Along with Wolverine, the Punisher was my favorite Marvel character back when I was reading Marvel comics regularly in the early 1990s. So after deciding to read Marvel’s Civil War event, I naturally wanted to read the collected issues of Civil War: Punish War Journal #1-4. But in hindsight, I really didn’t need to. The stories contained in issues 1-3 contain a lot of recap of the events involving the Punisher that were already told in the main Civil War series. And while issue #4 was a good story about the Punisher taking down numerous villains at once, it had no relevance to Civil War. The inclusion of a black and white reprint of issue #1 (for which the color version was also contained in this collection) was completely unnecessary.

While the story told in Civil War may hint at the Punisher playing a larger role in the Marvel Universe in the future, that story is not evident in this collection.

Rating: 4 out of 10.