THE HUMOR, THE HUMOR
By:
May 18, 2026
One in a series of occasional detours from Adam McGovern’s irregularly scheduled column OFF-TOPIC.
Was Marvel’s The Punisher: One Last Kill (spoiler: it’s not the last) supposed to be a comedy? I have to hope so, because taken at face value, it sets an unprecedentedly new standard of bad (though the latter is actually more useful as an example for study).
As our antihero Frank Castle careens through a housing project killing everyone he sees (note: they’re assassins coming after him; Frank is at least a post-colonial version of Charles Bronson, for whom the housing project’s actual residents are not the presumptive villains, but the people he’s “protecting”), anyway, as he plows through the self–defense murder spree like an (admittedly masterfully filmed) live-action first-person shooter I intermittently found myself lmao since all I could think of was Sir Launcelot hacking into bystanders in Monty Python’s Holy Grail.
Jon Bernthal is a generationally gifted actor, but reels out of his lane into onrushing semi’s as co-writer of this; many truly great artists eventually take on the ultimate challenge of whatever it is they don’t do well (like, Sinéad singing reggae), and that’s the worst enemy Bernthal faces here. The acting (especially from Judith Light as the mob widow who vows vengeance on Frank and sends all the hired guns, axes and clubs) is so over the top that it has to be a joke; in any case that’s how it ends up. This unfolds within the scenario of an out-of-control NYC where to walk down the street is to pass a mugging, rape, store-invasion or mass murder every sidewalk-slab. It’s the common American blue-state city as imagined by Stephen Miller, an artifact of the supposed 1970s madhouse that Bronson was turned loose on in the Caucasian id to “clean up”; it’s strange that a writer who’s concurrently starring in a stage version of Dog Day Afternoon, whose film version was an on-location report from the real 1970s that accurately recorded all the nuance and ambiguity in the volatile craziness, could get this so wrong.
Unless it’s a satire of comicbooky threats (especially from Light) and exaggerated hazards existing entirely in Frank’s own mind (he does hallucinate all his friends, dead and alive, admonishing him to shape up and snap out of a solitary depression and self-imposed exile he’s gone into, so maybe his enemies are also as imaginary as Stephen Miller’s). Frank regains his confidence and renews his license to kill in a spree of summary executions of indisputably bad people (these days it’s mostly nazi skinheads and masked assailants, who are strangely unaffiliated with the official fascists and kidnappers in our world who are known to see the Punisher as a hero).
His mental illness, harrowingly portrayed by Bernthal, is unaddressed except for clearing his head with the thing he does “best”; a separate stereotypical street-madman ranges through some of the scenes raving his delusions, as I guess a composite of the many folks whose families call 911 for services and get some cop who guns their relative down; that character is ignored by Frank in a tacit acknowledgment that illness is not a crime, but as far as that goes he remains a trope and not a human. Since the body count starts climbing again, I’d swear the “last kill” is Bernthal trying to bury this character for good in a private hallucinatory hell (or at least some violent urban Valhalla), but there he is back already and seeming much more well-adjusted and relatable in the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer. We all know that in comics, and recently comic movies, even after death the healing can begin.
MORE POSTS by ADAM McGOVERN: OFF-TOPIC (2019–2025 monthly) | textshow (2018 quarterly) | PANEL ZERO (comics-related Q&As, 2018 monthly) | THIS: (2016–2017 weekly) | PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HELL, a 5-part series about characters in McGovern’s and Paolo Leandri’s comic Nightworld | Two IDORU JONES comics by McGovern and Paolo Leandri | BOWIEOLOGY: Celebrating 50 years of Bowie | ODD ABSURDUM: How Felix invented the 21st century self | KOJAK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: FAWLTY TOWERS | KICK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JACKIE McGEE | NERD YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JOAN SEMMEL | SWERVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRO and THE LEON SUITES | FIVE-O YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JULIA | FERB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: KIMBA THE WHITE LION | CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: WASHINGTON BULLETS | KLAATU YOU: SILENT RUNNING | CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: QUINTET | TUBE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: HIGHWAY PATROL | #SQUADGOALS: KAMANDI’S FAMILY | QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: LUCKY NUMBER | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JIREL OF JOIRY | KERN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Data 70 | HERC YOUR ENTHUSIASM: “Freedom” | KIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Captain Camelot | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Full Fathom Five | A 5-part series on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos | Reviews of Annie Nocenti’s comics Katana, Catwoman, Klarion, and Green Arrow | The curated series FANCHILD | To see all of Adam’s posts, including HiLo Hero items on Lilli Carré, Judy Garland, Wally Wood, and others: CLICK HERE