Broken Frontier

It should be nigh effortless for comic readers to dive into The Devil’s Tools #1, no matter that Mack Bolan: The Executioner has had over 600 (you read that right!) novels published over the course of his…well, not illustrious, but definitely “steady” career as male pulp-action hero numero uno.  So why so easy to dig in?  For starters, Mack isn’t just “basically Marvel’s The Punisher”, Mack literally is The Punisher, as he was the inspiration and mold for Frank Castle, both being Vietnam vets turned vigilante crime fighters now at war against the mob.  Even The Executioner’s war journal and van and general arsenal, all were outright aped for comic fave Frank, so…in essence fans are jumping into a Punisher story sans all Marvel continuity.  Talk about effortless!

Even better, Mack Bolan novelist and old-school Punisher scribe Doug Wojtowicz pens this comic adaptation with a clever if not entirely unique method of information overload on multiple simultaneous fronts.  A round table of mob bosses discuss the “problem” of The Executioner: who he is, what he does, and what must be done to rid themselves of this nuisance, all the while intercut by scenes of Bolan infiltrating the bosses’ lair and trying to stop a large shipment of guns from hitting the streets.  In this way, action and exposition become mercifully intertwined rather than kept in their own camps, and Wojtowicz’s use of both the bosses’ narrative and a third-person omniscient narrative that slide in and out of the other compound the read into a rhythmic and satisfyingly dense little package.

So all the necessary backstory is told, while the beginning of the specific story elements of “The Devil’s Tools” is never forced to relent.  It’s a great example of having cake and eating it too, getting a comic script that seems as cared for as any page of prose during a story that could hardly be called slow.  I especially loved Wojtowicz’s ability to circumnavigate the nasty retcon aspect of a forty year-old character who needs to remain young and yet exist in the present day.  Marvel just shrugged and made Tony Stark a Gulf War survivor (bye-bye Vietnam!), but Bolan’s new origin gets cheekily confused by the many mob men, one claiming the Gulf War to be the hero’s origin, another blustering that such an origin is impossible, as Bolan was around and kicking butt in the 80’s, the 70’s even!  More origins are suggested and tossed aside—the Korean War, Vietnam, etc.—so that, ultimately, any or all could and can be used, the creators leaving the absolute understanding of Bolan’s place in real history to the readers’ discretion (do you care that he looks thirty but fought in Vietnam?  Or do you care that there exist adventures of the man as vigilante in the 70’s?  You decide!).

The dialogue is pulpy, no doubt, but this seems unerringly fitting to the material.  The pacing, as I mentioned above, is surprisingly intricate with all its wheeling back and forth between characters and events though none of it becomes overwhelming or hard to follow.  Wojtowicz succeeds brilliantly in putting 200% more into this single issue than most full mini-series and yet the whole thing reads as breezy as a Spider-Man newspaper comic strip.

Then there’s the highly expressive art by SL Gallant: he’s immaculate with offering different faces and 6-8 panel pages crammed with detail and action and nuance of both body language and language-language.  For those familiar with Dracula vs. King Arthur or Johnny Delgado is Dead and the art of Chris Moreno, Gallant's work is highly reminiscent of this, distinct character designs, easily distinguishable, action that’s dynamic and gorgeous to view.  I’d even go so far as to compare his work to Terry Moore—it’s that expressive and versatile.

The Devil’s Tools isn’t a throwback, but it doesn’t, in script though especially in art, adopt the more modern definitions of momentous and thrilling and worthwhile.  Panels are square and the action is shown simply, but always with a layout and style that is absolutely artful.  The dialogue and narratives are free of snark and overly self-referential humor.  Unlike the utterly abysmal Punisher War Journal by Matt Fraction, where characterization is non-existent and style completely and irrevocably supersedes substance, The Devil’s Tools looks to offer more along the lines of what Moonstone’s The Phantom does, only with a bit sharper an edge, higher production values, and cleaner art with more high-octane action.  It’s precisely what it says it is, pulpy and simple but not, in the end, ill-considered or cheap.  This is high-quality storytelling all the way.