Punisher: War Journal by Curtis James Coffey - Action, Adventure - Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, continues his crusade to punish criminals, this time taking on a ruthless corporation involed in the sex trade. Based upon the MARVEL comics. 118 pages - pdf, format 8)

Glanced through it. I'm almost positive this is based on the Punisher comic entitled "slavers" about sex trafficking. Will give this a read later on.

You're right to a certain extent. The story actually combines several different issues into one cohesive narrative, with a lot of my own spin.

What I liked:

I think you got Punisher right. He's dark, broody. Sort of like Batman from Dark Knight, except less flashy and more violent.

I liked the Holy character. I think he would make a good villain on his own. I was thinking of the Priest from Gangs of New York. I think this guy can really stand out - better than Tiberiu.

The action sequences are good. I can see the Hollywood-style fist fights and explosions.

Barracuda is bad ass. Perfect villain to counter the strong protagonist - Punisher.

What I didn't like:

Tiberiu - I'm not sure if he's part of the Punisher comic canon. I haven't read the comics in years. But he seems too much like a weakling. Maybe, you did this on purpose? A pimp of young girls in the end dies a cowardly, ignoble death (pleading for his life). If so, this could be a tad cliche. Personally, I prefer strong villains to counter strong protagonists like the Punisher. Either make Barracuda the main villain or make Tiberiu stronger. I just didn't like how he wimped out and begged for his life.

Action scenes come in huge paragraphs. They can be a slog to go through. Tighten it up and lessen the blocks of text. But then you'd run into an issue of a script pushing 130+ pages.

Pg 87 - Punishes sees his dead wife. You write it as if it's reality. I think this should be a dream sequence or flashback.

In general, I think you're aiming for two themes here: the trafficking of young girls and the copycat vigilantes. It's good to be ambitious, but killing off some characters and consolidating them into strong ones will make this shine through. Personally, I would give The Holy more prominence. Kill off or make Tiberiu stronger. Consolidating your characters can help reduce the pages, allow you to break up the action paragraphs and give you more room for characterization.

Out of curiosity, what are your plans for this script? Are you going to pitch it to Marvel? I'm just asking as I'm toying with a Silver Surfer idea myself - a rewrite of Silver Surfer's origins with a more emphasis on drama, akin to Watchmen. I'm not sure if it's worth it, as I don't know if Marvel would even look at it. I'd only write it to add to my portfolio of writing samples, but I'm not at all sure how to market it.

Anyway, good luck with this.

King, thanks for the detailed feedback. Tiberiu is canon to the Punisher "Slaver" issues. The reason I wrote him to end up being a weakling is for a few reasons - One, he's old and frail. And two, I wanted to sort of convey that sure any person can beat up or bully a young girl, more so to compensate for something.

I figured you'd like The Holy the best, he's of course the biggest stand out, in my opinion.

I know the action paragraphs can be a bit long and somewhat convoluted - this was done at the request of a reader as he wanted the action scenes to feel more intense and visceral and I thought the way I wrote them conveyed that. Also, you're right, it cut down the page count.

As for my intentions, this was actually intended to be pitched to Marvel. My manager at the time is friends with a big producer for Marvel (No, I will not mention any names.) However, he told me that they didn't want to look at it because I wasn't one of their in-house writers. I later found out from my old manager's partner that he never once pitched the idea to begin with to Marvel, since he didn't know enough about the Punisher to risk pitching it and ruining his connection. I sort of got screwed. It was overly ambitious on my part, anyway.

Now I've posted it on various websites and forums for people to read, in the hopes that maybe someone with influence will catch it.