There’s a line in the letter from the editor, Drew Baumgartner, at the end of Daredevil & Punsher: The Devil’s Trigger #5 where he specifically thanks writer Jimmy Palmiotti for fitting this story between continuity raindrops, and I have to agree – that might be the most impressive part of this whole story, especially issue #5. The Devil’s Trigger manages to feel like it takes place today, like it takes place at the height of the Marvel Knights era, and like it’s the late ’80s all at the same time.
Punisher and Daredevil have finally cracked the mystery that’s been haunting them all series: the corrupt judge who has been commuting sentences behind the scenes and organizing a new crime family to take the reins has been revealed to be Marco Gnucci, the patriarch of the Gnucci crime family who faked his death years earlier.
Marvel
Thinking he’s got the drop on only two vigilantes, he and his burgeoning new criminal enterprise lock themselves in a safe room and sic a team of mercenaries on Daredevil and Punisher. They methodically work their way through the hired muscle. Gnucci and his lieutenants panic and use an escape tunnel that reveals the true nature of their characters, and it all leads to a climax that makes the book.
As entertaining as the physical fight that Daredevil and Punisher go through is, the moral fight these two have been struggling with all series finally comes to a head. What’s really at odds here are the philosophies of these two characters. Daredevil thinks these criminals create rot in a system and need to be excised to remove corruption, and Punisher thinks that bad people deserve punishment.
I personally lean towards Daredevil’s approach, but only because Punisher hardly makes an argument besides ‘bad people are bad’. That said, he does operate with more moral clarity than recent Punisher stories and I think that’s a strength of the book, even if it is underdeveloped.
Setting this story out of modern times removes a lot of the baggage that comes along with these characters. The recent Daredevil comics put Matt in an unenviable position as a guardian roping in the personifications of the seven deadly sins and any given day there are headlines that make it clear why the Punisher is a tough character to root for. None of that weight is here, hell, 9/11 hasn’t even happened yet in this story.
Marvel
This may be a five-issue miniseries, but every issue has a slight time jump from the last and does a good job of catching you up to the point where you’d be forgiven for thinking it feels more like five loosely connected one-shots. Thankfully though, when you get the whole story, you see a satisfying ending.
Even though it’s a shorter series, there is still a tag team on art duties. The pencil work of Tommaso Bianchi and Mario Santoro are similar enough that it doesn’t really stand out in this particular issue, and that’s probably because of great color work by Bryan Valenza, who brings a consistency across the two artists. There’s nothing crazy going on layout wise, just dynamic compositions that promote clear and concise storytelling and cool action poses that really highlight the differences between the two lead characters.
There’s a promise of more story to come if readership demands it, and I hope they do. This is an above average miniseries that tells its story like a fun action movie from the early 2000s that you’d look back fondly on, and ask “why don’t we get 10 of these a year like we used to?”. Daredevil and Punisher are who they are, unapologetically, and the tension from their wildly different approaches to justice and judgment makes it a tense ride with a conclusion that feels complete, but like there’s still some meat on the bone.
You must be logged in to post a comment.