Gritty and Dull
This comic just plain fell flat. I mean the art was pretty good, some of the background scenery looked pretty cool - it was well drawn and well colored - but even that was kind of annoying. A lot of MAX comics have the tendency to shadow stuff a lot, especially characters' faces, which can get pretty annoying. It's kinda like how some movie scenes are really dark and you can't really see what's going on. For example when I was reading "Foolkiller White Knights" Foolkiller meets up with Punisher, and whenever they showed a panel of one of their faces I could barely tell which was which. However, that's more of a critique on MAX as a whole and not just this issue, so I digress. Anyways, the comic was super bloody and gritty, but it was just blood and grittiness for the sake of being bloody and gritty. The problem is that it lacked substance, it didn't really have any driving force behind it to make the gritty, bloody, gore worth while. It seemed as if it was trying so hard to be rated R that it forgot to have any spark. I feel that a lot of MAX comic books also try WAY too hard to be R just because that's what MAX comics is, which doesn't really make sense to me, I mean you shouldn't have to fill your comic book with blood, gore and sex just to make it fit the MAX quota. If you don't already have a story-line that is just darker on it's own, then what's the point of even going to MAX? Don't try and fill it up with explicit content just to make it darker, if it's not gritty just let it not be gritty, and if you want a grittier reimagining of a character's story, then make the storyline itself darker, don't just fill it with blood, gore and sex. That's exactly what this issue did, just filled up on the blood, gore and darkness with not a lot of interesting, original story. Oh, and did I mention they pretty much just made The Foolkiller The Punisher? He looks more like The Punisher, he dresses more like The Punisher and he acts more like the Punisher. Yeah, there are some differences, and those differences become more pronounced in "Foolkiller White Knights" - which is a much better storyline by the way - where Punisher and Foolkiller meet. However, they didn't need to make him more like Punisher, it's not like Punisher isn't still relevant, I guess it could've been to make Foolkiller more relevant because he isn't as popular a character but I don't think ripping off another character would make him more popular. Over all, this issue wasn't very good, but then again it is just the first issue in the miniseries, and even though I rated it two stars, I don't think it completely deserves that. If I could have, I would've given it two-and-a-half stars but I can't and it wasn't quite worth three.