the vynsane asylum

Last 2 weeks:

5 Ronin #4-5 - Psylocke was a good issue (I dig Parlov's art) but Deadpool seemed like a lackluster finale.

Batman Inc #2-4 - With so many new Batman titles out there, I confused this with Batman: Dark Knight. Dammit. I'll tray and grab issue #1 next week and see how I like it.

Gotham City Sirens #21 - The twist ending wasn't much of a surprise.

Incognito: Bad Influences #5 - Damn, what a noir ending! Can't wait until the next arc (whenever it comes).

Kick-Ass 2 #2 - Kick-Ass meets up with his new hero team (which includes one of his friends) and they beat the shit out of some gangsters. I'm sure repercussions are to follow.

Punisher: In The Blood #5 - Decent end, not exactly what I figured. But what of the Microchip loose end? We know he isn't dead because of the new creative team announcement.

Scarlet #5 - End of the first arc. Now that her revolution has begun, Scarlet prepares to cross a threshold she can't come back from.

Why did Microchip turn bad, initially? And hasn't he been resurrected six times now?

I remember that one awesome story (by Mike Baron?) from the original run, where shit got as hardcore as a Code-approved book in the early 90s could get. It was pretty insane and over-the-top. Unfortunately, it ended with the now infamous "black Punisher," which I'm sure was an editorial mandate of some sort. Didn't Microchip lose his hand when some mobsters tortured him in that? Is he pissed over that?

Not sure about the hand thing, but years ago Micro turned his back on Frank (they disagreed on Frank's methods) and ended up getting killed.

Micro turned up a few years ago, brought back to life by, and working for, The Hood, who had promised to resurrect Micro's son/nephew/whatever of he helped him kill Frank. Micro later killed GW Bridge in order to bring back Frank's family (and Frank instantly burns them back to death).

After The Hood fiasco, Micro tried to hide again but was nabbed by the Jigsaws, who held him captive and used his knowledge to lure Frank in. Last time we saw Micro (In The Blood #4) Frank had apparently cut his throat and killed him. And that building soon went up in flames, presumably with Micro's body still inside.

But the recent Greg Rucka announcement mentions Microchip, so who knows?

Gawd, the whole mess sounds awful. They used to be able to keep the Punisher in the Marvel Universe without bogging him down too much in the greater MU aspects that don't work well with the character. Now (and since about the first arc of War Zone, almost twenty years ago), it's either ridiculously "in" the MU or completely separate.

I do still say that, if they're going whole hog with MU silliness (which might not be silly in another comic book), Frank needs to start stealing supervillains' weapons and powers and add them to his arsenal, eventually making himself the baddest motherfucker on Earth. Even if it's an Elseworlds book, I'd love to see Frank start systematically analyzing villains, figuring out how to defeat them one at a time and take their powers, then winding up so mad with power that everyone else has to bring him down a notch or two.

Because, realistically, if a guy who thinks like Frank existed in the world of the MU and was dealing with alien invasions and resurrections and such, that's how he'd operate.

anarky wrote:I do still say that, if they're going whole hog with MU silliness (which might not be silly in another comic book), Frank needs to start stealing supervillains' weapons and powers and add them to his arsenal, eventually making himself the baddest motherfucker on Earth.

Yeah, they tried that very briefly. It was Remender and/or Fraction.
It didn't go well.

Okay, a couple of things that didn't come to me earlier:

1) When I was reading Punisher comics, I always got the impression that Micro was every bit the tough-ass psycho Frank is, just that he didn't have the skill to fight crime himself. He didn't kill, but only because he couldn't hit the broad side of a Jawa Sandcrawler. How did he disagree over Punisher's methods? And having him fight on the Hood's side simply to bring back his nephew seems disrespectful. Microchip the way I remember him would say, "Fuck you," then get the Hood to kill him again.

2) Wikipedia says Punisher War Zone was an "out of continuity anthology." When did that happen? It sure seemed in-continuity when it came out. Not like Punisher's backstory isn't already insanely convoluted, contradictory, and requiring him to be old as dirt.

(And, since you responded while I was typing that....)

3) From what I've heard, he got silly costumes and ran around thinking he was Captain America. I mean (and this would likely require help, even more than Micro could provide, assuming he's alive and a good guy at any given time) he compiles a list of supervillains with potentially useful abilities. Then he (or his team of geeks, or whatever) analyzes every known bit of information, determining the weaknesses of each, and which abilities could be taken and used--making a second list of those whose abilities could be incorporated into his own arsenal . (For instance, he'd just scratch Rhino off this list, since it's unlikely Rhino could be removed from his suit.) They rank the villains in the order of ease of defeat, adjusting if necessary (say, given one villain's abilities are necessary to defeat a slightly less-powerful one), and Frank goes about it.

Because, really, Frank is no dummy, and he's nucking futs. If they weren't pretending it never happened, he would have put a rubber bullet in Magneto's skull during the finale of Morrison's run on New X-Men, if not long before. The fact that he hasn't taken out more villains is sort of an insult to him.

It was his son that was killed. Way back in issue 11 or 12. I don't remember his exact reasoning, but Micro eventually went against Frank around the time Lynne Michaels and that other guy(the guy with the leg brace and hockey mask) took over as the Punisher, right? And he died in the verrry last story arc of the orginal Punisher books. When all three got cancelled at once. I seriously need to go back and do a big read through like I did with GIJoe and Transformers a couple years ago.

He got brought back in the PunisherMAX series and then killed immediately after. I think the internet rumblings from that story prompted Marvel into considering bringing him back in the regular continuity.

Those Punisher books I ordered last week came last night and I've been reading a bunch of them. Micro was in many of them and yeah he was just as gung-ho as Frank is/was. Intruder was particularly good. Back then, Frank seemed to have more of a 'big picture' view of organized crime. He'd be off in foreign countries blowing up coke labs and tracking intl' arms dealers and wasting crooked politicians.

anarky wrote:3) From what I've heard, he got silly costumes and ran around thinking he was Captain America.

Off the top of my head, two examples I can think of where Frank used Superhero tech: one retarded as fuck; the other is pretty good.
1. He used Ant-Man's helmet to hide in a pizza.
2. He used a Skrull sniper rifle to attempt an assassination of Norman Osborn from several miles away (he was thwarted by Superman Sentry.

anarky wrote:I mean (and this would likely require help, even more than Micro could provide, assuming he's alive and a good guy at any given time) he compiles a list of supervillains with potentially useful abilities. Then he (or his team of geeks, or whatever) analyzes every known bit of information, determining the weaknesses of each, and which abilities could be taken and used--making a second list of those whose abilities could be incorporated into his own arsenal (For instance, he'd just scratch Rhino off this list, since it's unlikely Rhino could be removed from his suit.) They rank the villains in the order of ease of defeat, adjusting if necessary (say, given one villain's abilities are necessary to defeat a slightly less-powerful one), and Frank goes about it.

Sounds like a Mega Man approach: kill the first one with what you have, then use his tech to kill the next, and so on, working your way up the ladder.

anarky wrote:Because, really, Frank is no dummy, and he's nucking futs. If they weren't pretending it never happened, he would have put a rubber bullet in Magneto's skull during the finale of Morrison's run on New X-Men, if not long before. The fact that he hasn't taken out more villains is sort of an insult to him.

But that would take balls on Marvel's part. When both Fraction and Remender took over, both claimed Frank would be going after the "big" bads.

Frank killed Stilt-Man.

Rollo Tomassi wrote:It was his son that was killed. Way back in issue 11 or 12.

That's what I thought, but I double checked wikipedia, and it said nephew twice. Should've known better than to trust wiki.

Its funny that you used the Rhino as an example because he and Frank are semi-friends and spend their Christmases together.

That's an honest to fuck truth. Look it up.


And its entirely possible they retconned Microchip Jr into being his brother's kid that he was raising or some shit. Technically making him a 'nephew' But at the time, it was his son, and he refers to him in the current Remender books as his son. But they've done a lot of retconning of Micro over the years. He had three different names before they settled on Linus Lieberman. The others being retconned as 'aliases'. His first appearance, they didn't even call him Micro, they gave a real name that escapes me. Then I think they started using 'Micro' as a code when they were on the radio, then it stuck as his name. Then later, they forgot they had given him a real name, and concocted a name for him(I forgot that one as well) and then even later they decided that name wasn't nerdy enough, so they said it was a cover and gave him the nerdy name Linus.

Rollo Tomassi wrote:Its funny that you used the Rhino as an example because he and Frank are semi-friends and spend their Christmases together.

That's an honest to fuck truth. Look it up.

Mother fucking Fraction...

Rollo Tomassi wrote:And its entirely possible they retconned Microchip Jr into being his brother's kid that he was raising or some shit. Technically making him a 'nephew' But at the time, it was his son, and he refers to him in the current Remender books as his son. But they've done a lot of retconning of Micro over the years. He had three different names before they settled on Linus Lieberman. The others being retconned as 'aliases'. His first appearance, they didn't even call him Micro, they gave a real name that escapes me. Then I think they started using 'Micro' as a code when they were on the radio, then it stuck as his name. Then later, they forgot they had given him a real name, and concocted a name for him(I forgot that one as well) and then even later they decided that name wasn't nerdy enough, so they said it was a cover and gave him the nerdy name Linus.

Micro first appeared in The Punisher #4 (regular series).
From the very first panel of the issue:

Punisher's War Journal,
July 1987-- Jersey.
Home of Sinatra, Springsteen, Princeton and Lowell Bartholomewori AKA Microchip the Man.
A former Ford weapons and systems designer, Microchip free-lances out of his own home.
He has only one client.

We are then introduced to his son.

Well, I was half right. Lowell Bartholomew. BTW, Ford designs weapons? Huh?

I looked at the wiki page. I think all that nephew crap is from the Micro Origin miniseries. They don't even mention his actual kid getting killed by a ninja.

Rollo Tomassi wrote:Well, I was half right. Lowell Bartholomew. BTW, Ford designs weapons? Huh?

Bartholomewori. And they thought that name wasn't nerdy enough?

I thought the same thing about the Ford weapons.

I'm almost positive that name is never mentioned again and they came up with another one, and then replaced THAT name with Linus. Because I think I reread issue 4 after the other ones and thought 'criminy, a little continuity people.'

I thought it was his son, but everything online said "nephew." I figured I misremembered. Fucking retcons.

When vyn does another split-off thread topic, the title will be

The "Yes, the Punisher's dead sidekick has his own topic" Topic