Issue(s): Punisher War Journal #64
Cover Date: Mar 94
Title: "Everything changes"
Credits:
Chuck Dixon - Writer
Gary Kwapisz - Penciler
Gary Kwapisz - Inker
Freddy Mendez - Assistant Editor
Don Daley - Editor

Review/plot:
The Punisher is fighting Blackwell, the rogue agent of VIGIL, but a gang of thugs is descending on both of them. Sheriff Bendix shows up in his police car and rescues them. He really just wants to get the Punisher out of town, since the Punisher is the reason for all the fighting.

When they do get out of town into the snowy mountains, Blackwell is convinced that the Punisher won't kill him, because the Punisher doesn't kill cops. But that's not accurate. The Punisher just doesn't kill clean cops, and Blackwell is a murdering psychopath at this point. So the Punisher does kill him.

Punisher and Bendix then hole up in a cabin and fight all the criminals that have been lured out of town.

The Punisher sets a trap, rigging the cabin to explode.

Punisher and Bendix hide in a freezer and survive the explosion. Bendix lies to the law enforcement agents when they arrive, saying the Punisher must have been killed in the explosion. So after all this, he's assumed dead again. But he resurfaces back in New York.

Outlaw makes it out of town, and the mortician that was helping Payback and Lynn Michaels smuggles them out. Meanwhile, Micro and Micky Fondozzi had gone their separate ways but they get back together (and seem to be the only people on the planet unaware that the Punisher is alive again).

As with a lot of crossovers, there are things that get dropped between chapters. It doesn't make the plot hard to follow, but i think it might explain why there are a lot of characters here that don't seem to have a purpose. The new copycat Punishers are underdeveloped, and it's hard to see why Outlaw was brought all the way here from the UK just to ride around on a motorcycle and get into a few random fights. I suspect that each writer was assuming that a different writer was covering those characters in more detail, and it all just got lost. I'm assuming deadline pressures (and also a change in the assistant editor) kept Don Daley from correcting that sort of thing, if he even realized.

Regardless of that, though, i don't really have huge expectations for any Punisher story, and this was a fun change of pace.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is the tenth and final part of Suicide Run.
References: N/A

Crossover: Suicide Run

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Seems like this was the best of Marvel's 1993 mega-crossovers (okay, it started in Dec 93).