give constantly and they treat you like shit because it wasn't more".

The man says he and Matty are alike, neither of them want to be there. He says some of the neighbourhoods are better than they were before, that the violence levels have decreased in places compared to what it was before.  Annoyed Matty says "I didn't think people like you existed anymore".   And he pushes away the man yelling "fuck off" when he doesn't get the hint.

Matty demands to why he is even here.  The man shouts that he has a twelve-million pound townhouse not two blocks away which he can't get to because he'll be attacked.   His yacht is now at the bottom of the Hudson.  Who knows what has happened to his house in the Hamptons, he used to have a wife and kids, "I used to have a life! Now I don't and everyone's fault but mine!"

Matty starts to say they are all in it together, but the man interrupts saying some have suffered more than others.  The people out there trying to live their lives in squalor are stupid, and Matty isn't someone who wants to live like that.  Matty says maybe not but not for the shame reasons the man has. "Liar! Fucking Liar" the man yells at him and everyone turns to look at him.

Morning arrives.  Everyone is asleep bar Matty who ventures outside as no bombs are dropping.  He starts climbing, thinking about events as he does so.  The was is going to end, we've had the preamble.

Matty: "How do you end a war like this one?  One where you are the population, where you still have to live with the people you conquered? Best answer: As quickly as possible.  You break the back of the opposition and get it over and done with".  As good and answer as anyone's come up with, anyway."

He reflects that the FSA for unknown reasons have been sitting out the past two years of conflict.   The U.S. is a wounded animal, it needs to charge or it'll die. How many lives of the remaining New Yorkers will be sacrificed in the end?  He reaches the top of the water tower he's been climbing and there he looks out across the city and thinks:

Matty: "I just wanted to see it one last time, all at once like this. Before whatever's coming comes.  I hope I still recognise it afterwards."

Matty reaffirms his faith in the people of the DMZ.

End of volume.  Five very diverse stories.  Cal's is an interesting one, if because I have learned he's behaving somewhat illegally in the DMZ despite ostensibly being part of the U.S. military.  A strange paraniod man who freaks out when Zee intuits who and what he really is, spinning paranoid fantasies about all around him and yet when challenged as to why he carries a gun by an innocent woman he can't do anything but flee.  Wilson's story is a sad one, he's been a great character but when he realises the conflict has grown bigger than just handling local militias and gangs he gets to look after his people by ordering to them to leave while salvaging his pride torching and dumping the bribes.  Dying with Chinatown, going out like a badass calmly drinking soup was the correct way to say farewell to him and it's notable he's the final person who was part of the nuke deal to be dealt with by the U.S. Amina's story though melancholy is also inspiring.  She managed to drag herself out of the lowest point a human can end up in, find her true self again and settle down in a nice flat.  It's also nice to know Parco's administration did more than just acquire a nuke, it rehomed people in safe buildings.  He interactions with the baby really tug at the heartstrings as does the broken woman's reasons for leaving.  Hopefully one day Amina will find someone to care about, but at least as she says being alone doesn't mean she's lonely.  Decade Later's story is another one that can be seen as uplifting even in grim circumstances.  The torture carried out by the U.S. military is shocking and it's totally understandable why he's break.  His defiant chronicaling of his entire life in an old art gallery has a strange beauty to it, the man loves the city more than anything and even on it's knees he'll always be part of it.  Finally with Matty we get an odd little tale, his immediate giving away of his Liberty News kit is one way of getting people to trust him, and his climb up to of the water tower to gaze upon the city gets us ready to lead into the penultimate volume, Free States Rising.  Join me in a few days to find out how the war escalates.

The Punisher: Franken-Castle (Dark Reign: The List, The Punisher #11-16, Franken-Castle #17-21, Dark Wolverine #88-89) PART TWO

"Quit squirming, you crazy sonofabitch.  We already had this dance!! We know how it ends." - Daken

Time to wrap up the Franken-Castle storyline. In the first part of this tale Frank Castle aka The Punisher was trying to kill Norman Osborn who set Wolverine's son Daken to kill him.  Which he did.  He sliced Fank into pieces but those peices were reassembled and given life again by some desperate monsters who were being hunted by a man called Hellsgaard and a small army of Japanese monster hunters.  After overcoming his initial reluctance, Frank took out most of the army and with the help of Manphibian banished Hellsgaard to the limbo dimension he had planned to use to dispose of the bodies of the monsters he killed inside.  However Frank was very badly injured in the battle and this half of the storyline picks up after he has spent some time recovering.  His next job now the monsters are safe is to extract his revenge against Daken.  But Daken is an accomplished fighter with claws and a healing factor just like his father. So defeating him will be no easy task, and how will Frank regain his normal human appearance?  Read on to find out.  Franken-Castle is written by Rick Remender with a variety of artists, Dark Wolverine is written by Daniel Way and Majorie Liu with art by Stephen Segovia and Paco Diaz.

This first chapter is drawn by Roland Boschi. We begin with Frank laid out in Morbius's operating table with Morbius saying there is nothing more he can do.  The Muummy says they have other options, and they owe it to Frank because he refused to abandon him, because "he wouldn't let Hellgaard's massacre go unanswered".  So reluctantly fetches the Bloodstone and places it inside Frank's chest saying it will regenerate him over time and it will also keep the stone safe.  Morbius says it's power could make him very dangerous if he doesn't take his synaptic bonding pills and goes on a rampage. The Mummy says they owe him a chance at life, Morbius agrees but says if he is wrong:

Morbius: "We will be responsible for creating the worst monster this world has ever known".

Then we jump to one month later.  Frank is still out cold.  Henry has been taking care of him all this time.  He wakes up grumbling about the music Henry is listening to.

Such gratitude!

Henry tells him he shouldn't be moving around just yet. Frank asks Henry if he has found them any work.  This irritates Henry who starts ranting about all the crap he's been put through over the past couple of months.  After he watched Frank die, then he showed up while Henry was sleeping and frightened the life out of him, then he was dragged into the battle with Hellsgaard and this ended up with him living in a sewer nursing Frank back to health.

"You find us some work?" repeats Frank. Henry says he has not because he's been cleaning his bedpans, watching his sutures, feeding him applesauce and juice and trying to set up a base in the Morlock hole they're living in.  He's been tending to him like he his mother and he doesn't know why.  So now the sarcastic crap has to end.  Frank pauses, then apologises and calls Henry a "good kid".   Now he will he find him some work?

He walks out into the Monster Metropolis and Manphibian walks with him, telling him after the assault on Hellsgarrd's castle there were "complications" and he shows Frank the prisoners they took. They don't know what to do with them and thought Frank might have some ideas.  Frank puts a gun in Manphibian's hands and walks off.  But Manphibian tells the panicking prisoners he isn't going to shoot them.

Frank is out and about driving his motorbike.  Henry tells him over the radio he's putting some missions together for him. Frank arrives at the graveyard his family are buried in.  He kneels by his wife's grave and touches the cold stone. Then suddenly two ninjas attack him.  Frank tells them they crossed a line and grabs one by the leg and smacks the other one with him.

A touching moment.

He shoots one and holds the broken body of the other upside-down and asks who he reports to.  He is about to spill the beans when a woman in a black catsuit and mask shoots him in the head with a sniper rifle and then speeds off. Frank jumps on his bike and goes back to base telling Henry to track her and also to set up a satellite to evaporate anyone who touches their graves.

Back at base, Henry says it all traces back to a "Lady Gorgon" who was one of the people who tried to kill Frank when Henry's dad "Jigsaw" put a bounty on him a few months ago.  Because she failed she was cast out of "The Hand" a ninja clan who get up to all sorts of shenanigans in the Marvel Universe.  He's found her, and she is in Tokyo. Frank tells him to gather all the intel for everyone on his list, he's off to Tokyo.

The next chapter is drawn by Jefte Paolo.  Lady Gorgon is contemplating how to get her and her team back into The Hand's good graces.  She has a sword called the "Izanami-no-Mikoto". It has a gem on it that glows when it predicts it will draw blood.  She believes delivering the sword to Yoshiokya will restore them to their rightful positions in The Hand.  A message is delivered to her, information on a man she killed to get Frank's attention during their previous encounter.  This means he's here and out for revenge.

Lady Gorgon in just her undies?

The room goes dark and Frank guns everyone down bar Lady Gorgon who lights the room with the blade. She runs to the helicopter and finds Frank waiting.  He gives her a short history of the man she killed, a man who ended up a vagrant.  She says killing him did him a favour.  Frank says "I'm here to return it."

She tries to dominate his mind, but the jumble it's in now means she can't.  So she psychically links him with the ninjas that jump down to kill him "you will suffer each death".  Frank doesn't care and hacks them all up.  He grabs Lady Gorgon by the throat and says he won't give her an honourable death in battle.  Then he tosses her off the roof.  She survives the fall though and Frank jumps down after her.  

She tries to psyche him out by linking him with the terrified driver of the car she is on.  He crashes his bike in it and pulls the driver free before the car blows.  Henry is still tracking her, she's gone to the heart of The Hand's district.  She barges into Master Yoshiokya room where he is meditating and offers him the sword.  He tells her to kill the man who hunts her, only then will she be able to rejoin.

Lady Gorgon, neutralised.

Frank runs a gauntlet of gunfire through The Hand building until he reaches Lady Gorgon and Yoshikya.  Before Lady Gorgon can do anything though, Yoshiokya runs her through. Frank walks off telling Henry to cross Lady Gorgon off the list and open Daken's file.

We then crossover with Dark Wolverine, art by Stephen Segovia and Paco Diaz.  Daken is in a sushi bar being fussed over by some girls while he looks bored. He gets up and goes to the toilets and stabs a man inside there.  He tells the other man standing there terrified that he is to call his primary client - The Silver Samurai - they need to meet tonight at his office about matters that can't be discussed over the phone.  He leaves the man vomiting in fear.

He leaves the restaurant and detects Frank following him and attacks him from behind.  "You look different.  Have you had some work done?" he sneers at Frank who answers him with a laser to the head that Daken just manages to dodge.   He says to Frank that he gets the pleasure of chopping him to bits all over again.  Frank says if he is trying to piss him off, it won't work - "Little boy, I'm always pissed off."

Let battle commence!

As they trade blows Daken notices that Frank's chest is glowing. He asks what it is.  "Wouldn't you like to know." responds Frank. Then rather graphically Frank snaps Daken's arms and smashes him through the roof of the building they are fighting on.  Daken says Frank used to be more gentle, Frank says he's not that nice anymore:

Frank: "But I'll do you a favour.  The same favour you did for me.  I'll take it slow.  And save all the important parts for last."
He pulls out a knife while Henry tries to warn him over the radio about his vitals. Then  Frank notices one of the people in the same room as him and Daken holding her son saying "please don't hurt us."

Frank punches a hole in the wall and goes through into an underground tunnel, Daken follows so they are away from innocent civilians now. Frank takes a pill while Henry scolds him over the radio.  "Stop whining" says Frank.  "I hate you" responds Henry.  "No.  You don't" replies Frank looking a little pensive.  

Frank: "You don't know what it's like to hate.  To have your entire life become nothing more than an expression of hate.  Nothing else matters.  Nothing else can compare, or taste as sweet".

And we see Daken having regenerated his broken arms clench his fists and snarl.  Then we're back in the Franken-Castle series with art by Tony Moore again. Daken has changed into his brown Wolverine costume and is tracking Frank through the sewers.

Daken: "Stale.  Blood of an old man too dumb to know he's already dead... because I'm coming Frank.  I'm coming to kill you all over again!"

He shouts down the sewer that did anything The Punisher ever do change anything?  He also knows what's in Franks chest and he wants it.   Jumps down and lands on some disturbed ground and it collapses into a hole full of bladed spikes. Frank comes and stands over him.  He bellows at Frank that he'll kill him again. Frank says he didn't kill him, he was just the "gun I used to shoot myself"  But he is feeling better now.

Inconvenient brain spasm.

And he drops a grenade into the pit and walks away from the explosion.   He readies a rifle to shoot Daken's head off as he climbs out, but then collapses.  Henry says his heart rate is going wild. He runs off holding his head saying "attacks. Brain... C-closer.. Upredic-table". Henry reassures him the Bloodstone is eventually going to heal him but maybe he should put off this revenge tip until it does.

Frank takes a pill and pulls himself together. He picks up his gun and says he is going to kill Daken, so Henry can help or shut up.  Henry says he'll help but there has been a complication.  Before he can tell Frank what it is, Daken attacks and cuts off Franks ear.  He knocks Frank down and rips open his chest to reveal the Bloodstone. He stabs Frank in the throat but Frank is unphased and grabs Daken by the neck hurling him through a wall, across a station platform and onto the train tracks.

But as Frank comes after him, Daken slices off his power supply and knocks Frank onto the tracks.  He tries to get the Bloodstone again, but Frank grabs him and a track and electricity surges through him electrocuting Daken.  Then a train appears, Frank jumps out of the way but it hits Daken and runs him over.  He is still mobile and staggers off to heal up.

He runs into a building site and thinks rambling thoughts about the Bloodstone and how Frank is "a gift-bearing angel resurrected and sent down to me.  Straight from Black Heaven".  Then Frank swings towards him on a crane hook.  Frank knocks him onto some metal poles running him through as he remembers their battle when Daken killed him.  Daken snaps the poles and charges at Frank who riddles him with bullets then slices him up with a circular saw.

So satisfying.

Finally Daken stops moving.  Frank grabs him by the hair and takes him to a pit where he has readied some concrete to be poured.  He is about to throw Daken in the pit saying he'll probably suffocate in there when suddenly two sets of claws are stabbed through his chest and he collapses.  He turns and sees Wolverine standing there. 

Wolverine: "Kid's a knucklehead.  But I can't have you killin' my boy Castle".

Back in the Dark Wolverine series, same artist as before. Wolverine tells Frank to get lost before things turn ugly, "too late for that" says Frank and they start fighting.   Wolverine slices off two of Frank's fingers.  Henry tries to warn him things are going bad but Frank can't hear.

Oh great. Wolverine.

Wolverine tells Frank that Daken isn't worth it.  Frank refuses to back down.  Wolverine slashes and stabs him saying he knows he's not himself right now and warns him Daken is after the stone.  Frank smashes Wolverine into a wall stunning him and asks Henry to find Daken. The Japanese police are on their way, Henry is doing his best to sabotage their comms but Frank needs to get out of there now.

Frank picks up Wolverine and is about to dump him in the concrete pit when Wolverine comes too and slices off Franks fingertips saying he won't let him near Daken.  Then he collapses and Frank tells him "he isn't worth your protection".  Henry finally gets through to Frank that he needs to leave and Frank starts to walk away from the unconcious Wolverine.  He drops down into the sewers and climbs up some way away.

And he is hit by a truck driven by Daken.  Almost out cold, Frank can't do anything to stop Daken cutting the Bloodstone out of his chest.  "So sorry Frank" says Daken, "you lose again".

Daken about to take the stone.

We return to the Franken-Castle series, this issue with art by Tony Moore, Paco Diaz and John Lucas. Frank is almost unconcious but recognises the sound of Daken laughing and rage consumes him.  "I need to kill him.  Turn that laughter to choking.  Gargling.  Begging" he thinks, but the "world goes drunk and the kid has my ace card".

The Japanese police have them surrounded.  They tell Daken to raise his hands and drop to his knees.  Daken says he will in a moment and punches Frank in the face.   Then he starts laying into the police, not noticing that Frank has managed to get in the truck.  Frank then hits him with it and crushes Daken into another vehicle.  The police surround Frank, but he doesn't speak Japanese and they don't understand his warnings about Daken...

...Who starts tossing cops about like they were nothing. He yanks one out of a car and runs his claws through his head, saying he sees them thinking about their terrible life choices, not too different from what he sees in Frank's face:

Daken: "Dusty old turd from an entitled generation doesn't know when to shuffle off to the old folks home."

And he tosses Frank into a neon sign which collapses on top of Frank. Daken drags him out continually trash talking Frank about his age, "a sad ego pleading for relevancy" which was what lead Frank to target Osborn a man "fantastically out of your league".   He leans over Frank saying he couldn't even protect his family when the cops open fire on him.  He runs into cover and where the bullet wounds were suddenly there are tumourous skin growths.  Confused he tries slicing one off making him yelp in pain.

Frank really likes to vent.

Frank crawls towards a live electrical cable hoping a jolt will get him on his feet, but exhausted he can't make it. Then Wolverine appears and jams the cables in him which gets Frank back on his feet.  Wolverine says it's Frank's fault Daken has the Bloodstone and now he's going to help getting it back off him. Frank rages at him:

Frank: "Your boy's a ruthless, blood-soaked monster!  How far's he gotta go before you do somethin'?  The cur's gotta be put down - and you know it."

Wolverine just reponds with silence. Daken hijacks a helicopter but Frank and Wolverine jump on it  and in the struggle the helicopter crashes into the roof of a building.

Daken climbs out of the wreckage to come face-to-face with Frank's big gun.  Frank says all his big talk was funny coming from Daken.

Frank: "Reputation coattail rider, dressed up like someone else, lecturing me about overcompensation.  I built my own reputation.  Ground up. You?  Snuck into the show on another man's back.  You're just a poser".

Daken is covered in more fleshy growths.  As he lunges at Frank in a rage, Frank punches a grenade inside him and it blows.  Daken then explodes into a mass of lumpy flesh  which ends up covering the whole rooftop

Wolverine asks what Frank did. Frank says the Bloodstone is a healing relic, he figured when he saw the first tumours it might react this way to Daken's healing factor.  "Your idiot kid gave himself super lupus".  Wolverine tells Daken what a disappointment he is as he cuts the Bloodstone out of the mass of flesh.  Daken says "likewise".  Wolverine then puts the Bloodstone back into Frank's chest.

Wish I had a Bloodstone in my chest.

Frank recovers enough to stand and says he won't stop coming for Daken until he's dead and if Wolverine wants to keep him safe he'll lock him away somewhere. "I plan to" says Wolverine. But he turns and finds Daken has cut himself free.  Frank has gone too leaving Wolverine alone, "right" he says and leaves as well.

Final chapter now, art by Dan Brereton, Andrea Mutti and Luca Malisan. Frank has decided to go and heal on an uninhabited island. Actually it's Monster Island but it was the closest Henry could find. Henry tells him they can't have him around people until he gets a hold of himself.

Henry: "Dig in - recover,  The Bloodstone will do its work if you let it.  Once you're mended you hit me back... we'll come get you".
The line goes dead and Henry says Frank won't be happy about this.  Morbius says it was their only option after the mess in Tokyo. Henry wonders if he'll be safe there, Morbius says it's not his safety he's worried about.

We then jump to some weeks later.  Frank is fully healed and human again.  His mind though is in bad shape.  He can think of nothing but vegeneance, on everyone. Especially those who left him here.  The Bloodstone is feeding his revenge fueled nature and he is mentally talking to his dead wife Maria all the time.

Frank:  "I am Frank Castle.  I am The Punisher.  I am going to fix the world".

At the Hall of Monsters the assembled squabble over whose fault it was that Frank's gone as mad as he has.  Then Elsa Bloodstone, the English monster hunter, daughter of Ulysses Bloodstone and one of the stars of the amazing NEXTWAVE series appears saying she'll help them fix the mess they made.

Fabulous hair Frank!

Frank is brooding over his plans to lay waste to the criminals of the world while eating by a fire.  Then Manphibian appears and gently tries to explain that the Bloodstone is clouding his thinking and turning him crazy.  As Frank's inner voice tells him to kill Manphibian his words start to get through to him.  Then Elsa fires on him, but Morbius yanks the gun and she misses her shot.

Manphibian tries to calm him down but all Frank can think is he brought someone here to kill him.  He and Elsa get into a punch-up.  She holds her own saying she's fought Frankenstein and that Frank is no Frankenstein.  Manphibian, The Mummy and Jack argue about what to do and Jack decides to take Frank on directly.  Frank fires on him but bullets don't phase Jack, then the Mummy uses bandages to smack Frank into a tree and Elsa fires a bullet that goes through him.

He and Elsa struggle and Frank pushes her face into Man-Thing's hand and she burns at his touch.  Jack snatches her up and dunks her in water.  Frank asks why he cares about a monster hunter.  Jack says she doesn't deserve to die.  She's just doing what her father taught her, "I don't agree with her methods, but her intentions are clean".   Frank says if he kills her he'll be saving the lives of all the monsters she'll kill in the future. 

The Mummy: "It is not your responsibility to kill anyone capable of crime.  That is the road of a tyrant.  You kill those who prey on the innocent.  The stone is destroying your ability to see the difference.  Taking away your one redeeming quality...that you only kill those who deserve it".
Silently Frank pulls the Bloodstone out of his chest and gives it to Elsa, then he turns his back on all of them and walks away saying "we're done."

Seriously Frank. Learn to gratitude.

Weeks pass. Some young men are talking in incomprehensible youth speak on the streets of New York.  They go upstairs to a flat and inside they find Frank in his Punisher outfit. He tells them to both sit down or he'll kill them slow.  When he has finished talking with them, one can leave.

He tells them to put their guns on the table, "I understand one of you recently graduated to cop killer" he tells them.  They both accuse each other, but Frank says the cop was killed with a .357 Magnum.  That leaves G-Dey off the hook.  He then tells G-Dey to pick up the Magnum and shoot his friend in the head.  The terrified G-Dey does so.

Then Frank tells G-Dey he is going to send a message for him. He puts a sign round his neck and tells him to stand by the window and G-Dey "leaves" the room in a hail of bullets, landing on the hood of a car and the sign has the Punisher's skull symbol on it and the word "BACK" written on it.  And that brings The Franken-Castle storyline to a close.

Yes, most definitely back.

While I prefer the first half of the storyline more thanks to its varied slection of cool characters and more consistent art, this second half is still very enjoyable even though it is about 90% fight scenes.  Daken is the Scrappy Doo of the Marvel Universe as far as I am concerned and seeing him getting an extended beatdown and a vicious verbal assault from Frank that skewers him for being an poor copy of his incredibly overrated father is very satisfying.  Of course Frank is being a little hypocritical when he tells Wolverine his son is an unrepentant killer who needs to be put down, because Frank is pretty damn unrepentant even if he covers himself with the figleaf of only killing those who in his eyes deserve it. Still it was cool that he managed to bring down Daken using his superior brain, even as messed up as it was it was still able to recognise a way to use the Bloodstone to incapacitate Daken in a huge flesh explosion similiar to what happened to Tetsuo at the end of the Akira film adaptation. This second half suffers a bit from the art changing styles so dramatically, but kudos to the writers of Dark Wolverine for making their issues work seamlessly with the Franken-Castle ones.  I said this in my summation of Part One but I cannot understand why people hate this chapter in Frank's life.  To me it is everything awesome about comicbooks, only in comicbooks could such a cheeky way be used to bring a character back to life and change him so drastically and the prior existence of The Bloodstone means there wasn't even an asspull required to bring him back, just an item with plenty of prior history in the more monster orientated annals of the Marvel Universe. The whole fourteen issue storyline has been collected in one bumper volume which is where I have got this from and is a great and good value read for Punisher fans with a sense of the absurd. Like me.