3 out of 5

Well, damn, it finally happened: latter-day Ennis – i.e. the ranting, unfocused old man – has finally overtaken the last bastion of Garth’s writerly mainstays: The Punisher.  The Platoon – Frank Castle’s first lieutenant tour in Vietnam – is already set during a period that holds the utmost fascination for Garth, there aren’t any unnecessary narrative redirects to that period, and for most intents and purposes, this is a solemn, well-considered, balanced and incredibly effective war tale.  However, it’s not so much a Punisher tale, even as an origin story, and much like Garth’s recent Battlefields outings, it feels like we’re reading what amounts to an intriguing snapshot, but not something structured to have a beginning, middle, and end.  This leads us to diminishing returns of questionable subplots and an underwhelming fade-to-black ending.

Framed as the Valley Forge book writer trying to track down the story before valley forge, and thus interviewing Castle’s Vietnam charges at a bar, the discussions trigger a flashback of that initial tour for most the series’ content

And we pause to acknowledge how amazing of a pair Goran Parlov and colorist Jordie Bellaire are together.  Goran’s style on Punisher has always impressed with its emotiveness and weight, but dang, he has evolved: Platoon is limned with gravitas and humanity thanks to Goran’s representations and dramatic action, and Jordie’s colors bring a rich, FMJ / Heart of Darkness grain to every panel.  Platoon isn’t very blood and guts driven, rather a lot of in-the-bush conversation, and this art team never fails to make that look stunning and compelling.

Back on the story, Garth attempts to further humanize Giyap (the Vietnam antagonist from previous Fury / Pun tales of this approximate era) by letting his more philosophical side outweigh his sadistic one; Platoon is an appreciably American / Vietnamese balanced story – but Garth sort of just subs in a revemge-driven female to replace the aggressor role.  While there are some interesting things to consider about Giyap and said female’s dynamic – emotionally, gender-wise, and more – and what the events in Platoon may have done to Giyap’s outlook (and to Castle’s), that doesn’t really come through to well: she’s just a bad chick, and Frank is just a quiet soldier.  There’s also the oddity of how Garth / Goran choose to hide the intetviewer from us in the present day shots.  Is it because it’s based on a real person?  I don’t know.  But it played in to “this will be a surprise reveal” tropes that were very distracting, especially when the character just says his attemptedly meaning-laden concluding lines on one page and then isn’t there the next, with our Vietnam squad given a similar shoulder shrug on their final few pages.

Platoon is a damned professional war book, and it brings a soberingly human POV to the war, but it feels untethered to an actual narrative, especially that of the Punisher’s, and thus doesn’t carry much impact after the fact.