This hefty four hundred pages volume consists of three distinct parts. The first one is the original 1986 limited series. Punisher starts out being led by the guards in a prison. He was caught earlier and now has to pay the price. Of course, he won't stay in the prison for very long, helped by a mysterious cabal of do-gooders called the Trust. This is an excellent start for the character, high octane action highlighted by the stylish Mike Zeck/Scott Beatty art. By the way, the book includes a lot of the pencilled pages in the end, they look just as good or arguably even better in black and white. Steven Grant's Punisher depicted here is like an 80s action movie hero, a Chuck Norris you might say. I would recommend this book just for this part, but the other ones aren't bad either.
The second large part is the first ten issues of the "unlimited" run (amusingly, they proclaim that on the cover). Pencilled by Klaus Janson and, later, Whilce Portacio, it has great movies, I mean, stories like the Punisher going after the Doomsday cult and Japanese ninjas in cahoots with the nefarious Wall Street traders. Did I say ninjas? I actually meant businessmen, they were ruthlessly murdering the stock exchange together. I didn't notice that in later portrayals but Mike Baron's Punisher is almost like Richard Stark's Parker at times, calculating, preparing, doing the legwork, and casing the joint with fake IDs and correct slang ready. Janson's art lends to that especially.
The third part is the Assassin's Guild novel, also available standalone. This one has a very distinct Jorge Zaffino art, whom I admire from his still mostly undigitized Terror Inc. run. A group of ninja assassins (yes, more ninjas, please, they go well with the Punisher) now works with Castle to off the leader of a group of sinister lawyers. And that Lupin joke at the start never gets old.
To sum it up, all the individual parts of the volume are both distinct enough providing some variety, and mesh well together to recommend this book for purchase. I'm keen to see how Mike Baron's run proceeds from here on and I'm firmly behind this depiction of the character.
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![Punisher Epic Collection: Circle Of Blood (The Punisher (1987-1995) Book 2) by [Steven Grant, Jo Duffy, Mike Baron, Ann Nocenti, Mike Zeck, Mike Vosburg, Klaus Janson, Dave Ross, Whilce Portacio, John Romita, Jorge Zaffino]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51yCfSyhgTL._SY346_.jpg)
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