Marvel's The Punisher: Season 1 (Review)

Marvel's The Punisher

Marvel's The Punisher is a dangerous series. A dark, moody story laced with moments of shocking brutality, the show toes the fine line between realism and sadism, between showing the toll violence takes on a human being and glorifying the very thing it's trying to comment on. To be fair, this is a tricky thing to do creatively. In the age of "switching off the brain" in the name of entertainment, this presents a real problem for shows like The Punisher, which prefers to communicate its deeper meanings through nuance. In other words, the point of a series like this stands to be easily missed.

For the most part, The Punisher walks the tightrope admirably. But there are missteps here and there, which seem to be the necessary pitfall of long term storytelling. Part of the problem arises in the realization that Frank Castle, the titular "Punisher," is not a character who translates well to long form serialization, instead working better in a more old fashioned procedural, "story of the week" format. His character arc is relatively small and tough to trace over the course of 13 hour-long episodes without beginning to feel stale and repetitive. However, the slog through the sometimes meandering story is made worthwhile by the fact that the writers have a remarkable understanding of the primary character, and by Jon Bernthal's ferocious performance as the haunted, tragic Castle.

The story is relatively straightforward. When the series begins, Frank Castle is dead, as far as the world is concerned. But Pete Castiglione is paying the bills by hammering down walls as a construction worker in New York City. Castiglione is, of course, an alias. He is actually Castle, alive and well, living under the radar. He works long hours, swinging his hammer until his hands bleed, then goes home at night to try and power through the rest of Moby Dick and catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. This proves especially difficult considering that his dreams are haunted by the faces of his wife and children, who were killed many months prior in a hit gone bad. In the wake of their deaths, Castle had gone on the warpath, carving a bloody trail through the New York underworld as "The Punisher," a one-man army, taking his revenge against those he believed to be responsible. Now, with his family avenged and the Punisher believed to be dead, Castle struggles to function in the aftermath.

But the past is not so easily outrun, and through an encounter with brilliant hacker and former NSA analyst David Lieberman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Castle learns that the people responsible for the deaths of his family are still out there, all tied to an illegal CIA operation, one that Castle was unwittingly party to during his time in the Marines. This brings the threat closer to home than he could have ever imagined. Thus begins the resurrection of Frank Castle, the Punisher.

Castle's uniqueness as a protagonist is worth noting here. There is an effective storytelling trope in the vein of the Byronic hero, which sees a protagonist tormented by a dark past. When it comes to characters who are assassins—characters like Frank Castle—these characters are usually brooding, tired of killing, and looking to leave that life behind. The Punisher stands in stark contrast to this stereotype, because Frank Castle worships violence. In the wake of his first round of revenge, when our story begins, Castle doesn't know what to do with himself. Any chance he had of leaving this behind died with his wife and children. Now, he can barely function as a human being. He only snaps back to life the moment the possibility of revenge rears its head. As the time for the kill draws near, a kind of excitement overtakes him, and every kill is carried out in a state of religious rapture. There is very little heroic about Frank Castle, at least in the traditional sense. He functions more as an antihero, one who operates from his own set of ethical principles. On one hand, this makes Castle the most moral character on the show. He has a clear sense of right and wrong, and the punishment he deals to wrongdoers is absolute and final, usually coming in the form of a bullet. The problem with Castle lies in his power of self-determination. He singlehandedly judges what is right and what is wrong, effectively acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Castle thrives on violence, finds his purpose in punishing those he deems deserving of it.

The toll this takes, not just on Castle, but on those around him, becomes the driving force of the show's first season. There's a brilliant moment in the fifth episode, when Castle meets with an old acquaintance, journalist Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). There are shades of Faithful from The Pilgrim's Progress in Page's character, as she's the one who stays the course and, in doing so, helps the protagonist to do the same. Castle espouses his usual belief that he has to find the people who murdered his family so that he can kill them, to which Karen finally asks, "So where does that end, Frank? Because I look at you and my heart breaks because all I can see is this endless, echoing loneliness." And perhaps the most telling thing of all is how quickly Castle retorts, "I'm not lonely, Karen." The truth is that Castle cannot see himself, he marches ever forward on his quest for vengeance, never once stopping to consider himself. His relationship with Page is crucial. He is drawn to her, but she perplexes him. Perhaps it's because she sees right through him. Viewers who aren't watching carefully might be tempted to see a hero in Frank Castle. The truth, however, is exactly what Page describes as endless, echoing loneliness. It's this trait that makes Castle a sympathetic, almost pitiable character. What The Punisher gives us is a man who simply refuses to cope with loss, and grief. Someone who deflects it all and reaches deep into the well of rage that, by his own admission, has always been present in his life, even from childhood, in order to manage his trauma. It's a tragic dimension of character, a willful act of self-destruction that Castle refuses to see about himself. He thinks he's keeping himself alive, when the reality is that, little by little, he is suspending more and more of his humanity with every life he takes. "I want there to be an after for you," Karen says to him, telegraphing where this story is heading, and the choice Castle will ultimately have to make. In many ways, this pivotal conversation lays the groundwork for Castle's character arc for the remaining episodes.

Yet another powerful conversation occurs in the eleventh episode of the season, between Castle and the hacker, Lieberman. The Punisher is known for wearing an iconic white skull. When Castle emerges with the skull painted on a suit of body armor, Lieberman says, "That skull? That's a memento mori. It's Latin for, 'Remember you will die.' In Rome, victorious generals would return from war, and so they didn't get blinded by glory, they'd have a slave who would say, 'Remember, you're only human. You are gonna die.' Well, it's meant as an admonition to value your life, to live it well." While Castle dismisses him, Lieberman's insight is a powerful one that, again, viewers who aren't careful can miss: the Punisher is not a hero. He is, like Batman to Bruce Wayne, Frank Castle's singular act of wanton self-destruction. While Castle might find his purpose as the Punisher, he is stunting himself emotionally by refusing to deal with his trauma.

All this makes the final scene of the season the most profound. The show's final episode, tellingly entitled "Memento Mori," sees Castle, having emerged from the shadows to finish bringing down the conspiracy that got his family killed, finally attend the veterans group run by his friend, Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore). For the first time, Frank speaks openly with the group about himself in a stunning monologue: "If you're gonna look at yourself, really look in the mirror, you gotta admit who you are. But not just to yourself, you gotta admit it to everybody else. First time, as long as I can remember, I don't have a war to fight. And I guess, if I'm gonna be honest, I'm just... I'm scared."

Castle's final words can seem oddly out of place for a comic book character. His words signal a movement from within. Because of Karen Page and David Lieberman, Castle has, to some small degree, thawed. He, for perhaps the first time, sees himself. It's an admission of guilt, to be sure. But more than that, it's an acknowledgement of fear. We like the heroes we worship to be larger than life. The problem is that the heroes we worship tend to be profoundly human characters with serious deficiencies of being. Our tendency now is to look to antiheroes, to men like Frank Castle, with the same reverie as those standing in the lineage of men like Atticus Finch and Shane. The truth is that there's no correlation at all. But that doesn't mean that men like Frank Castle have any less to teach us about ourselves. In fact, it's likely that most of us are more like Castle than any of the truly great men of literature. Which is why we should pay special attention to this iteration of the Punisher, and note his character arc.

It's a rare thing that an antihero emerges from his self-medicated state to see himself for who he actually is, much less take steps in the right direction to course correct and become a better man because of it. Yet that is exactly what happens with Frank Castle, and that is exactly what makes The Punisher worthwhile. We travel with Frank Castle through his dark night of the soul. We experience the cathartic release of witnessing him finally unleash on the ones who murdered his family, all the while haunted by the notion that though justice is rightly demanded, perhaps we take the power of self-determination upon ourselves at the expense of our very humanity. And, ultimately, we see Castle make the hardest choice of all, to do the truly courageous thing and take a good, long, hard look at himself and admit that he doesn't like what he sees. And then to look outside of himself for help in dealing with it. That endless, echoing loneliness that Castle finally confronts within himself is actually a terrifying prospect that I suspect is all too real for so many men in the modern era, myself included. And when we're standing on the knife's edge, threatening to stumble over into that dark void and lose ourselves, then we can hope to have the strength of Frank Castle to do the right and necessary thing.

Metaphor and the Nature of Meaning in Lewisian Thought

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963)

The power of metaphor can hardly be overstated. Former editor of Time magazine's Europe office, James Geary, suggests that metaphor "is not just confined to art and literature but is at work in all fields of human endeavor, from economics and advertising, to politics and business, to science and psychology."¹ This notion attracted C. S. Lewis, and is one that he dealt with frequently throughout his work. In Miracles, Lewis writes, "The truth is that if we are going to talk at all about things which are not perceived by the senses, we are forced to use language metaphorically. Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion."² If Geary's premise is to be taken as true, that metaphor is at work in all fields of human endeavor, then, as Lewis demonstrates, metaphor is most certainly at work in the realm of theology. In fact, if this assumption is presupposed, then the implications for the bearing of metaphor on theological reflection are vast and extremely important.

Metaphor and the Organ of Meaning

Lewis understood the surprising and terribly efficient power that metaphor could wield. In his little-known essay in critical theory, "Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare," Lewis extrapolates on the importance of metaphor to man's ability to ascribe meaning. This essay is the logical starting point for dealing with the role of metaphor in Lewisian thought in particular, for in it he posits in plain language a contrast seen clearly throughout the corpus of his work. "I am a rationalist," he writes. "For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition."³ Here, Lewis demonstrates the stark difference between thinking (perhaps reasoning works better) and imagining; in other words, Lewis differentiates between ideas and images.

The relationship between metaphor and imagination is nuanced, but the subtle points are critical in understanding how Lewis will develop metaphor in his works. Insofar as Lewis identifies the imagination as the "organ of meaning," he will attempt to demonstrate that the ability of the imagination to actually ascribe meaning—the ability to connect images (or, symbols) to ideas—lays the groundwork for reasoning of any sort. He writes,

When we pass beyond pointing to individual sensible objects, when we begin to think of causes, relations, of mental states or acts, we become incurably metaphorical. We apprehend none of these things except through metaphor … Our only choice is to use the metaphors and thus to think something, though less than we could wish; or else to be driven by unrecognized metaphors and so think nothing at all.

Such recognition leads Lewis to conclude that, "all our truth, or all but a few fragments, is won by metaphor."⁴ In a very practical sense, what Lewis speaks of is the ability of the imagination to connect images that are not necessarily to be taken as literally true to nevertheless convey ideas that are as true as truth can be. Thus, for Lewis, the discussion of metaphor is a discussion concerning meaning. In some ways, in many ways, metaphor takes one into truth in ways that literalities—not because they are untrue, but because they are literal—cannot, precisely because of meaning (given that the metaphor is an apt one).

The true metaphor, then, might be accurate without being necessarily literal. The accurate metaphor succeeds in capturing truth which, when further abstracted by reason, loses some of its clarity. In everyday conversation, one might be heard saying, "Don't carry this metaphor too far, it will eventually break down." This seems to be the very point Lewis is making. While metaphors might certainly break down when abstracted further into reason, Lewis is simply highlighting that the metaphor not further abstracted might nonetheless contain a very profound truth. In fact, Lewis suggests, it is very likely that all truth might be won through accurate metaphors not abstracted by reliance on reason alone. Rather, good reasoning accounts for the truth of the meaning contained within the accurate metaphor. For Lewis, many of the ways human beings come to understand God is through metaphor.

This is an approach that is favored quite heavily by the writers of Scripture to communicate truth. There are several metaphors in Scripture that are decently well known. Christ's famous "I am" statements from the gospel of John are rife with metaphorical language. The Psalms contain a number of metaphors, notably to compare God to a fortress, or a rock.⁵ To clarify literal terms, it is understood that Jesus Christ is not himself an actual loaf of bread, or that God himself is not a divine Stonehenge. But what these instances from Scripture demonstrate is the point Lewis makes—the ability of metaphor to stoke the imagination, to paint in stronger colors and define with crystalline clarity a truth that might otherwise be won with a lesser degree of potency.

Metaphor as the Language of Meaning

Thus it might be said that, for Lewis, metaphor is the language of meaning. "We can make our language duller," Lewis states in an essay presented to the Socratic Club on November 6, 1944, "[but] we cannot make it less metaphorical. We can make the pictures more prosaic; we cannot be less pictorial … In other words, all language about things other than physical objects is necessarily metaphorical."⁶ Viewing metaphor as the language of meaning becomes a necessary component for understanding not only the nature of meaning of Lewis's works, but also for understanding Lewis's own epistemology.

It is important to understand that Lewis does not attempt to favor imagination over intellect, or vice versa. Rather, both are incredibly important, necessitating that that they be viewed correctly. As already mentioned, Lewis developed the idea that the imagination must be dealt with first, because it is the mechanism through which the meaning of something is grasped. Therefore, when it comes to probing the Divine, if the words of Paul to the Corinthian church are to be taken with all the gravity in which they were intended, then for those who now "see in a mirror dimly," metaphor is imperative for grasping that which is both unfamiliar and remote. No more is this readily apparent than in one's attempt to understand the supernatural. And, as Lewis demonstrates at multiple points across his literary works, to accurately grasp the supernatural is to push one “further up and further in” to meaning itself.

Meaning and The Chronicles of Narnia

Though somewhat counterintuitive, perhaps the best place to begin when examining the treatment of meaning in The Chronicles of Narnia comes at the very end of the series. At the close of The Last Battle, the final book in the series, Aslan says to the humans, "There was a real railway accident … Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this is the morning."⁷ For the reader who has tracked the story through the entire series, there is a startling recognition here: what Lewis, through Aslan, identifies as "the Shadowlands" is, in actuality, the "real" world from which the main characters come. The point Lewis is making is that the current reality in which we inhabit is a mere "shadow" of the world to come. In a sense, this world is a metaphor in and of itself for the world to come.

Now, this notion of metaphor is not fully realized until the recreation of Narnia itself is taken into account. After Aslan has set about recreating the world of Narnia, Lewis takes a moment to contrast the old with the new: "The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more."⁸ It is the curious usage of the word "meant" here that becomes crucial for understanding how Lewis has developed his notion of metaphor throughout this series. As the new Narnia comes into being, meaning itself becomes more actualized. Truth, it would seem, for Lewis, is merely a statement that corresponds to reality. But meaning is what determines the initial statement. This corresponds to Lewis's notion that imagination—the ability to ascribe meaning—is the condition of truth. To extrapolate just a bit further, the point Lewis is making about this present reality is that, at some future point in time, when heaven and earth are reconciled, it is almost as if fact is transformed into meaning.

Meaning and The Space Trilogy

This same notion is captured in a singular instance in the final book of Lewis's science fiction series, That Hideous Strength. While the first two books draw up the mythos that is to define the series, this book gradually redefines the mythos before detailing the resolution. Famously panned by Lewis's friend J. R. R. Tolkien for its reliance on their mutual friend Charles Williams and his writings, That Hideous Strength is something of a curious conclusion to the series. Yet the book also provides a startling insight into how Lewis handled meaning in his works, in many ways a better example than in his more popular Narnia stories.

Up to this point, the central character of the first two books, Elwin Ransom, has ventured to Mars and Venus, where he has learned the story of man's oppression at the hands of dark spiritual forces. In That Hideous Strength, the plot of which unfurls on planet Earth, the reawakened Merlin of Arthurian lore becomes the vector through which angelic, heavenly beings will aid man in overcoming the dark forces oppressing them in the form of a government agency tastefully (or distastefully, depending on the reader) acronymed N. I. C. E. The utter outlandishness of the plot aside, the moment the angelic being named Mercury descends on Merlin, Lewis writes,

For Ransom, whose study had been for many years in the realm of words, it was heavenly pleasure. He found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the white-hot furnace of essential speech. All fact was broken, splashed into cataracts, caught, turned inside out, kneaded, slain, and reborn as meaning.

Again, fact becomes meaning.⁹ The recurring point of Lewis’s work, present in The Last Battle and here again in That Hideous Strength, is the notion that, when confronted with the Divine, the seemingly benign things of this present reality begin to mean more. Meaning becomes a key element of supernatural manifestation, and the impression one gets when reading Lewis is that dealing with meaning in such a way presses one deeper into truth.

Myth, Metaphor, and Meaning

As already pointed out, in Lewisian thought, statements that are true are simply meanings concerning reality abstracted from reality. In other words, truth statements are those statements that simply correspond to reality. But there is another type of meaning, what might be termed a "deeper" meaning, which is reached through myth. Such meaning is not necessarily reached through language. In fact, all of language could fade away and the core mythic qualities still communicate—accurately—the intended meaning.

Nowhere is Lewis’s understanding of metaphor and its relation to the nature of meaning more apparent than in his understanding of myth. In his essay "Myth Became Fact," Lewis points out that the "intellect is incurably abstract," and draws a hardline between experience and intellectually apprehending that experience. "You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting." Yet in "the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction."¹⁰ What Lewis suggests is that myth is the thing that draws one closer to truth and pulls one deeper into reality. This forms the basis of accepting Christianity as the "true myth."

The point of connection between myth, metaphor, and meaning in Lewisian thought is summed up nicely by Peter W. Macky in his 1981 essay "The Role of Metaphor in Christian Thought and Experience as Understood by Gordon Clark and C. S. Lewis." In this essay, he traces Lewis’s development of metaphor to conclude that there is a spectrum of language through which truth can be accessed. "Metaphor," he writes, "is most at home in the poetic type (including religious speech), for that is the way to speak of supersensible human experiences." This is precisely the function Lewis ascribed to metaphor, the ability to make clear a supernatural reality. "It is best done by appealing to the imagination, using metaphors that enable us to taste reality rather than just talk about it."¹¹ And this notion of "tasting reality" rather than just talking about it is the key component of myth. Myth is capable of "speaking" without necessarily abstracting. To ascribe meaning to myth is to do so intuitively, rather than analytically, thus requiring the power of imagination.

In myth, the analytical abstractions from reality about reality must necessarily give way to something that can be experienced as concrete in myth itself; that is to say, a mythic "truth" is not one that corresponds to reality, but is, in fact, reality itself. Myth, like the new Narnia, purely means. And this realization, like the realization of Ransom in That Hideous Strength, enables one to experience truth in a way that goes beyond merely talking about it, while at the same time communicating truth in new and profound ways.

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City (Review)

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City

Scott Snyder shakes up the Batman mythos again with Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City. With the New 52 initiative, the DC Comics universe underwent a soft continuity reboot. The slate of character histories was wiped clean in favor of establishing new and updated stories, effectively bringing their pantheon of heroes into today. Being one of DC's biggest properties, Batman's well-known backstory was one of the many that came under new penmanship. How fortunate that Snyder was the one wielding the pen.

After three quintessentially dark and murky Batman stories, the bright splash of color that greets readers on the first pages of Secret City is both a jarring and welcome shift in tone (having Danny Miki and FCO Plascencia on ink and colors, respectively, is nothing short of a revelation). The very first panel establishes that this is Gotham City, but six years ago. And this is where things take a turn for the surreal. The city lies in ruins, a kind of hellscape where fish swim in flooded subway tunnels and the buildings are overrun with overgrown shrubbery. Into this strange, post-apocalyptic world comes a child, who is almost immediately assailed by thugs. Enter the Batman, like you've never seen him before. Instead of his trademark cape, he's packing a rugged rucksack and crossbow. Instead of the classic Batmobile, he's mounted on a mud-slicked dirt bike meant for navigating harsh terrain. This is Batman by way of Mad Max. He saves the child, who proceeds to tell him that a mysterious "he" has been telling everyone that Batman is dead, "ever since he killed the city."

"Good," Batman retorts. "Then he won't see me coming." And suddenly we're off again, jumping back in time another five months, where we meet a younger Bruce Wayne—before he becomes Batman—who has an axe to grind. He has only recently returned to Gotham City after some years of being away, and everyone believes him to be dead. He wants to keep things that way. See, even though Bruce has yet to become the Batman, he has wasted no time getting his hands dirty as a street-level vigilante, working to infiltrate the vicious Red Hood Gang. Bruce is a young man, looking to be somewhere in his mid-to-late twenties. While he's full of piss and vinegar, as the old codgers say, he's a tad unrefined and takes ballsy but unnecessary risks.

The story established here is poles apart from Snyder's two previous narrative arcs. Which is an intelligent storytelling decision. After the dark subject matter of Death of the Family, having something a little lighter in tone gives readers who are in for the long haul some room to breathe. Snyder executes these kinds of genre shifts with a kind of flawless perfection. He has such an understanding of both the Batman character and classic genre tropes that he can flip between horror, thriller, adventure, and even science fiction with ease, exploring Batman through a multitude of lenses. If the first two volumes were action-thrillers, and the third flirted with horror, then this volume is firmly planted in the pulpy, adventure-thriller genre. For a retelling of Batman's origin, this is completely appropriate, given that the character was originally conceived by Bill Finger and Bob Kane in 1939, at the height of the old pulp fiction era.

Noticeably absent from this volume is Snyder's trademark use of mythological themes. This isn't necessarily a criticism, as Snyder is a master of genres, and he puts the storytelling emphasis not on symbolism, but on character development and big, bombastic set pieces. It works for the more adventurous feel that this volume is going for.

There are three major relationships Bruce develops throughout the narrative. The most obvious one is with his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Ever the caretaker, Alfred is quite opposed to Bruce's harebrained schemes, and early in the volume the two have a rather startling confrontation. Alfred has serious issues with the fact that Bruce refuses to reveal himself to the world and reclaim all that he is entitled to as the sole heir of the billion-dollar Wayne estate. He even goes so far as to accuse Bruce of behaving as a coward, and tells him that his parents would be ashamed. When Bruce turns physical, Alfred gives him a much-needed slap to the face—it's a jarring moment. After Alfred storms away and refuses to help Bruce further, Bruce flies into a fit of rage. This is a young man full of anger and defined by his pain, specifically the pain of having lost his parents to a senseless mugging as a child. This singular moment from his past is what drives him. Every criminal he faces down essentially wears the mask of the man who murdered his father and mother. There's very little selflessness here, and Alfred is right to walk away.

Another relationship of note is the one between Bruce and his maternal uncle, Philip Kane. Not long after Bruce's return to Gotham, Philip finds him. In Bruce's absence, Philip has been running Wayne Enterprises, the company that is the Wayne family legacy. With Bruce now back in Gotham, Philip approaches his nephew and asks him to reveal himself to the public and to return to Wayne Enterprises as the golden boy of Gotham, since the company never really recovered in the wake of the Wayne murders. Bruce refuses Philip's proposal, but is disturbed to learn that the Red Hood Gang has been stealing non-lethal arms manufactured by Wayne Enterprises. As the story unfurls, it becomes clear that Philip's not the most honest businessman, being that he has actually been negotiating with the Red Hood Gang to sell them small arms, in hopes of deterring them from stealing the more dangerous weapons. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Philip is drafted into the gang and is looking for a way out. The man he turned to in the past, a strategist with his own sordid history, is one Edward Nygma. It's clear that Nygma is Philip's confidant, and when Bruce refuses Philip's request to return to the public sphere, Nygma suggests that Philip should have him killed in order to gain public sympathy. While Philip's difficult position is to be appreciated, he is clearly a weak man who always looks for an easy way out and who is now paying dearly for it.

The third (and most interesting) relationship Bruce forms in the story is with the leader of the Red Hood Gang. As the name suggests, the gang is identified by the crimson masks each member wears when carrying out gang-related activities. There is implied to be a system of rules in place within the gang that prohibits the members from divulging information about their personal lives to one another. So each member is assigned a number, which becomes their gang callsign. As such, the leader of the gang is identified as Red Hood One. Now, this is where being a bit of a serious Batman reader pays off. One take on traditional Batman mythology tells us that before the Joker became the Joker, he was a small-time criminal known as the Red Hood, and only becomes the Joker after a confrontation with Batman leaves him boiling in a vat of chemicals. In Snyder's rewriting, it's clear that Red Hood One is the modern incarnation of the classic Red Hood villain. Though we only ever glimpse the man under the mask and never see him outright, Capullo brilliantly ensures the Joker's trademark hook nose is present, as is a penchant for unsavory jokes and a dark fascination with the Batman. It's a subtle thing that unfamiliar readers are likely to miss, but it's worth pointing out that Red Hood One and the Joker are likely one and the same, if only because of the nice parallelism with Snyder's previous yarn. As Bruce Wayne evolves into the Batman, Red Hood One evolves in the Joker. The hero and the villain are intricately tied together, even in origin. In a turn of sinister poetry, this provides a basis to the Joker's codependence on Batman, which was the highlight of the previous volume, Death of the Family.

The story forward is by the numbers, yet there's something to be said for doing something familiar, and doing it well. It gives the things we're accustomed to a new sheen, and that's exactly what Snyder does with Secret City. After Philip chooses to go public about Bruce's return on his own terms, his strategist Nygma goes behind his back and hires the Red Hood Gang to kill Wayne, and they nearly do. Broken and alone, Wayne heads to the only place he has left to go—Wayne Manor, where Alfred is waiting to patch him up. His brush with death giving him a new perspective, Bruce reconciles with Alfred and resolves to fight this war on crime in a different way. In a powerful moment, beneath the cold stare of Thomas Wayne's statue, Bruce resolves to "become a bat."

As Batman, Bruce begins dismantling the Red Hood Gang through fear tactics and guerrilla warfare. When he uncovers a plot involving the ACE Chemical Processing Plant, he chooses to combat the gang on two fronts by finally going public and announcing his return to Gotham, reclaiming the Wayne legacy. The story's climax involves a battle at ACE Chemical between Batman and the Red Hood Gang, during which Philip sacrifices himself to save Batman, and Red Hood One is dropped into the vat of chemicals despite Batman's attempt at saving him. Again, this is all pretty familiar territory for Batman fans, but the execution is done well enough that it's a thrill to read anew.

The biggest twist comes in the final pages of the main story. Batman and Alfred are discussing the outcome of the battle at ACE when Edward Nygma—now calling himself the Riddler—causes a city-wide blackout. This, of course, sets the stage for the story told in the first few pages of the volume, which depicts Gotham as a devastated cityscape. It's definitely an interesting wrinkle in Batman's backstory, but one that will have to wait until the next volume to pay off. The backup stories collected at the end of this volume give snapshots of Bruce's training sessions around the world. These are smaller, self-contained stories that are equally as fun as the main plot. One short story that stands out is titled "The Pit," and depicts a 24-year-old Bruce Wayne who has battled in a death match in Norway for 28 hours straight, simply because he refuses to kill his opponents. His instructor, a cryptic woman identified only as the Queen, tells him that the lesson he has yet to learn is that the only way to win a war is by finally killing his opponent. Sparing lives only leads to battles being won, not wars. Or so she preaches. But after hours of fighting, it turns out that no man is willing to set foot in the pit, having been frightened into submission. Bruce wins, having conquered his enemies with fear. It's a nice touch, demonstrating the beginnings of the scare tactics the Batman will eventually use to keep the villains of Gotham in check.

This volume is certainly not as deep as Snyder's previous work on Batman, but deep is not exactly what this particular story is going for. Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City is a fun, adventurous romp through Bruce Wayne's earlier years, that provides an interesting context for the relationship between Batman and Joker. It drips of pure, pulpy goodness and fist-pumping excitement, with a zinger of an ending that promises a bigger and more unexpected story to come.