I assume I don’t need to tell you that an event titled “System Bytes” is bad. And look at the four annuals that clustered together for this clusterf**k. What is Wonder Man doing there? And Guardians???
Marvel still bothered to promo it.
Summary: A computer is infected with a virus. Punisher blows it up. Obviously, that doesn’t end it. And also it makes for a pretty talky Punisher story. Good thing Peter David writes it, otherwise it would have been insufferable. There’s two back-ups where Punisher kills people, though.
What makes less sense than Punisher fighting a computer virus? Daredevil. He’s blind. He can’t see screens. But Deathlok can, so he joins with Daredevil to fight the virus. Deathlok has his own annual in 1992, but it’s not part of this event. Daredevil barely appears but, again, there’s some back-ups with him doing his regular thing.
The head-scratching continues.
Anyway, they team-up and beat up some people and then the virus jumps to Wonder Man’s annual. Wonder Man is basically a himbo. It also makes no sense for HIM to be in a computer-based story.
Anyway, he shoots the virus off into space on a rocket, where it drifts until, in the future, it survives and fights the Guardians. Meh.
The Punisher annual had some pin-ups that were pretty cool. I covered them separately, here.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #2 offered a top ten in its back up:
