Writer: Steven Grant, with Jo Duffy
Artist: Mike Zeck and John Beatty, with Mike Vosburg
Colourist: Bob Sharen
Letterer: Ken Bruzenak
Price: $15.95
Publisher: Marvel Comics
ISBN: 0871353946

It's almost as if someone dragged Stan Lee and Jack Kirby out the back of the Marvel Comics offices and had them executed gangland-style.

Even now, month-to-month superhero comics are cosy places to visit. As you begin to know what to expect, the illusion of change becomes just that. Frank Miller kills off Elektra - twenty years later, she's enjoying her second ongoing title. Claremont and Byrne bury Phoenix, but resurrect Jean Grey a handful of years later. What is done can be undone. The Marvel Universe was (and still is) as familiar and comfortable as your childhood bed.

This is anything but the case with Frank Castle, aka the Punisher. Up until CIRCLE OF BLOOD's initial release in 1986, the character was seen as a violent manifestation of 'poetic justice', an angle still extant today - but under Miller on DAREDEVIL, Castle was written as a stone-cold lunatic; a nuisance with high-calibre weapons.

With CIRCLE OF BLOOD, Steve Grant and Mike Zeck at once fleshed out the character and boiled him down to his essence: if you're guilty, you're dead. A 180-degree turn from comfortable, one would imagine.

From page one, it's evident that CIRCLE OF BLOOD is as far removed from Lee's pithiness, Kirby's artistic flights of fancy, or Steve Ditko's stylised earthiness as Metallica is from Peter, Paul and Mary. The story opens with Castle being led to his cell on Ryker's Island, in order to begin a stint of prison time. It's a foregone conclusion that Castle will be part of a breakout - but it's one with an unexpected dividend. An agency known as the Trust offers Castle their backing, with the mandate being to wipe out organised crime - and all too willingly, Castle throws himself back into 'the war'. His mission, however, clashes with what the Trust has in mind.

CIRCLE OF BLOOD can be defined as a book with the impetus of (then-recent) socio-political history behind it - a history that dovetails with that of the comic book form. Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Bernie Goetz (the New York subway vigilante) - American cultural touchstones that the likes of Gerber, Englehart, Grell, Chaykin and others commented on in their work during the 70's and early 80's. With Ronald Reagan firmly entrenched in the White House come 1986, the reading audience was primed for a work that hit as hard as CIRCLE OF BLOOD did.

In fact, 'hard' is the operative word for the bulk of the narrative: hard characters, hard talk, hard shadows, and hard choices.

Frank Castle is, on the surface, a thoroughly distasteful character - brusque, staccato in speech and thought, emotionally shut off - but under the cold façade is a philosophy rooted in existentialism, reinforced by a strict moral code. He may terminate criminals without a second thought, but Castle has scruples. The Punisher is as hard as they come, but he is human - he bleeds; he gets tired (physically and mentally); he has his doubts. Indeed, Castle's doubts about 'the war' and 'his mission' make for an interesting subtext.

The defining problem in the world Castle exists in (he doesn't live in it, and expects to die in it before long) is that there are very few innocents left. Most people whom Castle interacts with have their own agenda - and quite often, he has to deal with the lesser of two evils. Such is the case when Castle discovers the Trust's true intent, while having to deal with the son of a gangster that he murdered. The former is a threat, the latter is an annoyance - and both are dangerous.

Alongside BADLANDS, this is one of the defining works of Steven Grant's storied career. Hard-boiled dialogue coupled with a straight-ahead plot that's typical of Grant's writing make for an action-filled reading experience. In many ways, Grant's take on the Punisher is the definitive one - Dixon, Ostrander, Ennis, et al have all taken their cues from the version presented here. Mike Baron even went out of his way to praise Grant's dialogue in CIRCLE OF BLOOD, citing it as some of the freshest he'd read.

While Grant's prose is bullet-like in its dispensation, Mike Zeck's art is the target those bullets strike. Appropriately slick and cinematic, abounding with broken-glass angles, Zeck wears his influences well (Steranko and Williamson come to mind), without being derivative. The Punisher appears to have been sculpted in stone, and the action sequences move with a fluidity that belies their ink-and-paper origins. Each of Zeck's panels bespeaks attitude.

Between Grant and Zeck, CIRCLE OF BLOOD had the makings of a classic - if it wasn't for some last minute pinch-hitting by Jo Duffy and Mike Vosburg. Apparently, Marvel editorial balked at the actions taken by the Punisher in the story's finale, and instructed that it be rewritten and redrawn to tone down the violence. As such, there are no on-page deaths in the concluding chapter - a severe reversal from prior proceedings. It's fair to say that the story suffers as a result of the editorial compromise, leaving the reader somewhat cheated.

That said, CIRCLE OF BLOOD is a worthy member of the 'Class of 1986', and points the way towards how superhero comics would evolve in the ensuing decade and a half. One has to wonder, though, how even more influential CIRCLE OF BLOOD would be had Grant and Zeck been allowed to tell the story as they intended. It's a disservice and a shame that it happened - but strangely enough, the Punisher is enjoying a new lease of life these days, courtesy of PREACHER's Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. All the violence one could want, and with no Comic Code to restrict them.

Brent Keane is a regular contributor to Ninth Art and PopImage and has also written for Opi8, Sequential Tart and Nerdbait.

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