Born # 1
"The First Day"

In late October of 1971, the soldiers stationed at Firebase Valley Forge in Vietnam are witnesses to a supply plane being shot down out of the sky. The base's only active platoon see the crash from the jungle, but decide to press on with their patrol; the group includes Steve Goodwin, who is nearing the end of his tour, his friend Angel, and their squad leader, Captain Frank Castle. Goodwin believes that Castle is the best Marine at the base, and that Castle is the reason he'll survive the war. Captain Castle is in his third tour of duty, and as the war reaches its conclusion he's been stationed at the run-down base at Valley Forge. The squad soon encounters a group of Vietcong soldiers transporting supplies, and the Marines kill all of them without a single casualty on their side.

Later, back at the Firebase, Castle reports to his superior officer, Colonel Ottman, about the supply run they encountered, and how it has led Castle to believe that the V.C. are preparing for an offensive strike against them. The officer could care less, more interested in drinking, and he informs Castle that General Padden will be arriving within the hour for a surprise inspection. Castle is to be the General's guide, because Ottman will be too "sick" to attend. Later, Frank meets with General Padden and tells him about the shortcomings of the base; that the soldiers stationed there are all rejects, especially the officers, and there's only about a platoon's worth of good men that Castle has been able to use on patrols. The General informs Castle that he's going to close the base, which Castle disagrees with because they're the only American outpost left on the Cambodian border. When Padden refuses to change his mind, Castle tells him that he has proof that the base needs to stay open. Frank leads the General to a hill, where Padden is immediately shot by a sniper; Castle had blocked the warning sign so the General wouldn't see it.

That night, while the General's body is being loaded onto a helicopter, Goodwin and Angel see Castle sitting alone. A mysterious voice is speaking to Frank, telling him that he can fix it so Frank can fight his war forever. When Frank wonders who the voice is, it replies "Well who do you think I am, Frank...?"

Annotations:
The original, proposed title for this series was The Punisher: The War Where I Was Born. It was presumably shortened to make it fit in with other revisionist Marvel history stories that had previously been published such as Origin (a Wolverine story) and Truth (a Captain America story).

This mini-series is the first Punisher story published under Marvel's mature reader MAX imprint, and is followed by an ongoing series starting with The Punisher (2004) # 1.

This story takes place in the alternate continuity of the MAX universe and is not part of the Punisher's history in the Marvel Universe. Stories about Frank Castle's service in Vietnam in the 616 universe can be found in The 'Nam # 52-53, The 'Nam # 67-69, and The Punisher Invades the 'Nam: Final Invasion.

The final arc of Garth Ennis' Punisher MAX series, titled "Valley Forge, Valley Forge", is a sequel to this mini-series. In The Punisher (2004) # 55-60, the story is interspersed with excerpts from the book "Valley Forge, Valley Forge: The Slaughter of a U.S. Marine Garrison and the Birth of the Punisher". That book was written by Michael Goodwin, the brother of Steve Goodwin who first appears in this issue and dies in Born # 4.

The suspected assassination of the N.V.A. general by Castle, mentioned here by Goodwin, did in fact happen, as told in The Punisher: The Tyger # 1.

The voice that speaks to Frank, which is named "the Darkness" by Microchip in The Punisher (2004) # 3, could be interpreted as being the Devil, an alternate personality, or even Death itself.

This issue is reprinted in the Punisher: Born TPB.

Review:
The War Room takes its first look at a Punisher story by Garth Ennis, which is also the very first Punisher comic published under the MAX banner.

Since I was in the middle of reviewing Punisher: Year One, I decided to follow the trend and offer up my thoughts on Born as well. There are certain similarities between the two stories, they're both introspective and both shed some valuable light on the character of Frank Castle before he became a vigilante, but there's also some vast differences. In short, putting Garth Ennis on a Punisher comic set during Vietnam that has no restrictions on content...? Yeah, that's going to lead to some brilliant shit.

There are two general story topics that Ennis likes to default back to at most opportunities, war and religion, and while there's not much you can say about religion in this series (though I am surprised Ennis didn't do something with Frank trying out for the priesthood in his youth) the character does of course give him plenty to talk about with the Vietnam War. Ennis can, of course, write war comics in his sleep, just look at his War Stories series from Vertigo, and at first glance this issue looks to be more of the same. That comes from the writer's interesting decision to make the point-of-view character be Steve Goodwin, not Frank Castle as one would expect. Honestly, I don't care much for Goodwin's narration in this issue, because it's so very by-the-numbers for a Vietnam War story. The only thing that separates this series from every other war story or film is the presence of Castle and the knowledge the reader has about what he eventually becomes. Ennis treats Castle as an outsider in his own story, and to me at least it takes away a lot of the impact it could have had. In fact, we get absolutely no insight into Frank's thoughts outside of "the voice" speaking to him at the issue's end (and I'll get into that when I review the fourth issue, not here). While it's true that we've seen a vast number of comics with Frank's first-person narration, I think it robs this story of what we're really here to see. Perhaps if I thought Goodwin was a more interesting character it would make a difference, but here Steve is just a stock character that's repeating everything a Vietnam soldier has said before in films like Platoon.

What does work for me is the portrayal of Firebase Valley Forge and the attitudes of the officers within it, ranging from apathy (the head officer) to disgust (the General) to a determination to do things correctly (Castle and Goodwin). This is helped immensely by the artwork of Darick Robertson, who draws the base and its occupants as worn down, weary beings who have long served their purpose and are falling into disrepair. I've been a fan of Robertson since his days on New Warriors and up through his lengthy stint on Transmetropolitan, and his work here is just as great. His look for the younger Frank Castle is excellent, still a young man but already possessing the cold face of the Punisher. There's a weird bit of actor reference with Col. Ottman looking dead-on like William H. Macy, but it doesn't detract from the first class work by the artist. Surprisingly, his artwork isn't swallowed up by Tom Palmer's finishes, because most artists inked by Palmer are robbed of their individual styles to make them all look like John Buscema - see Palmer's finishes on Steve Epting and Paul Ryan's runs on Avengers and Ron Garney's run on Nightstalkers for examples.

I want to love this series, and later issues indeed live up to expectations, but this first issue just doesn't do the job the way I'd like it to.

Grade: B
Review Date: 01/29/12