Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #491: The Russian

So, imagine my surprise while watching Deadpool & Wolverine when I realized that, among Cassandra Nova’s many silent henchmen, was the Russian, a particularly brutal, if nonpowered, guy who battled the Punisher in a movie once.

Yeah, I’d say he qualifies for this series.

The Russian, real name unknown, was a big Russian fan of American culture and superheroes that first appeared in Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s The Punisher #8 in November of 2000.  Frank Castle was causing problems for mob boss Ma Gnucci, so she hired the Russian to come deal with the killer vigilante.  The Russian, known to appear just about anywhere that violence and war breaks out, boarded a plane to North America but caused it to crash on the way, a situation where he was the only survivor, after which he went to Gnucci, accepted the contract, and off he went to attack Frank in his at-the-time home.

So, here’s the thing:  the Russian in this first encounter was darn near indestructible in that he didn’t seem to notice much what Frank tried to do, all while he was having this extensive monologue on how much he loved American superheroes.  Any trick Frank had stashed at home didn’t work for one reason or another, and Frank was only able to dispatch the guy by taking the fight to the apartment of a neighbor, an obese shut-in, and after burning the Russian with the neighbor’s hot pizza, he then smothered the Russian to death with the obese neighbor (said neighbor was not really hurt during this confrontation).  Frank then used the Russian’s severed head to get most of the rest of Gnucci’s henchmen to run away.

Well, that’s not much of a character if he only last one storyarc.  Well, joke’s on you if you think so!  The Russian lasted two storyarcs as Ennis and Dillon brought him back in the next series.  How?  Well, a Russian general, not happy about how the West seemed to have won the Cold War, grafted the Russian’s head onto a cyborg body with all kinds of adamantium enhancements.  And since this was a Garth Ennis comic, he had other enhancements as well.

This version of the Russian was far more dangerous, still a chatterbox, and Frank only survived an initial encounter because Spider-Man showed up, and after the Russian knocked Spidey out, the Punisher realized that “bug boy” could take the hits better and used Spider-Man as a human shield before using a webshooter to disorient the Russian enough to knock him off a high building’s roof and down through the sidewalk below where he was hit by a subway.  The Russian survived that along with another fiery plane crash, and Frank only took him out at last with a bullet through the mouth and by knocking him out of a plain tied to a nuke, a fact the Russian didn’t seem to mind all that much because he was a Garth Ennis character.

Now, that was his last comics appearance because there’s no real reason the Punisher should have reoccurring villains.  But he did appear in the 2004 Punisher movie where wrestler Kevin Nash played the guy, and he and Thomas Jane basically recreated the fight from the Ennis/Dillon issue without the dialogue as Nash’s Russian was largely silent.

That said, when I did some research into this character, I did learn that Nash apparently had a miserable time making the movie, so he wasn’t all that upset that the part got recast for Deadpool & Wolverine.

But recast he was.  That striped shirt sure does stand out, after all.