Whedon is no BKV
One thing I complain about a lot in comic books, is when a writer uses a "guest appearance" in their books to make a character look like a dumbass. I complained about this a lot during Civil War with all the Iron Man appearances in other books. Some writers didn't bother understanding what Stark was doing, and just figured "In my eyes he's wrong... and that's how he's going to be portrayed here." and we ended up with Tony Stark being called the biggest villain in the Marvel Universe.
I found that extremely annoying... so how do you think I feel when a writer does something similar with one of my all time favorite characters? It seems that the Punisher turned into a complete moron before meeting the Runaways here. The really sad part, is that the character of Frank Castle has not had that much character development over the years, so researching what makes him tick isn't that hard... I'm not sure it would even fill an entire paragraph. He has two kwirks when it comes to people: nothing pushes his buttons more then seeing a woman being victimized, and he's over protective of kids in general. So what does Castle say when asked if he would actually shoot a kid? He says "Wouldn't be the first time." WTF? Huh? Did I miss something here?
Ok it's one thing to get the characterization wrong of a character that is simply making a "guest appearance", but Whedon's characterization of the kids themselves makes very little sense. First off they're runaways because they don't trust adults (not even Captain America), so what do they do? They decide to do a favor for the Kingpin of all people. I was hoping that this issue would explain why in God's name they would do something like this... but no there isn't. They also come to New York to "lay low" because they know that the superheroes know about them, and they don't want to have to deal with them. Ok... so they want to hide out in a city that has the biggest concentration of superheroes on the planet. Yeah it all makes perfect sense (where's the sarcasm font?).
Needless to say I miss Brian K. Vaughan.
