4 out of 5

It doesn’t go out with a bang, but that’s appropriate for Garth Ennis’ defining Punisher run, as its opening aggressions gave way to several sobering, hauntingly contemplative moments concerning the nature of violence; the legacy of it; and the mentality of a man such as Frank Castle that would allow him to wallow in and be so affected (unaffected?) by it.

Valley Forge, Valley Forge is also probably one of the most successful blending of war comics and “hero” comics Ennis has written.  In almost every single book – goddamned Thor included – Garth gives in to his war-fascination indulgences.  With Punisher, he had the easy-in of casting Castle as a Vietnam vet, but one of his intelligent additions to his run was to mostly keep us seated in the present, keeping Pun’s experiences rooted to the now and not “excusing” it with excessive family flashbacks or wartime atrocities.  ‘Valley Forge’ continues that, but with a twist: a book has been written (under the eponymous arc title) that purports to tell of The Punisher’s origin from a particular skirmish during Vietnam.  Through these six issues, we read full page excerpts from the book, and though there are only a few authors that can get away with text dumps of this nature, the juxtaposition of what’s covered in these sections against the modern day story – the government higher ups that kicked off the Russia events send a special ops team to “deal” with their Frank Castle problem – is absolutely riveting, and leads to a pitch perfect, beat-by-beat concluding few pages for the arc, and for 60 generally masterfully scripted and arted issues.  This, of course, is also a good wrap-up for the incoming author (Gregg Hurwitz, exerpted via a preview in issue 60), clearing the decks of any lingering baddies, but it also provides Punisher with yet another unique foe: American soldiers whom he won’t kill; dutiful men he has to decide how to fairly deal with and perhaps reroute their senses of duty.  And because Garth respects these type of “honorable” men, the spec. ops guys are no dummies: they question their orders and cause, and try to comport themselves as effectively and responsibly as possible.

Goran Parlov and Lee Loughridge kill it, Parlov curbing some of his more expressionistic touches from when he worked on Barracuda so as to properly maintain this final arc’s hefty tone, and Loughridge giving his color work a matchingly deeper sense of shadow versus last arc.

This all sounds pretty good… so why the docked star?  Well, it’s cheap, but the entire series’ tenseness is lessened a bit by some failed sleight of hand.  A final ‘twist’ is of the type that falls flat because it’s not clear that it was meant to be a twist; some scenes early on set the stage rather obviously, and thus also make one question the ops team leader’s motivations, but not in the way intended…

Thankfully, the quality of the writing in general is so, so good, and it is such an effective capper to the themes worked on up to this point that even this can’t truly derail the issues.

If there is one further unfortunate bit, it’s that this, along with the first Crossed arc pretty much nailed any and everything Garth has tried to say in the majority of his books.  But that’s still a damned fine track record, and the series – I’m happy to experience – holds up greatly after the fact.