David Lapham, best known for Stray Bullets, comes to Marvel for a six issue Daredevil vs Punisher series.  Lapham's speciality is crime stories, so these are the natural Marvel characters for him to work with.  And the result is... well, average.

Imagine, if you will, a generic Daredevil versus Punisher story.  There's been enough of them by now for us to establish the format.  The Punisher sets out to kill a mobster.  Daredevil fights him, because even though mobsters are bad, killing is wrong.  They respect one another as combatants, but Daredevil thinks the Punisher is mad, and the Punisher thinks Daredevil's a well-meaning idiot.  The ultimate winner depends on whose book it is (so at least that's up in the air here).

Well, if you liked that story in the past, good news.  Here it is again.  Rather than reinventing the characters to suit his own agenda, Lapham simply seems to be enjoying the playpen.  Daredevil and the Punisher go through their usual routine, with the slight quirk that the Punisher gets first person narration and Daredevil gets third person.  Hammerhead is the current mobster, making a play for the vacant Kingpin position.  And Lapham indulges himself by giving a minor role to the Jackal (who has history with the Punisher, long long ago).

Basically, though, it's the same old same old.  And it's done perfectly well.  Lapham is a solid craftsman who knows how to run through the old standards and hit the key points.  After years of Garth Ennis writing him as an ubercompetent slaughterhouse, it also makes a pleasant change to have a fallible Punisher whose best laid plans can go hopelessly wrong. 

But if you're looking for any new ideas or insights into the characters, or even the relationship between the two, then you won't find it here.  It's Daredevil versus the Punisher, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Rating: B

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