Punisher #7

Rick Remender is doing an excellent job re-introducing the victims of the Bar With No Name back into the Marvel U. This issue features a bunch of the resurrected villains, but my favorites are the last two we get to see. The Wraith is an internal-monologuing egoist convinced he knows the city and her ways better than anyone. This has got to be a joke pointed at the forced narration from the recent Spirit film. The Wraith was the brother of Jean DeWolfe, although she's only referred to as "his fallen sister" in a nice nod to classic Spidey stories. Of course, the Punisher nails this pompous doofball and quickly returns him to the land of the dead, but it is fun while it lasts. My other favorite villain here is the Human Fly, re-imagined into a cannibalistic murderer. The Fly is totaly nuts here, and his powers seem to be ramped up to make him a real threat to the Marvel U. There are some nice bits with Basilisk and Death Eater too, where they are threatening GW Bridge and his family. I hope these two villains get to stick around for awhile, but I'm afraid that all the dead villains will be gone again by the end of the story. These retro-characters still make for awesome villains though, I'm thrilled Rick Remender seems to find them entertaining too. I'll be picking up this trade for sure.

Tan Eng Huat's art is a bit more stylized than Jerome Opena's was, so the pencils do take some getting used to. The art isn't bad, just a bit less mainstream that we had been getting.

Good