Today we bring you a very special episode where we interview Mike Baron, the man who wrote the first Punisher on-going, but still has a lot of other projects going on that you should know about. But first thing’s first: The tyrannical FCC has come down on us for talking about butt fucking and voodoo too much, so we needed to do a PSA to avoid jail time. We refused due to moral disagreements, but we compromised by getting Chris Patton to do a bumper for us, so props to him.
Introduction – Jake and I catch up on our lives as he talks about his new internship and I talk about trying out for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, failing, but getting offered some coke as a consolation prize. Jake also brings an audio clip that shows how much of a Don Juan he is.
Mail Call – Fan of the show Andrew asks us if other family members of Frank or Maria have been in the comics, and what their thoughts were on Frank’s actions. Jake and I weigh in on the problems and possibilities..
Interrogation Room – Mike Baron comes on the show and tolerates our questions about the Punisher, horror comics, and Superfoot. Once again, we thank Mike for taking time to speak with us, and we highly recommend you pick up the May issue of Dark Horse Presents if you’re a Nexus fan!
Bullet Points – We “discuss” Jason Aaron’s and Steve Dillon’s Incredible Hulk #8, and by that I mean we wonder why anyone let’s Dillon draw the Hulk and who would ever want to see Hulk fighting more mutated dogs.
Flashbacks – In honor of Mike Baron’s interiew, we review Punisher v2 #11 and 12, which involve Native American drug trips and mini-copters. Overall, we really liked them!
Discharge Papers – I talk up the two comics I got from Forbidden Planet, Paul Pope’s 100% and Henry + Glenn Forever. Jake makes fighting words against two other podcasts with his dislike over Flex Mentallo‘s narrative, and I put on my literary analysis hat as a counter-point. We then bring up our Important Opinions on the gay Green Lantern that DC has released to the news outlets. We also announce our new contest winner!
Punisher: Body Count 
FYI on the Pendleton/Punisher debate. At the time Punisher was created, Pendleton had recently pretty much created the genre of having a character series franchise for men’s action that would bring in other writers (something Tom Clancy perfected on down the road). Yes Fleming was first with Bond, but he wasn’t cranking out a couple of books a year and wasn’t looking at a multi-writer franchise. To the best of my understanding, there were a slew of action title series cropping up to compete with Mack Bolan, and Punisher was Marvel’s bid. I don’t think Pendleton gave it a lot of attention because there were enough people copying and imitating that it was just one of the crowd. Plus in the early 70s he just finished a massive lawsuit with his publisher over them creating competition in his own line, and talked like he was burnt out with the legal battles. I saw in some interviews later that he knew Punisher was from Bolan, but let it pass. I always wondered if he knew that his Marvel interview was going into the same Marvel Previews with Punisher on the cover, and how he felt about that. Marvel had some pretty big balls to use the guy whose character they had just ripped off to try to boost sales! Either way its a moot point, he’s dead now and the Executioner books kind of suck, they have not aged well.