3 out of 5

Hrm.  This came before Punisher MAX, I believe, and I guess you could say it informs the Frank Castle Ennis would write the shit out of for 60-something issues of that series, but Born doesn’t feel like that character, he feels more like the ‘serious’ Frank that popped up toward the tail end of the Marvel Knights run, where Ennis suddenly seemed to be getting a full hold on what makes this character tick.  Darker territory, but not fully committed, not the amazing depths Ennis would plunge in to.  So.

This is Frank during his war years.  The narration is a bit clumsy because it’s told partially through the eyes of another soldier, describing the cold Frank Castle, the man who continues to serve but who everyone knows will do right by them and protect them as long as they remain honest soldiers.  We don’t really care about this solider, he’s just another voice, an easy narrative attempt to try to stage us for proper reverence or fear or awe for The Punisher.  Garth, I think, was the first to try to tie Frank into a real background, fleshing out his war history, and he would use this specific setting – Valley Forge – again in the MAX series, and again through the eyes of another character, but it was done less directly, as Garth got by then that there was no real need to justify The Punisher persona.  It’s as though Ennis spent his several runs on the various versions of the title trying to understand, or accept, how someone could come to be Frank Castle, and he knew it and could accept it, but it’s too oblique to tackle head on… so Born ultimately falls flat in this attempt, trying to start with showing us the cold vet and his skills and ending with a sequence where he realizes, too late, that he’d gotten the taste for killing.  It doesn’t add anything to The Punisher because we know this information, and it feels too trite to display it in this fashion.

I get that I’m struggling here to explain it, but essentially, the story just doesn’t connect.  It’s kept afloat by Ennis’ love for the character and desire to develop him, but ultimately undone by how basic the core concept is.  This man just likes to kill.  No amount of carnage is going to justify that.  MAX showed the ranging effects such a lifestyle brings, but Born is just a one-note story.  A necessary stepping stone to get to the brilliance of the MAX run, but not required reading.