WRITER: GARTH ENNIS | ARTIST: JACEN BURROWS | PUBLISHER: MARVEL | FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK | RELEASE DATE: JUNE 9TH

As Marvel’s resident serial killer, Frank Castle doesn’t have a whole lot of friends. Aside from the occasional begrudging team-up, the Punisher really doesn’t play well with others. The more conventional superheroes tend to take umbrage with his murderous methods, and Frank himself doesn’t have a whole lot of time for copycat killers (see the end of Welcome Back Frank).

Frank finally gets his bromance in Garth Ennis’s Soviet. Marking Ennis’s big return to the character after a definitive run on Marvel Knights and Punisher: MAX, this bloody thriller sees the Punisher investigate an apparent copycat killer taking down Russian mobsters – on his turf, no less. But in ex-soldier vigilante Valery Stepanovich, it looks like Frank might have actually found his Russian counterpart. 

Like some of Ennis’s best Punisher stories, Soviet primarily operates as a grisly war thriller, taking in a grand conspiracy and extensive flashbacks which stretch all the way back to 1980s Afghanistan. This is no mere retread of Ennis’s greatest hits, and an excellent story in its own right, quite unlike any of the writer’s other Punisher tales. Ennis is very well matched with artist Jacen Burrows (having previously worked together on the repulsive but effective Crossed), and Burrows’ Punisher is wonderfully stony-faced and intimidating. Naturally, the gore is in ample supply, and the violence in Soviet is some of the most brutal ever seen in a Punisher book.

But it’s the writing which shines. These days, Ennis is best served by his more serious war stories and crime books, and Soviet is no exception. This exciting, slightly horrifying action thriller is up there with some of the best Punisher stories ever told, and finds both writer and artist on top form. Frank too. Look, he made a friend and everything.