Punisher MAX: Six Hours to Kill

When Garth Ennis left “Punisher MAX,” the plan following his departure was to run three storylines by noted crime writers Greg Hurwitz, Duane Swierczynski, and Victor Gischler.  The prospect of having three lesser known writers follow in Ennis’ footsteps didn’t really thrill me and judging by the reviews, Hurwitz and Gischler’s stories didn’t really thrill anyone else either.  Now that I think about it, it’s probably not surprising that Swierczynski gave us the one story that was worth reading out of these three as he did a great job picking up from Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction on “The Immortal Iron Fist,” and did the best with what he was given on “Cable.” 

Here, he takes a familiar plot device in the form of criminals poisoning Frank Castle and promising to give him the antidote only if he’ll do their dirty work and puts a fresh spin on it.  The spin in this case being that Frank won’t compromise his mission and sees the titular time limit as a license to kill as many bad guys as he possibly can — survival be damned.  While we all know that he’ll survive his impending doom, Swiercyznski makes that inevitable reprise seem almost tragic in the way that Frank had almost reached the end of his quest only to find out that he was still trapped in the nightmare. 

This collection also features another story from Swierczynski and artist Michael Lacombe, “Force of Nature,” which has Frank putting the screws to three friends on the high seas in order to learn the details of their criminal organization.  It’s good stuff from both parties, and makes me look forward to anything else they do together, with the Punisher or not.