The Batlord

Does anyone remember Marvel 2099? That series of titles based on quasi-futuristic versions of existing superheroes set a hundred years from now (or at least in 1992) in an angsty, dystopian world with a disproportionate amount of spikes and lack of sunlight? No? Well then you're in for a ****ing treat. There aren't many characters in comics more suited to a 90s overhaul than the Punisher, as he was pretty much the 90s back in the 70s, so this is a very good fit all things considered. I think I've read this issue at some point, but I remember nothing about it other than Punisher 2099 being one of the great pinnacles of ridiculous 90s excess. Grit? Check. Guns? Check. Hideous costume redesign? Check, mate.






Good lord in heaven just look at that. Apparently the new and improved Punisher did not trust himself to design his own costume, so he just had the dude from Voivod do it. I really like all that red, to be honest. Really brings out the bulky fugliness of the rest of his costume. Look at those gun... lasers (?), the first of which, according to the current placement of his hands, must have been fired from a 45° angle at the ground. And is that a book with the Punisher logo on the cover that has no bullet holes but is expelling pages that do in a sort of magical dance to pay homage to the Punisher's supreme manliness? **** me I don't even know where to begin with that ****.

That goes triple for the comic book itself. You know how a good cyberpunk story uses a dystopian future world to make commentary on the nature of humanity by focusing on something like the widening gap between rich and poor, or the difference or lack thereof between humans and androids? This book wants to be all the things, and pretty much everything about everything is a cyberpunk nightmare to make George Orwell dry heave into an evil cyber trash can. There are simply so many panels and pages I want to post that I'd basically have to commit copyright infringement to try. So let's just look at the first page and count the ways in which the future is a big meanie.






Right off the bat the first two sentences makes me glad I have the privilege of living in Trump's glorious America. Apparently all you need to do to incur the wrath of this brave blue world is not be half-dead. I first assumed the dude in wrist sweatbands and combat boots was running from a cholera epidemic down the street, but the second panel informs us that he's worried about "Street Surgeons". The two-way police terminal, complete with unnerving eye logo and bootleg 1984 slogan, from which he seeks help is not impressed however, as it ain't messin' wit no broke niggas. And so... wait, holy ****! "Street Surgeons" isn't some bull**** name! Not at all! THEY GOT MEDICAL EQUIPMENT!!! Or at least I think that's medical equipment, although I don't know what a real surgeon would do with serrated scalpels. I guess that's what they use on people without health insurance in this world. Maybe this is Trump's America and he's a head in a jar on top of a robot ruling the country with a literal iron fist?

I so want to post the next page too, but I guess I should hold off since there are so many panels that require ogling throughout this artifact of deathification. The Street Surgeons are in fact black market organ harvesters (assuming of course that this isn't just how hospitals work now, and I'm not assuming anything at this point) who target people who can't afford police protection and then cut out their "pump" (don't worry, they mean heart) without using any anaesthesia.

Enter the ****ing Punisher, bitch, clad in "high density plasto-armor" and toting what I assume is a sub-machine gun, an "antique" .54 caliber Magnum hand cannon from 2015 complete with its own ammo belt that disappears somewhere behind the Punisher's back, and three "grenazers". Apparently his shoes are also of note for some reason. Ah **** it, ya'll need to see this ****.






The kneepads really make the outfit as far as I'm concerned. Note the last word bubble from one of the Street Surgeons. It forms the beginning of the greatest witty repartee between hero and villain I have ever had the fortune of reading...

"Who are you? You're no strolling citizen packing that hardware..."

"I'm the Punisher... and you're deadware!"

"I see you went to the butt-face school of charm!"

After which the Punisher blows the reprobate straight to hell with a .54 caliber message from God's own arsenal of righteousness. How do you even write such genius? Is it skill? Practice? A concussion? And I'm not entirely sure the artist consulted the writer before drawing the dude with a smoking hole in his head, because on the next page the man is alive and clutching his smoking gun hand... huh. In any case, the Punisher doesn't seem to mind as he has something more hands-on with which to dispense street justice. Bat power! Excuse me, a power bat.






There's so ****ing much to love about this literary equivalent to hairy testicles, but that last panel with the angry eyes is one of the high points. "I've never used the lower settings." Lulz. Obviously he kills the **** out of all of them, cause Punisher, and next we find ourself at a "police" station, where the corporate racketeers who pass for law enforcement are none too pleased with our man Skully, and call in "'special operations' agent Jake Gallows" (snort) to help. And guess who Mr. Gallows is?






Alright, before I get into the meat of this scene, WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH THE PUNISHER'S ****ING HEAD?! It's only marginally bigger than his fist and appears to be sprouting from his right shoulder, which is big enough to house at least twelve more heads. Nobody at Marvel caught that? Really? Anyways, as much as I love droppin' deuces on this comic there's a part of me that wonders if the writer isn't actually in on the joke. Punisher 2099 is just so outlandish that there are only so many people on Earth who could have written it seriously, and the reasoning behind the police pursuing the Punisher shows some small amount of cleverness. He didn't attack a cop and now they're getting revenge for one of their own, and they aren't being ordered to put him down by any presumed corporate masters, they're going after him of their own volition for threatening their business in a way that comes off like how any modern police force would. I'm not saying it's genius, but it does feel a little bit more intelligent than I would otherwise give this book credit for.

But that Punisher brand hoverbike amiright?

There's also a short conversation between Jake "Punisher" Gallows and Fatty McPornstache the police boss a few pages later after they've watched footage of the Punisher pouring some kind of flammable liquid on an arsonist and forcing him to transfer all of his money to charity.






Tell me that joke doesn't sound at all self-aware? I'm not jumping to any conclusions, but there are enough ridiculous things going on in this issue to make me open to the idea that the writer is actually being ironic to secretly lampoon 90s grim 'n' gritty comic trash. I honestly wouldn't be surprised, but either way Punisher 2099 is too delightful for me to hate. Seriously though, there's no way that the Punisher's brain is large enough to properly operate his terrifyingly gigantic body.

To further show that these phony cops are just corrupt thugs they don't seem able to comprehend why a vigilante would want to take the law into his own hands in an effectively lawless society where the police will happily mock a brokeass as he is about to have his heart removed by people with shark teeth knives. Is the Punisher a corporate lackey? An agent from a rival racketeer organization? A mob hitman? A serial killer? Jake knows, though, and is perfectly willing to arouse suspicion by suggesting that he "simply believes in justice", which confuses his associates as much as it does me. But they seem willing to chalk it up to his inevitable origin story of his family being killed in front of him.

Cue flashback!

Now, as much absurdity as has already happened, nothing can prepare a sane person for what now foists itself upon the page. Not-yet-the-Punisher is spending time with his mother, brother, and sister-in-law as they celebrate his brother passing what I guess is the police academy exam. I'm honestly sitting here thinking how best to present this scene. Do I post a page and let you bask in its glory? Or do I take the time to describe everything that's ludicrous and then post something? I guess I'll go with both because it'll be more fun for me.

You know how the original Punisher's, Frank Castle's, family was caught in the middle of a mob hit? Simple, but effective. But that's too bitch for the Punisher who parties like it's 2099. Frank Castle's wife and son were in a park when they were shot. Do you know where Jake Gallows' is? I'll give you three guesses. I'll wait...

Give up? Well if you guessed "dinosaur zoo" then congratulations, you're a freak, but also correct. That's right, folks! The new Punisher's family was murdered while surrounded by sauropods.






And no, you aren't having a seizure. The Punisher's family were members of the Church of Thor and it's exactly what it sounds like. Odin's beard wtf. It couldn't possibly get any more retarded you're probably saying. Think again! Instead of a botched mob hit his family are killed because they're just so happy and loving that some guy with a gun and goons simply goes nuts. He hates happy families. Can't stand 'em. Has to shoot 'em. That's literally the entire reason. All of it. I swear I'm not leaving out any motivation and that's Mjolnir's own truth. You're also probably assuming that this love-deprived psycho shot them with a laser gun or something. Wrong! It was a microwave gun. The Punisher's family were literally cooked like Hot Pockets.






Now you might be asking why the Punisher is wearing armor and carrying a gun with twelve barrels that don't even shoot when he's not even yet the Punisher, but that would be asking questions, and we best not do that here. In any case he tries saving his family but gets his kneecaps microwaved and has to watch as "Kron" nukes his mother and sister-in-law on high for one second. Then he begs Kron to kill him too, but now that he's no longer a member of a family the electromagnetic radiation happy lunatic couldn't be more polite and leaves him to presumably throw peanuts at velociraptors.

This entire scene is simply too stupid for me to wholly believe that the writer wasn't drunk and laughing his ass off at his own inspired idiocy. A dinosaur park. Microwave guns. Kron. That beret. Am I the only one willing to believe that this is all intentional?

Moving on. Now that the Punisher is laid up in "Midgard Hospital" with unevenly heated knees a friend visits to inform him that Kron has been apprehended and will soon stand trial. Jake attends the trial, only to see Kron quickly released after paying a possibly hefty fine of "2.2 million mega dollars" with his "black card", which is sort of like a get out of jail free card for those who can afford to be above the law. The Punisher is not pleased.






No offense, Jake ol' buddy, but I have to call your sense of outrage over injustice into question. You happily served in a police force whose business model explicitly allows for the deaths of the poor and protection of the rich, and yet you simply can't believe that justice could be so horrifically subverted? And it's not like this is a secret to anybody. The police even seem proud to be bootlickers for their corporate masters. In this world the very act of applying to a police academy is nothing less than betraying your fellow man. Obviously I understand why watching your family be cooked alive in an off brand Jurassic Park would be traumatic, but you're just as complicit as anyone else. **** you kind of.

But this is the ten-ton straw that breaks the dystopian camel's cybernetically-enhanced back. Having previously discovered the original Punisher's equipment and journal in police custody and stolen them I guess, Jake has been agonizing over a decision to become the new Punisher. That decision has now been made with extreme prejudice.






Gotta love that last journal entry with the blood stains and trailing "k". So evocative. So subtle. And so we leave this issue on the declaration that, "I am the Punisher now", ushering in a new age of cracked out adventures that we will sadly never get to see in our lifetimes. Although I definitely wouldn't be able to afford police protection, so it's probably for the best.

It would be easy to simply mock this mess, regardless of the writer's intent. Strip away all the charming nonsense and this is a very pedestrian Punisher origin issue: he pops some caps in some suckers, is shown to be a loose cannon, and we see his family killed before his eyes. I'm sure there are at least five hundred comics featuring the Punisher that are no different and many of them are likely far better written. But that would be joyless and lame, as all those bat **** crazy moments are what make this so entertaining. That's right, I am legitimately entertained and while I am happy to poke fun at this... this, I also very much want to read more and this will likely not be the last entry for Punisher 2099. So I implore you, if you have any love for cringey, 90s comic bull****, or you just like corny action movies, then you should really pick this up. It's a lot of ****ing fun.

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