Another case of international intrigue, Man of Stone introduces the first (and only) love interest in the Ennis run. In fact, the aftershocks of this story reverberate throughout later arcs as well. The story also shows the progression of Ennis’ storylines, from street crime and mob bosses; to terrorist cells; to larger, international mob bosses and larger, international white-collar criminals; to this: A genocidal general intent on committing mass murder on a global scale. A weakness of this arc is that there’s no real character development—just exposition, masquerading as development—but that is true of most ongoing, serialized books because the author can only do so much: Readers want and expect their characters to remain relatively consistent from year to year. The other weakness of this arc is that it’s just a little too big, a little too broad, and a little too “important” to be believable. And I mean believable in the context of the Punisher universe—he’s out of his element here, and it’s not as satisfying to see him fighting helicopters in the desert.