The Punisher

TOP TEN TUESDAY: Books with a Unit of Time in the Title

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme, as the title suggests, is book titles with a unit of time in them. This can be seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, eternity, however you might mark the pass of time.

I’ve read all but the last book in this list, though it is on my TBR for June so I hope to get to it soon. I’ve linked to any reviews if I have them, and some of these I read so long ago I’m not sure if they’d still hold up for me today but I did tend to like all these books when I read them.

172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad
A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston
The Punisher Vol. 3: Last Days by Nathan Edmondson, Mitch Gerads, Moritat and Brent Schoonover
Black Widow Vol. 3: Last Days by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto
Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Rania Mamoun

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki
40 Years: For my 40th Birthday I pause to share 40 poems then I shall be on my way by Ritah
Thirty Days by Annelies Verbeke
Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam edited by Linh Dinh
The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

Have you read any of these? What books came to mind with this prompt?

2021: The Year of TV

For many, many years I’ve been saying I’m terrible at watching TV shows and generally speaking I am but that did change in 2021. I still haven’t watched many of the “big” shows like Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Succession, The Boys, Outlander – you name it, I probably haven’t seen it.

But in 2021 I watched more TV shows in their entirety than I have ever before in one year. In fact, I watched 31 different shows. Only two of them were continuations of shows I’d starter before 2021; Cobra Kai and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and one was a rewatch; W.I.T.C.H.

Here’s a list of all the shows I watched last year. they’re sort of in order of when I watched them though if there’s been a gap between when I watched various seasons of the same show, I’ve included it on the original listing. Like Cobra Kai I watched on 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021 – started and ended the year with my new favourite disaster man Johnny Lawrence.

– Cobra Kai season 3 and 4
– Derry Girls series 1 and 2
– Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 6 and 7
– Superstore season 1-6
– WandaVision
– The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
– Loki
– 9-1-1 season 1-4
– 9-1-1: Lone Star season 1-2
– Shadow and Bone S1
– Batwoman season 1-2 and first half of S3
– The Gifted S1-2
– Ted Lasso S1-2
– Mare of Easttown
– W.I.T.C.H. S1-2
– Chernobyl
– Turner & Hooch
– Big Shot
– What If…?
– Only Murders in the Building
– Doctor Who: Flux
– The Equalizer S1
– Jessica Jones S2-3
– Luke Cage S2
– Iron Fist S2
– Daredevil S3
– The Punisher S2
– Hawkeye
– Superman & Lois S1
– The Wheel of Time
– Alex Rider S1-2

My favourites that I watched this year were Chernobyl, Superstore, 9-1-1, Ted Lasso, Superman & Lois and, of course, Hawkeye (which I reviewed over on JumpCut Online). But really, I enjoyed pretty much everything I watched this year. I will say I found the first series of Alex Rider a bit of a slog but the second series was great and more than made up for the first.

I also finally caught up with and watched all the seasons of the various Marvel Netflix shows I’d just left by the wayside. That was something I’d definitely been talking about catching up on for years and I’m pleased I’ve finally done it. It was nice to revisit those characters and stories again after so long.

I think in 2021 the pandemic sort of caught up with and it was in 2021 when I found it difficult to concentrate on things like a two+ hour film or a 400-page book. So that’s why I turned to TV. A lot of the stuff I watched is around the 45-minute mark per episode if not shorter and I just found it easier to watch a few episodes in an evening than have to focus on a film. Plus, as I was working from home for the vast majority of the year, I would also watch an episode (or two depending when I got up) before work or during my lunch hour. So that definitely helped me watch more TV than normal.

As for what my TV-watching will be like in 2022? Well, I do want to make reading more of a priority this year so naturally films and TV may take a bit of a backseat which I’m fine with. I want to carry on with the shows that I’ve started, when the next series starts here in the UK so that’s Batwoman, Ted Lasso, 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star, Derry Girls, The Equalizer and whatever else might have a new series air at some point in 2022. I’m still kind of annoyed that the final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine still hasn’t been aired here yet but at least that’s something to look forward to.

I’m not sure how many new-to-me shows I’ll end up watching in 2022. The thing is with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and the bog-standard TV channels, there’s so many shows out there that it is overwhelming. One new show I do have my eye on (and will maybe renew my subscription to Apple TV+ for it) is The Afterparty, that looks like fun and it has a lot of people I like in it.

Looking at what I’ve watched and enjoyed this year, if there’s any shows you’d recommend whether they’re new for 2022 or not, please do let me know. I won’t make any promises that I’ll watch them – especially if they’re in their fifth season with 20ish episodes a season (that’s super intimidating) – but as there’s so much out there it’s hard to know what’s good or not or where to begin. And who knows, I might like a show to fill my lunchbreaks again.

F is for Frank Castle

frank castleFrank Castle aka The Punisher isn’t exactly a good guy, but you could say he does bad things for good reasons. Basically he kills people, but they are people who are murderers or rapists and who have often escaped justice so Frank dishes his own brand of justice. Frank is a vigilante who does whatever he can to take on criminals and his history in the military means not only is he comfortable in using a wide variety of weapons but he is also a tactical genius and is a master of martial arts.

Frank Castle is definitely an anti-hero but that’s what makes him so compelling. The first time I came across Frank was in The Punisher (2004) which I thought was an OK film and it got me interested in the character (have to say I love the scene where Frank has a bow and arrow), then I watched Punisher: War Zone (2008) which was brutal but brilliant. Now Frank is in the latest series of Daredevil which I’ve yet to watch but I can’t wait to see what he’s like in it – fun fact, I have only watch the first episode of the first series of Daredevil and don’t really care much about Daredevil as a character but the fact that Punisher is in the second series really makes me want to catch up.

I’ve now read some of The Punisher comics, mainly the series by Nathan Edmondson and Mitch Gerads which I loved. I love the art style and it was a great insight into Frank’s character and the fact he does care about people even though he tries hard not to. He sees things as very black and white – you’re either good or bad and he treats you accordingly, he can be terrifying but there’s something strangely reassuring about Frank Castle.

To get an introduction to Frank Castle, one of the best places you can go is watch Dirty Laundry, a fan-made short film that is really great.

REVIEW: The Punisher Vol. 2, Secret Avengers Vol. 1 and Lazarus Vol. 2

FullSizeRender (58)The Punisher Vol. 2: Border Crossing – Nathan Edmondson, Kevin Maurer, Mitch Gerads, Carmen Carnero and Phil Noto

Frank Castle is in trouble, he’s injured and has not only gang lords after him but Crossbones as well. Things get interesting when he runs into Black Widow but whether their meeting will be good for Frank, who knows? All Frank knows is that he has to get back to LA before it burns to the ground.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed volume one of The Punisher (I mainly picked it up because I’ve seen the various Punisher movies – check out The Punisher: War Zone – and because I liked the art). I really like Frank Castle and his attitude towards criminals, he is a vigilante but when he’s not around things are decidedly worse for the general public. Volume One ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger so I was keen to see what happened to Frank next.

I really liked his encounter with Black Widow and how his story entwined with that of her (as seen in the series by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto) but you don’t need to be reading Black Widow to know what’s going on (though I highly recommend it because it’s great). They’re interesting characters to have together as they are both comfortable with doing bad things for the right reason.

All the threads that were set up in volume one are coming together and painting a complicated picture – but not too complicated. There’s the strand with the drug lords and the strand with the new Howling Commandos but Frank (and you as the reader) is slowly starting to join the dots. Everything hasn’t become clear quite yet so I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how it all pans out in the next volume.

I still like the art a lot but the way the panels are ordered so they suddenly go across a double page spread sometimes threw me a bit. 4/5. (more…)