I have been reading The Punisher since late 80s and went back and collected everything prior from Amazing Spider-Man 129. Great Character. To this day I still collect Punisher comics and have every single issue and likely 95% of appearances. All the prestige format one shots they used to do also. Frankencastle could have so easily fallen down like the Angel stuff did - it had that kinda thing about it when I first heard they were doing what they did, but like you said - it was an extremely fun and well crafted read.
But take a look at the listings of those one shots. They are the same as Vol. 6. Even the product description is the same. I think it's a typo, or a place holder. Unless I missed something, the only material left in the Max universe is the Jason Aaron run, which would be a fitting end to the complete collection trade paperback series.
Lately I've been into characters like... daredevil, batman, joker, kingpin, punisher... they really interest me, I just got the max comics of punisher vol 1 and vol 2... I'm trying to break away from the traditional comic hero's such as iron man, thor.... and get more into darker characters... question do they have a full graphic of the Kingpin?? But this punisher is all what I expected and then some...I love it.
The first 4 volumes of the Complete Collections collect everything in the Ennis/MAX run plus all the mini's that he did during that time. If you get them you'd read everything starting with Punisher:Born and closing with Punisher:The End. I wanted to get all the volumes but only wanted the Ennis and Aaron material.
I love both Ennis' run and Rucka's run equally and would be all over a Hardcover of the Rucka run. Aaron's run I've never gotten to read so if volume 7 collects his entire run I can't wait to check it out. For me Frank has always been the most human of the Marvel Universe characters. He has no moral compass, but that allows him to do things others would not.
Ennis is overrated. He had the dude make a deal with the devil just because he needed to kill people. That deal is why his family is dead....so in a sense he made it Franks fault that his family died. OVERRATED. The Max run was good when it was serious but his origin story attempted to destroy my love for Punisher. I think if I started reading BORN first I would hate the Punisher. Year One is a great story and good place to start but don't start with Ennis if you want Punisher to make sense. Rucka definitely had one of the best Punisher runs imo. Suicide Run and The Cell by Ennis were some of my favorite stories.
