Punisher #7
Story:
Art:

Story and Pencils by Steve Dillon
Inks by Jimmy Palmiotti
Colors by Chris Sotomayoa

Published by Marvel/Marvel Knights
Price: $2.99

My Verdict: Ugh.

I have a theory about the whole December month-long Nuff Said nonsense that Marvel did. For those of you uninitiated, it's where they told the creative teams behind all of the books that they had to tell their issue without using any dialogue. No word balloons.

My theory is this: Marvel is so damn notorious for late books these days, they decided to give the writers a month off to get their shite together and catch up--and, marketing maniacs that they are, they turned this defect into a feature!

Now. Thankfully, I haven't been exposed to too much of this silliness. But I do pick up Punisher and so here we are. Smack dab in the middle of a story that we've seen fifteen hundred times before: Frank is after some guy. That's pretty much it. But this time--he's after him...(you ready?)...but not TALKING! Wow.

Now don't get me wrong. I like Steve Dillon. He was half of the team that gave us Preacher. I'm glad he got a chance to write a story about Frank. But did it have to be this one, complete with the splash page image that we've seen a hundred times: full on Frank, stoic lack of expression on his face, muzzle flash in foreground, shell casings flying? This is tired. This is beyond tired and in "exhausted" territory.

Can we please get a moratorium on wasting the readers' time with these "events" that interrupt things companywide? Please?