Punisher Kill Krew #1 (2019)
Written by Gerry Duggan
Artwork by Juan Ferreyra
Chef’s Note: Leave it to Frank to see the tactical potential of, and then weaponize, the long-standing tradition of restaurants providing crayons for their younger patrons.
The whole menu is printed in a bright azure ink. On the bottom of the page it reads, in capital letters, “Take me home and color me” … The bright design captured the attention of young visitors, the limited options made ordering simpler, the images and interactive aspect of the coloring helped keep children entertained, and by keeping the menus, kids and their families were also keeping the restaurant’s promotional material.
Chef’s Note: What pizza joint are they eating at? This one has been a real stumper for me.
At first I assumed they were near Central Park since A) the kid says “we were in the park when everything went crazy” and, B) Frank immediately heads to the place where he “chased a big worm being ridden by a bug” and it seems very green and full of (mostly good, not people-eating) trees – very Central Park like.
That said, I have reviewed the pizza places around and about Central Park and, even back in 2019, none seem as old-school and basic as the place where Frank and the orphans are hanging out – spacious interior, big windows, big tables, bathroom labelled as WC, open window to the kitchen, fat chef with a mustachio and toque, etc.
Instead, they tend toward the ritzier-style of pizza place.
I then examined the exterior shot a bit more. The first thing that is noticeable is that it is right on a corner and is only one-story. This seems like a very unlikely possibility for most areas of NYC, given the ridiculously high $$$ real estate rates.
There is a street sign on the corner, which on first glance seems a very promising lead!
But then one zooms in-
Yes, you read that right. This pizza place is on the corner “JEF 8” and… what the?
Is this helpful? No, it is not.
(Mr. Ferreyra, if you have any explanation for this mildly frustrating graphical oddity, please do feel free to clarify by contacting me or using the comment form below. It’s an inside joke, yes?)
At a certain point, I began wondering about the architectural design of this supposed pizza place. It really had a classic diner feeling to it and so I started wandering down those research paths and eventually, voilà:
~ Empire Diner 210 10th St Chelsea NYC ~
That’s clearly the place in the exterior shot (just with PIZZA in the place of DINER on the side).
But it also definitely isn’t now and never was a pizza place. Is this is yet another example of comic book writers/artists just making things up? It would seem so.
UPDATE: Apparently the diner was, for the most part, closed from 2014 to 2017.
If we are to offer the benefit of the doubt here to Mr. Duggan and Mr. Ferreyra, and I definitely think we should because this is a really fun comic, we can then perhaps assume the place Frank and the war orphan gang visited was some kind of a pop-up shop(?) that occurred sometime during that downtime period.