It’s always tough to have a creative team leave a title. Especially when you love the writer and artist on board. Well being a huge Punisher MAX fan; I’ve been disappointed twice in one year! First it was Ennis leaving, which of course is one of the best runs by a writer on any title. But Hurwitz leaving this is actually very sad for me. For these last five issues, I’ve had nothing but good times since he’s done this. Gregg Hurwitz is a name I never heard of, but damnit this run made me wanna try both his prose and other comic works.

This five issue arc wraps up nicely, maybe a bit too rushed at times but still good. Jigsaw coming into the story feels a bit mishandled, especially since we werent shown his face until the end of last issue. Sure he’s been that dude in the gas mask the entire arc, but really….Did we need Jigsaw in this? The conspiracy nut in my says ‘it’s because of the War Zone film’…cause really, no reason for it to big Jigsaw. Still with that complaint out of the way, again I like how this issue ends. Just seeing Frank going out killing the bad guys, paint by numbers if you will, is always funny to me. But I like the Jigsaw fight, I like the way the women stand up to the bad guys in the end, and I just love that last panel of Frank saying ‘Never Again’.

Here’s what totally ruins this issue though….Laurence Campbell. He has been all over the place this entire arc, and this is no different. Too many times I had to squint and see who was talking and just what type of face Campbell drew. His Jigsaw is really bad looking…I mean it’s just like taking a four year old kid and drawing in lines all over the face. Bad. Plus in some of the panels, it was hard to tell what was going on. When Frank was running into the plate glass to save the girl, I couldnt tell what was on the glass (flashbacks by the way) and why Campbell did it in that way.

So art aside….I liked overall what Hurwitz did with the MAX title. Like many others, I groaned when Garth Ennis decided to leave the title and we got this ‘unknown’. But Hurtwitz just surprised me on how easy it was for him to make a good, solid story and some really great personal moments for Frank. Heck I made issue #63 my POTW a long way back, so he did something right during this arc. Is this as great as Ennis’s entire 60 issue run? God, no. One thing, it’s only five issues against sixty; and two Hurwitz is no Ennis….But what this arc did to me was that this MAX title (with stupid name change aside) will be just fine without Ennis. For anyone who left this title because of the creative change, I’d say pick this up in trade. You’ll be plenty surprised on how great this title can be without the best Punisher writer off of it.