CBR senior staff writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for over fifteen years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post, Vulture and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
Over 25 years ago, the Marvel Knights line of comics helped change Marvel history forever, and one of the original creators of the line, Joe Quesada, is helping to reshape the Marvel Knights line with Marvel Knights: The World to Come, a new series set in the future that is written by another one of the original Marvel Knights creators from the late 1990s, Christopher Priest. Jimmy Palmiotti was the other founder of Marvel Knights, though, and he is back with a new Punisher series set in this new Marvel Knights: The World to Come continuity.
In the first issue of the series, the Punisher was hunting down a dangerous criminal, Armando Molerro, but in the process, he ran up against Molerro's top enforcer, known as El Zombie. The Punisher was unable to kill El Zombie, and was taken prisoner. The Punisher was then brainwashed by Molerro to become the NEW El Zombie. In this CBR exclusive preview of Marvel Knights: Punisher #2, by Palmiotti and artist Dan Panosian, we see whether the Punisher can be kept down for long.
MARVEL KNIGHTS: PUNISHER #2 (OF 4)
JIMMY PALMIOTTI (W) • DAN PANOSIAN (A/C)
VARIANT COVER BY MICHELE BANDINI
VARIANT COVER BY TBA
FRANK CASTLE – PRISONER?! It’s no easy task to capture Frank Castle, and what his enemies do to him in this issue is well beyond that. This comic will shock, disturb, and have you on the edge of your seat. Buckle up!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99
In the exclusive preview pages, we see the Punisher about to go on to a boat to commit more atrocities for his crimelord boss. However, the boat is in the middle of a storm. The Punisher, seeing as how he is alllllllll the way gone as "El Zombie," is not in the right frame of mind to be concerned about things like boat safety. So when he is warned about the storm, all he has to say is that he is El Zombie. That, of course, is the problem with breaking a guy down to the point where he will become a mindless killer for you, the "mindless" part sometimes causes problems.
The boat is then thrown for a loop by a series of lightning strikes in the water around it, and the Punisher is thrown overboard.
As the Punisher sinks into the water below, he relives the events of his life, including the more recent problems where he became the very thing that he was trying to hunt down and kill. However, something like a near-death drowning experience has a way of breaking through the clouds of mind control.
So at the end of the preview, as the Punisher struggles to get out of the water, we see that perhaps the Punisher has has broken free of his "El Zombie" programming. You'll have to pick up a copy of Marvel Knight: Punisher #2 next week, though, to find out if that IS what happens!
Source: Marvel
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