What if... the Punisher's family had not died?

Mark Hazzard: MERC #1 

What if the Punisher's family had not died? The tenth issue of What if...? volume two answered that question, but prior to its publication, the answer might have looked something very like Mark Hazzard: MERC.

Written by Peter David with art by Gray Morrow, Merc was one of many first issues in Marvel’s New Universe, which is why it is this month's "First Issue on the First". The issue's title “Bad for Business” is ironically prophetic, because Merc was the ill-fated NU title that never really took off. I think it was even one of the first to be cancelled. Even so, the name is solid, and the concept isn’t bad: a Vietnam veteran turned mercenary struggles to balance his post-divorce family life against his post-Army occupation.

I only ever read a few issues back in the day and never got my hands on issue #1. Reading it now, I found it to be a solid enough intro, but there has to be some hook, some extra dimension to the character’s origin that emerges later. If not, maybe that was why this title folded sooner than the rest of the NU. He had a scar and a cool name, which was enough for me back in the day, even if I would have preferred a little more straightforward superheroics blended with the gritty military action. Hama had made that a winning formula with G.I. Joe, so presumably David should have been able to do it with Merc. Jim Shooter's editorial in this very issue plays up the NU's theme of greater realism, which might explain why, after serving as lingerie-clad eye candy for a few pages, the assassinated dictator's daughter gets gunned down instead of joining the cast of recurring characters. Sick of her shit, ol' Mark Hazzard just lets her run off into a hail of bullets. How's that for realism? Maybe Marc was just tired of all the pointed (and sometimes valid) barbs she was making about U.S. foreign policy. There are some other moments of dark comedy, including two guards that each try to seize power after the dictator's death and wind up immediately killing each other.

Very solid, even moody art to go with a fairly bleak story. No, Merc isn't quite the New Universe version of Nick Fury or the Punisher, but he doesn't have to be. In some ways, he is the anti-Punisher in that his wife and kid are still alive, though he is estranged from them. However, he is a non-powered human armed with conventional weapons operating in a world where other characters can lift cars or shoot fire, so that puts him in the same class of character as Punisher, no matter how differently it is carried off.