Matt Hollingsworth Archives

It makes perfect sense that Greg Rucka would be the author to turn in the most-memorable in-continuity Punisher story in recent memory and the one with the best-developed female characters. After all, he’s not only known for stellar super-hero runs on titles like Wonder Woman, but also beat-cops drama on DC’s Gotham Central.

However, if Rucka’s success in this story makes perfect sense, the big surprise is the superstar turn from artist Marco Checchetto on his first lengthy run.

The Punisher by Rucka & Checchetto is the #42 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes. And, check out Guide to Punisher for details on how to collect this and every other Punisher run, ever.

Past Ranking: A 2017 debut!

Probable Contents: Punisher (2011) #1-16 & Punisher: War Zone #1-5, a crossover with Daredevil #11 and Avenging Spider-Man #6, and material from Spider-Island: I Love New York City (maybe adding the non-Rucka Punisher: The Trial Of The Punisher (2013) #1-2)

Creators: Written by Greg Rucka.

Line art on The Punisher (2011) by Marco Checchetto (with Matthew Southworth, Michael Lark and Stefano Gaudiano, Mirko Colak, and Mico Suayan). Line art on Punisher: War Zone (2012) by Carmine Di Giandomenico. Color art on both series by Matt Hollingsworth.

Can you read it right now? Yes, but the four paperbacks collecting the 23 core issues of this run have become exorbitantly expensive to track down, which is part of the reason this omnibus is such an attractive prospect. Find the details in the Guide to Punisher.

Marvel Unlimited includes both The Punisher (2011) and Punisher War Zone (2012) in full.

The Details:

It’s hard to separate the quality of Rucka’s run from fans’ sense relief and delight that Punisher was back to basics and back to the streets of New York City after less-than-beloved runs from Matt Fraction and Rick Remender. This 2011 iteration of Punisher finds Frank Castle back in New York with little explanation. It’s simply where he ought to be.

(For the record, Remender’s is good but fucking weird.)
[Read more…] about The Punisher by Rucka & Checchetto – The #42 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about audiences and about screaming into the void.

One of my earliest ongoing creative endeavors was writing fan fiction inside the Final Fantasy II (Japan IV) universe. I was writing it just to write it, but then I discovered a few other like-minded folks on the internet and we had a small, shared universe of fiction. Honestly, I have no idea how 14-year-old me put it all together – the details are a blur. It was mostly just that same handful of people who were reading it. No one was writing for attention or exposure. We were all writing for the joy of writing.

The same is true for my songwriting. I spent years writing songs for no one to hear before I started pushing to play them for more people. Even after being in a gigging band for years, to this day the vast majority of my catalog has never been heard outside of our house or this website because I write so darn many songs. I’d have to put out an album a year to keep up and tour constantly.

I have the luxury of doing those things for fun. My fanfic was niche and so is my music, but it doesn’t really matter. I am happy to cast that art out into the void knowing no response would echo back at me.

The problem with doing art for the love of it comes once you’ve actually earned some attention. What happens when more than a handful of people like your writing or your music? Now you have an audience. If you were making art for the love of it, their eyeballs and ears shouldn’t make any difference to you. Yet, it’s hard to avoid their influence, even if you aren’t performing craven acts of fan service to keep them all pleased. Once you’ve seen an indicator that your art is actually being consumed it’s hard to ignore it completely.

Let’s advance that to it’s end state: a popular artist who has followed their own path and pleased fans along the way now wants to do something inherently less popular – or simply something different. I’m not thinking about the dangers inherent in each new release. Instead, consider an independent artist experimenting with a new genre or a big money director wanting to make a decidedly non-mainstream film. J.K. Rowling is a terrific example; after Harry Potter, she didn’t want to write another young readers opus, but that’s what everyone wanted!

It’s a risk. Do they trust fans enough to compartmentalize this work of otherness away from their main oeuvre? You might not be able to afford the detour if it turns too many people off. In Rowling’s case, she released one novel under her own name (The Casual Vacancy) and then another under a pseudonym (The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith). Neither detracted from the fervor for Potter, but the latter earned higher marks from fans and critics, called “a brilliant debut.”

Was it the quality of the Galbraith book that made it more successful, or that it was free of baggage? How would you enjoy the new album from your favorite artist if you didn’t know it was by them?

These questions occur to me with every subsequent piece of art I purchase or consume from a known artist.

Savage Hulk, Vol. 1 – The Man Within

Collects Savage Hulk issues #1-4 written and penciled by Alan Davis, with inks by Mark Farmer and colors by Matt Hollingsworth. Also includes X-Men (1963) #66 written by Stan Lee with pencils by Sal Buscema.

Tweet-sized Review: Alan Davis writes/draws a lovely, clever sequel to X-Men #66, a face-off w/Hulk, in this ode to early-70s Marvel.

CK Says: Consider it.

This Alan Davis Hulk and X-Men story is a love letter to early-70s comic books and it’s possible you simply won’t care. His tale in The Savage Hulk, Vol. 1 – The Man Within branches off from a bash-em-up encounter between the heroes in X-Men #66, the last comic before the hiatus ended by their Giant-Size comeback in 1974.

In a follow-up to that orphaned story, a recovered Professor Charles Xavier feels compelled to design a device that could help Bruce Banner control the Hulk as repayment for Banner’s cure for his mental exhaustion. However, the Hulk is being hunted by the military after causing serious damage in Las Vegas, while Xavier has unwittingly attracted the attention of Hulk’s foe The Leader. [Read more…] about Review: Savage Hulk, Vol. 1: The Man Within by Davis, Farmer, & Hollingsworth