4 out of 5

Of course ‘Cuda had to come back.

With the last couple arcs wrapping up Garth’s various Punisher MAX plotlines, it follows that he’d want to revisit Barracuda again, given how clear it was that he’d found a perfectly vile foil for Frank.  But how to do so?  The ending of the Barracuda arc seemed fairly definitive…

The key lies with the character himself: intensely brutal, all action, waiving off explanations or justifications and boiling motivations down to their most primal.  And that’s how The Long Cold Dark – tellingly titled as well – plays out.

On the one hand, revealing how ‘Cuda has returned and how he plans revenge on Frank would be spoiling major plot elements; on the other hand, as suggested, Garth doesn’t waste to much time on that himself, giving us just enough to understand the Whats and Whys and Hows, but then dialing in to what matters: Castle is haunted and motivated by dreams of what could have been had his family survived… and Barracuda is a machine, unstopped by shark attacks and lost fingers and teeth, the pitch black reflection of the Punisher without whatever grounding has kept his violence enacted only upon criminals.

Goran Parlov returns on art, with Lee Loughridge applying appropriately (for Parlov’s loose style) flat, but dusky colors.  Garth’s script and Parlov’s approach, this time out, are much less humorous, painting The Punisher as a mass of hurt and muscle and Barracuda as a straight out monster.  Initially, Frank’s dreams of his family seem opposite of his previously expressed fears of never stopping his killing – notes of humanity instead of notes of helplessness – but Garth successfully darkens that cloud without betraying the tone of the character or of the arc.

Also: Howard Chaykin.  Can’t not mention this, even though it’s superficial.  Chaykin illustrates the over-sized issue 50.  While this is a pretty cool nab, I frankly haven’t enjoyed Chaykin’s art for years – the digital colors, the way all men look the same and all women look the same – and he is just not a good match here.  It’s a very unfortunate introduction to the story; Barracuda is not frightening via Howard’s pen, and his statted images make some sequences underwhelming.  There’s also no clear reason why issue 50 required extra pages.  But… Chaykin’s issue still ends on quite a zinger, and assuming the reader is already familiar with ‘Cuda, you’re furiously reading to see what’s next, regardless of the art.