The penultimate issue of Duane Swiercyzski’s run on Punisher MAX is here and I am a bit sadden by it. Only because I dont want to see this entire team leave at all. They have been great subsitutes for Garth Ennis and I for one want to to be the permanent (or at least stay on longer) creative team on this title.

But for now I’ll just have to enjoy this great inside look into the corrupted side of Philadelphia. Which if you live in the city or close to it (like me) you know that isnt a stretch to find corruption in the city. This issue in general is a bit slower paced, it feels like Duane is trying to stretch this out to get one more issue in. Not to say it is bad, just that it feels like there wasnt that much to tell in this issue. Castle gets out of his jam from previous issue, fights a couple more people trying to kill him, then almost gets blown up the by Russian mafia. If that sparknotes-like recap of the issue is any indication….yeah nothing a lot happened here. But Duane still has a perfect voice for Castle; not too quite but not to talky either. There are some nice bits of Black Humor in here so that it least keeps up the entertainment for this issue.

I cannot stress again how wonderful Lacombe and Staples have been to this arc. I’ve been giving a lot of praise to colorist Staples for his wonderful use of Red and other colors in this issue. But let me state more fully why Lacombe is a great pencilier. He gives everyone a unique face and not one person looks like. Even the gangsters who go after Castle, they all look different (usually they have the same faces in a different Punisher comic). So that brings more depth to the reader and actually makes it easier to know who is who.

So this was a bit of a slow issue, not weak, just slow. I’m sure Duane S. and the rest of the team is gonna be ‘balls to the wall’ gory next issue. But for this issue I wished things could’ve picked up a bit more. As it stand this is still a great arc by Duane, much better then the last arc with Hurwitz/Campbell. I hope again in the future we see more of this creative team playing around with Frank Castle.