x35's The Punisher Annual #1 - Evolutionary Jihad review

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    Civil Evolution

    AF Reviews: Evolutionary War
    AF Reviews: Evolutionary War

    Evolutionary Jihad by Mike Baron and Mark Texeira marks the second chapter in the Evolutionary War crossover of 1988 and stars the Punisher going up against the High Evolutionary's forces.

    I'm not a Punisher fan, I've never been a Punisher fan and I don't think I ever will be. The story is just a color-by-numbers Punisher plot that also struggles to link the Punisher to the grander scheme of the Marvel Universe as often is the case. The plot is the Punisher is down south to kill a drug lord when the High Evolutionary's stormtroopers come marching in eliminating everyone in the village because they're drug addicts and blemish on the genetic advancement of mankind. Witnessing the mass genocide, the Punisher has to join forces with the very drug lord he came to kill in order to fight off the Evolutionary's squad.

    This is bad. I just don't like the Punisher. As a supporting character or antagonist to a hero, he's fine but as a protagonist of his own book, he's incredibly dull. He's a monotone, one-dimensional character and this story feels like a Punisher story I've read ten times already. It's almost like Mike Baron ran down a checklist of Punisher clichés when plotting this... you have Punisher in a foreign locale, you have Punisher awkwardly having to team-up with the person he came to kill, you have Punisher thrown into the mix of a large-scale crossover and being completely lost within it. In Baron's defence, he is actually the "innovator" of all these cliché's and in fact I think this is the first time the Punisher starred as part of a crossover in his own book.

    The problem is, with most Punisher crossover issues, this isn't part of a crossover. This is just a Punisher issue with a few High Evolutionary troopers forced into the role of villains. Take away the Evolutionary War banner and it could just as easily be rewritten as a rival drug cartel or corrupt police officers or whatever. Other than one or two pages that do serve to tenuously link these attacks to the High Evolutionary's plan, there's not much at all to do with the story here. The High Evolutionary doesn't even appear.

    The saving grace? Early art by Mark Texeira. He draws a good Punisher and in general the artwork for the story is solid. It fits the tone of the Punisher well, it's just a shame that it goes to waste on such an unimpressive and weak story. The art certainly makes it easier to read through what is otherwise an unremarkable story.

    This isn't a great issue and it really isn't a great issue of the Evolutionary War. The presence of something doesn't necessarily make it part of a wider story. This is often the case with Punisher crossovers, still to this day, but this just feels like a Punisher story with some Evolutionary stuff latched on to attempt to make the character part of something he's not. As the second chapter to the Evolutionary War crossover, this is a spectacular misfire as it doesn't really have all that much to offer and doesn't tease anything coming up in the storyline. I will admit I did think that the story had some mileage in it up until the point where it descended into cliché territory by having Punisher team up with the drug lord he came to kill. Oh, and yes, he kills the drug lord in the end.

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