Comic Cuts 8 March 2019

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on these company profiles that I have been writing since December. I'm working on sixty-something of eighty, so another few weeks and I'll be on the job market again.

I should be hauling stuff out of boxes and putting it on Ebay, because I've always put it off "until I get some spare time". Well, my time might be going spare for some while, judging by the job market around here, so maybe I should be looking on this as an opportunity, not unemployment.

A couple of fun things from this week. We had pancake day on Wednesday rather than Tuesday, Mel cooking up some batter that tasted superb with lemon and sugar – some people go all-out these days with honey, syrup or red pepper & cheese filling, spicy beans, lettuce & avocado (I kid you not). Did you toss your batter, I hear you ask, and I say Ooooh, no, missus. Actually, yes, and despite the pancakes being thin and floppy, we both managed a couple of successful tosses. At least nothing ended up on the floor.

I'm also very pleased to say that I've managed to pick up a couple of books I've been looking out for and relatively cheaply. One is Satan Ltd. by Gwyn Evans, the third and final Bill Kelloway novel in a series that started with Hercules, Esq. I wrote a book about Evans – The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet – but I was always short of a few of his books in my collection. This fills one of the gaps and I have a second book on the way to fill another. I'm seriously thinking of reprinting some of his work for Kindle and in print form... something else to fill my ample spare time with!

Incidentally, the cover to my book on Evans used a colour rough of the Satan Ltd. cover. It was painted by Hynd G. Wolfe, an artist living in Hornsey in the 1930s with his mother and sister. Mother Alice V. Wolfe died in 1944, aged 78, and I can find her daughter, Alice V. E. Wolfe, at addresses in Hornsey in 1947-52, but can find no further trace of artist Hynd, nor his sister.I'll have to do a bit more digging when I get a chance.

With Mel away for the weekend, I was left to my own devices and took the opportunity to watch The Punisher. I loved the first season and the new season, out on Netflix a couple of months ago, didn't disappoint. Too often in comics, and in their TV and movie adaptations, the hero differentiates himself from the villain by not taking the villain's life at the end of the story.

This is fine in a kid's comic – who wants to waste a good villain? But not when the the majority of the audience are adults and your protagonists continue to make the decisions they made in the 1930s. You can't place your heroes in the real world and tell the audience "comics aren't just for kids anymore," and then ignore the real-world consequences of letting villains go, or jailing them only to have them escape time and time again.

(Don't forget, I'm a tree-hugging, Guardian-reading lefty and comments here apply only to comic books and their adaptations.)

I say, kill 'em all.

If Batman had snapped the neck of the Joker after their first meeting, think of the lives he would have saved. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bank tellers, police officers, innocent bystanders and even fellow criminals who would be alive today if only Batman had had the courage and foresight to just snap the neck of this monster with no empathy, no morals, and no regrets. No amount of therapy is going to make him safe to walk the streets... and, frankly, I'm surprised he doesn't face the death penalty every time he's captured. An insanity plea might work at first, but eventually a jury would have seen him for the cold, calculating monster he actually is.

How many times does he have to escape from Arkham Asylum to murder again before Batman decides that, in order to protect Gotham, it's better that the Joker doesn't survive their next encounter?

Which brings me to The Punisher. He has the attitude that the bad guys need to be killed before they kill you or others. He has a code that stops him from killing randomly. That's a code I can get behind.

(Again, I remind you that we're talking about comic book characters, not real life.)

The TV series has an advantage over, say, Gotham, or even some of its rapidly diminishing Netflix family of Marvel titles, in that the Punisher isn't fighting recognisable, iconic villains of the stature of The Joker, Penguin or The Riddler. His ongoing battle across seasons one and two is with Billy Russo, whose actions inadvertently led to Frank Castle's family being killed. Castle subsequently throws Russo through a glass window, giving him the jigsaw of deep facial scars that earn him his nickname in the comics (Jigsaw), although it isn't used on the TV series.

For the most part he's faced with (often literally) dozens of goons who are the red shirts of all action thrillers. The sidekicks and minions that can be slaughtered without anyone feeling anything for them. It can be done with style or with brute force, but rarely is it done with both quite as well as it is here. It lacks the balletic qualities of a John Woo or even a John Wick, but every brutal pummeling in the show is choreographed to maximize moments of bone-crunching horror.

The Punisher may overcome his enemies but he never escapes unhurt, and here is the difference between this show and other thudding heroes... Frank Castle is troubled by what he is, thinking himself a necessary evil in a violent world. He is aware that he is damaged. Compared to the old Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies, Jon Bernthal gives a nuanced performance worthy of an Oscar. I've enjoyed every one of his appearances, which started with Daredevil season 2 and grew from there.

There's only one season of Jessica Jones to go before the Netflix / Marvel collaboration ends. What a shame. I really wish that wasn't the case.