Book Review: A Cultural History of The Punisher by Kent Worcester

A Cultural History of The Punisher by Kent Worcester, Intellect, 2023. https://www.intellectbooks.com/a-cultural-history-of-the-punisher

reviewed by CT Lim

 It is now almost a cliche to talk about how comics studies as a field has grown. There are numerous books being released almost every month - more than one can read to be updated about the latest research - a very different scenario from 20 years ago when one could possibly read every new book to keep up with the extent literature. But the more the merrier as the growth and diversity of the field can only be a good thing. Other than specific author studies (Brannon Costello on Howard Chaykin; Charles Hatfield on Jack Kirby), gendered readings (Ramzi Fawaz on The New Mutants; J. Andrew Deman on The Claremont Run) and transmedia and seriality surveys (Daniel Stein, Christina Meyer), one particular area that has expanded is the singular character studies. While most would approach a company-owned character via the lens of literature, history, cultural, and media studies, I would argue that the latest book to hit the shelves, A Cultural History of The Punisher by Kent Worcester is looking at the popular Marvel character from the refreshing perspective of political science, in spite of its title. Worcester has earlier co-edited A Comics Studies Reader (2008) and The Superhero Reader (2013). 

The breakdown of the chapters is as such: Chapter 1 asserts the importance of New York City in creating the Punisher and creating the milieu or conditions for his ascendency and popularity. I really enjoyed  the extracts from Welcome to Fear City: A Survival Guide for Visitors to the City of New York (1975). I first visited NYC in 2000 and my reference points were Lou Reed albums, but the 1986 Punisher miniseries by Steven Grant and Mike Zeck would not be far behind them. Worcester argued the latter could be read together with The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Watchmen (1987) as “the turn in mainstream comics towards more adult-oriented offerings.” (p. 141) In hindsight, the NYC I visited in December 2000 was probably closer to the violent cartoony zaniness of Garth Ennis’ rendition of the character which started in that year. 

Chapter 2 sets out the difference between the trigger-happy Punisher and the grim and gritty Punisher. Not forgetting that the Punisher is still a corporate owned character, Chapter 3 examines his interactions with other Marvel characters. Chapter 4 gets into the meat of “the Punisher’s meteoric rise during the second half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s.” (p. 19) This was when the character started becoming a major revenue stream with multiple monthly titles and making real money for the company. Worcester incorporates the idea of production cycle (taken from film studies) and explains how and why the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s was the first of the two Punisher production cycles to date. The end of the first production cycle coincided with the burst of the collecting bubble in 1995. (p. 184)

Chapter 5 takes a step away from the official franchise and looks at the Punisher parodies since the mid 1970s and also the challenges writers have in writing the Punisher when violent crime declined in NYC in the late 1990s and early 2000s. What thus remains as his raison d'etre when the urban crisis and decay have rolled back? Chapter 6 brings us up to speed on the recent series of the last 24 years. Basically, the Garth Ennis stories starting from 2000 are the start of the second production cycle. 

Worcester explains:

While their version of Frank Castle still preferred decisive lethality over due process, the character now manifested an absurdist aspect that previous creators had eschewed. The first cycle achieves a kind of pulpish modernist realism, until its final act at least, whereas Ennis and (Steve) Dillon opt for cheeky jokes, glossy visuals, and postmodern bombast. Their story verse offers a giddy fantasia in which sadism, machoism, and gore serve comedic rather than ideological ends, and the grim and trigger-happy templates are fused. (p. 207) 

It is also during this production cycle that we see “the locus of production and consumption has migrated from print to screen, and from screen to iconography.” But Worcester’s main contention is that the Punisher “also embodies a raw, populist anger that presents an uncomfortable fit with business models and strategic plans.” (p. 20) In a way, this answers Worcester’s key research question: why are so many of us fascinated by the Punisher? (p. 20)

Witness the co-option of the Punisher by the alt-right, Trump supporters, Unite the Right and Blue Lives Matter. (p. 3) In fact, Worcester started this book in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected. (p. 239) In Southeast Asia, former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte was known as the Punisher way back in 2002 when he was the mayor of Davao. He even used comics to spread his 'war on drugs' campaign in 2016. 

Where are the political science aspects I initially referred to? They are most evident in Chapter 1 where Worcester used a four-box matrix to study vigilantism - fiction, non-fiction, less violent and more violent. He concluded that this is inadequate in helping us understand the vigilante’s underlying goals and proposed an alternative typology taken from H. Jon Rosenbaum and Peter C. Sederberg’s Vigilante Politics (1973). There are three types of vigilantism - crime-control, social-group control and regime control. No surprise that the Punisher is a crime-control vigilante. (pp. 54 - 55) 

(a drawing Tan Eng Huat drew for me in 2009.
He was one of the artists for the
seventh series of The Punisher
written by Rick Remender between 2009 and 2010,
the second production cycle.)

Comics studies have incorporated trauma studies. (or is it vice versa?) Recent books include Documenting Trauma in Comics: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied Histories, and Graphic Reportage (2020), edited by Dominic Davies and Candida Rifkind. A more niche study is Visualising Small Traumas: Contemporary Portuguese Comics at the Intersection of Everyday Trauma (2022) by Pedro Moura. Worcester referenced Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War (2017) by Harriet E. H. Earle in his first chapter on trauma culture. But the true strength and value of this book lies not in theories but Worcester’s close reading of the primary texts. He “harvested nearly five decades’ worth of comic books and graphic novels to show how a binary-minded rageaholic ended up with a lively, sometimes ridiculous, and often socially resonant storyverse.” (p. 14) Worcester took from political theorist John Gunnelll’s concept of internal history and also the late Martin Barker’s advice of needing subtle and cautious research instruments so as to be able to grasp the flow and stresses of the stories to bring out the maneuvers and moments of decision that make the stories meaningful. (p. 15)

In that sense, Worcester also dwells into the current approach of seriality as he does not just use the trade paperbacks and compilations, but the actual monthly floppies and the very useful letter columns to gauge readers’ sentiments and response to the Punisher’s body count and arsenal over the years. 

Another thing I like about the tone of this book is that Worcester is clearly a fan of what he writes about - comics and pop culture. You catch glimpses of it when he quotes Jane’s Addiction. (p. 236) 

Singular character studies in comics studies have been around for a while. From Will Brooker’s books on Batman to recent ones by Ian Gordon (Superman), Brian Cremins (Captain Marvel), Kevin Patrick (the Phantom), Paul Young (Daredevil) and Scott Bukutman (Hellboy). Worcester’s take on Punisher is a much welcomed addition. Now if only there is a good book on Judge Dredd…

(This review was edited on April 19th, after originally being posted by the author on April 11; a version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 26:1)

Sham's Smiles

by CT Lim

I first encountered the cartoons of Shamsuddin H. Akib (1933 - 2024) in 1995 when I was researching on the history of political cartoons in The Straits Times. Better known as Sham, he contributed cartoons to The Straits Times in the late 1970s. By that time, political cartooning had more or less come to standstill in the newspapers. While political cartooning was vibrant in the postwar years during the twilight years of British colonial rule, once Singapore became independent in 1965, political cartoons would appear less and less in the newspapers as the mass media was conscripted into agenda of nation-building and building consensus among the public. Politics was a serious business and armchair critics and artists should not snipe from the sidelines. Basically the message was get into the ring of political polls or get out. There was no direct censorship of cartoons but one gets the message from what happen to the Singapore Herald and the cartoons of Morgan Chua in the early 1970s. After the closure of the Singapore Herald, Morgan sought his fortunes and trade as a political cartoonist elsewhere - in Hong Kong, to be specific. 

This was the climate which Sham sent in his first cartoon to The Straits Times in June 1978. It was a sports cartoon about the singing soccer stars in Singapore. It was lighthearted, easy humour and something the editors of The Straits Times and its readers could accept. Sham continued to contribute cartoons to The Straits Times in a regular slot called Sham’s Saturday Smile. Later, after gaining the trust of the editors, he would venture into current affairs (Sham’s World) and also covered the 1979 by-elections in Singapore in a column called Sham’s Election Smile. 

Keep in mind that Sham was not a full-time cartoonist. He worked as a graphic artist throughout his life till his retirement in 1997. He had aspirations to be a fine art artist although he was not art trained but self-taught. As documented by his daughter, Dahlia Shamsuddin, her father was one of the two winners of the Paya Lebar Airport mural competition in 1963. Sham’s winning entry was “Cultural Dances of Malaysia”. 

https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-17/issue-2/jul-sep-2021/murals/

I will let Dahlia provide her father’s bio:

My father is a self-taught artist. Born in Singapore in 1933, he started out as a peon (office boy) in the Commissioner-General Office but realised advancement prospects were limited and that he was capable of more. He briefly joined The Straits Times as an apprentice artist before moving to Papineau Advertising as they were looking for someone who could write Jawi in a calligraphic style.

My father eventually left Papineau and joined publisher Donald Moore before working for various international advertising agencies in Singapore. In the 1980s, he became a freelance graphic artist and continued doing commissions until his late 60s. In 2015, he was awarded the Singapore Design Golden Jubilee Award for Visual Communication.

I got to know Dahlia as we were both members of the Singapore Heritage Society. Later, Dahlia would become the president of the society. She was the one who told me that Sham was her dad back in the 2000s. 

In recent years, Sham’s achievements as an artist and cartoonist have been documented by Justin Zhuang. 

http://justinzhuang.com/posts/shams-saturday-smile-one-illustrators-spectator-sport/

He has also been interviewed by Ho Chi Tim for the National Archives of Singapore Oral History Department. I hope the recordings will be made available soon.

(L-R: Koh Hong Teng, Sham, CT, Dahlia on 9 June 2022)

In 2022, artist Koh Hong Teng and I started on our book on pioneer cartoonists in Singapore, Drawn to Satire. With the help of Dahlia, we interviewed Sham at his home on 9 June. He told us many stories and anecdotes about growing up in Singapore in the 1930s, reading The Saint novels and comic strips like Tarzan (Burne Hogarth) and Dick Tracy and comics like Captain Marvel. He was an avid soccer fan and would bring the young Dahlia to football matches in the 1970s. What came across strongly in our afternoon with him was his easy going nature. 

“Maybe that’s life. I drew cartoons for fun. Sometimes they made some people angry - like my old neighbours! 

But it’s all for fun. No need to be too serious. Take things easy. Take things as they come.”

Our book came out in late 2023. I am glad I was able to give a copy to Sham.

Time and tide waits for no man. Sham has been suffering from poor health in the last few months and he passed way on 7 April 2024, during Ramadan, a holy month for the Muslims. May he continue to smile and to smile at us from wherever he is. 

Shamsuddin H. Akib (1933-2024) RIP

CT Lim is reporting on Facebook that Singaporean cartoonist Shamsuddin H. Akib AKA Sham (1933-2024) has passed away. We've reached out to him asking for more details to update this blog post.

This article provides information on Sham's cartooning career.

Spectator Sport: The Cartoons of Sham's Saturday Smile [Shamsuddin H Akib, Singapore]

Justin Zhuang

January 2, 2018

http://justinzhuang.com/posts/shams-saturday-smile-one-illustrators-spectator-sport/

Leela Corman on IJOCA posts reminder

Now that the book is out, we'd like to remind you that Hélène Tison did a couple of pieces for us earlier this year, which will also appear in print in a month or so.

"The Story of the Holocaust Is Not Pretty, And It's Not Redemptive": An Interview with Leela Corman

https://ijoca.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-story-of-holocaust-is-not-pretty.html

"The look of a ghost with ashes in her shoes." Review of Leela Corman's Victory Parade by Hélène Tison

https://ijoca.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-look-of-ghost-with-ashes-in-her.html

Book Review: Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration by Ytasha L. Womack

 

reviewed by Charles W. Henebry, Boston University

Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration by Ytasha L. Womack. New York: Epic Ink, 2023. 176pp. https://www.quarto.com/books/9780760375617/black-panther

Judging by its cover, lavish illustrations, and meager page count, you wouldn’t think Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration lived up to the scholarly ambitions of its title. Yet Womack manages to pack a surprising wealth of cultural references and oral history into this slender volume. Having myself analyzed the Panther by reference to the aims of his creators, I was fascinated by Womack’s reader-centered approach to the character. Prior scholarship has problematized the Panther’s status as the “World’s First Black Superhero,” given Marvel’s all-white creative staff back in the sixties. Womack implicitly responds to this criticism with a moving account of the lived experience of the superhero’s African-American fans who, in that same era, encountered the new character at the newsstand and argued with their friends about how he was connected to the Black Panther Party. And she ties this oral history to developments in contemporary history and culture, from Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, to the cosmic jazz of Sun-Ra. In so doing, she encourages us to think of the Black Panther not as corporate IP, but as one of the shared myths of our culture: “I’d reason that the Black Panther myth is bigger than its creators, an idea held by fans, writers, pencilers, and the awed alike—a myth that channels love and liberation.” Having previously published a book on Afrofuturism, Womack is well situated to deliver in this effort to claim the Black Panther as a genuine expression of the African-American experience.

While the first chapter contextualizes the creation of the Black Panther in the ferment of the late 1960s, the book is organized not by timeline but by topic: “The Panther Mystique,” “The Wakandan Protopia,” “The Modern Goddess and Futuristic Warrior Queens,” etc. Throughout, Womack works suggestively rather than analytically: in the chapter on political power, for instance, she juxtaposes the Panther with real-world political figures ranging from MLK to Mandela, but does not explicitly argue any particular parallel or connection. Some may see this as a virtue, in that it invites the reader to take an active role in making sense of the Panther’s cultural resonance. But I would have liked a more detailed account, especially in regard to lesser-known figures like Kwame Nkrumah. Without such detail, the reader is hardly in a position to weigh the real significance of Womack’s musings.

The book’s greatest strength is its oral history of fans. Besides childhood memories, the interviews offer up a variety of insights as to the Panther’s political and cultural significance. A few of those interviewed are famous; many others are identified by Womack as authors or artists. In a few cases, we are provided with no more than a name, which left me wondering what principle Womack used in choosing whom to interview.

Another strength is the book’s format: lavish full-color images predominate throughout, ranging from comics panels to news photographs. Comics are a visual medium, and it’s wonderful to see scholarship illustrated in this way. Too often, due to the cost of permissions, comics scholars see their work go to print with no illustrations whatsoever. In Black Panther as well as in an earlier book on Spider-Man, Epic Ink neatly solved the permissions problem by partnering with Marvel Comics.

But I can’t help but worry that this cure is worse than the disease. Rights holders like Marvel are unlikely to partner with scholars who train a critical eye on their history, so in the marketplace of ideas, such scholarship will be text-only and hence at a disadvantage relative to visually attractive puff-pieces. Womack’s wholeheartedly celebratory account—which interrogates neither the politics of the character’s early decades nor the politics of Marvel’s creative team—does little to allay such concerns. Interested readers will have to seek out that richly problematic history elsewhere.

Comics Research Bibliography 2023, print edition is now available

Two volumes, 1200 pages in total, are available at the following links:

https://www.lulu.com/shop/tony-r-rose-and-john-a-lent-and-michael-rhode/comics-research-bibliography-2023-print-edition-vol-1/paperback/product-dynrrj4.html?page=1&pageSize=4

https://www.lulu.com/shop/tony-r-rose-and-john-a-lent-and-michael-rhode/comics-research-bibliography-2023-print-edition-vol-2/paperback/product-p6kddq2.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Manga in Angouleme and Paris

So Angouleme Comics Festival / France / possibly most of Europe continues to focus on manga. It did not happen overnight and there was backlash. The same backlash happened in the Philippines in the 1990s but over time, manga style was accepted in most countries like in the case of Malaysia. 

I wrote about the Philippines' response to manga here.

https://singaporecomix.blogspot.com/2013/02/manga-and-philippines.html

https://singaporecomix.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-complex-relationship.html

And how Malaysian comic artists have also embraced manga style back in the 2000s. 

https://www.academia.edu/6454913/Lest_we_forget_The_importance_of_history_in_Singapore_and_Malaysia_Comics_Studies

And of course, genres like BL / yaoi led the manga wave in Asia.

https://singaporecomix.blogspot.com/2013/02/bl.html

These days, Thai BL tv series are very popular in Southeast Asia. And at one time, China BL tv series too. (until they were 'banned')

Here's an interview with Bounthavy Suvilay who has insightful things to say about manga style.

https://sgcartoonhub.com/swf-2022-an-interview-with-bounthavy-suvilay/

But back to Angouleme Comics Festival 2024. There was this huge Moto Hagio retrospective of original art (you know the Japanese do not lend out their original art easily) which really helps one to reevaluate the importance of Moto Hagio in comics history. Reading her shojo manga now might be a bit underwhelming. But that's because so many of her innovations in manga have become common vocabulary in the medium. But looking at her original pages, you are reminded she is the pioneer in portraying what we take for granted now - how the inner worlds of characters are visualized on the manga page. She invented the language. That is the power of a good comic art exhibition. They make you think and reexamine your assumptions. 

I have written about Shin-ichi Sakamoto in a previous post. But I want to talk about Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal exhibition. Which is excellent, of course. That's not surprising. But what is shocking is that some of my friends from Japan (manga profs) are not familiar with Blade of the Immortal. To them, Hiroaki Samura is not a well known mangaka in Japan. This blew my mind as I thought Blade of the Immortal was a popular manga series in Japan. So I am dispelled of this belief. That led me to think that back in the 1990s, the kind of manga that gets translated and published in the West really depends on agents and the kind of rights that get bought and sold in the trade market. Blade of the Immortal is popular in America and France. It was well reviewed in The Comics Journal in the 1990s when manga reviews were not so common. But according to my friends, it is almost unknown in Japan. Today, the world is flat, to borrow a phrase. What is popular in Japan (One Piece, Naruto, Demons Slayer, etc) is also popular in the rest of the comics worlds. This is food for thought as this means the manga translated into English and published for the American comic book market in the 1980s and 1990s was something else altogether. I think it is a good thing to have such anomalies in history. It makes things more interesting.

Which reminds me I should be getting round to review The Early Reception of Manga in the West by Martin de la Iglesia soon. But do I have time to read the extant literature? Casey Brienza wrote an excellent book about Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics (Bloomsbury 2016). She was also the editor of Global Manga: "Japanese" Comics without Japan? (Routledge 2015). I have gone through these books before a few years back but I doubt I have the time or energy to read them again. Maybe the easier way is to read back issues of Bubbles zine as they are also into 1980s and 1990s translated manga in America. 

I hope Iglesia's book will explain why Blade of the Immortal was picked up for translation and publication in America in the 1990s and what led to its success and popularity in the West. 

Talking about manga at Angouleme, my friends from Japan (Kazumi, Jessica and Fusami) had a panel about women manga in conjunction with the Moto Haigo exhibition, I think. 

Here's a photo of them. (i was appointed by Fusami to be the 'official' photographer)

(L-R: Kazumi Nagaike, Jessica Bauwens, Matthew Loux, Denson Abby, Fusami Ogi, moderator Xavier Guilbert)

I also had the chance to catch up with the ever popular Peach Momoko and her business partner Yo Mutsu in Manga City. The queues for her signing were less hectic than the Singapore Comic Con last December. So we had a nice chat. 

But it was a different story when she had an event at Pulp's Comics in Paris a few days later. You can see the long queue here. It went all the way till the end of the block. 

It was her first time at the Angouleme Comics Festival and in Paris and they were surprised by the warm welcome she received. I asked Yo Mutsu why was manga so popular in France and his reply was: "We don't know. Manga has just been the norm for us, so we don't know what sparked the popularity." 

Just goes to show how manga is ubiquitous in France / Europe now. 

Ok, I think that's all the Angouleme / Paris reports I have.

Oh yeah, Akira Toriyama passed away at the age of 68 a few days ago. Someone should translate and publish Bounthany Suvilay's book on Dragon Ball. 

(all photos by CT)

CT Lim