The Punisher
In the 70’s there was this guy who was a Vietnam veteran whose family was wrecked by the mob. That’s when that guy decided to use his military training and experience to wage a one-man war on crime.
And his name was Mack Bolan a.k.a. The Executioner. He was a character in a series of pulp novels by Don Pendelton.
(No major film series ever came.)
In 1974, Marvel Comics introduced a new character into their universe in Amazing Spider-Man #129.
Essential Punisher, Vol. 1
By Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Frank Miller, Steven Grant, Ross Andru, Mike Zeck, and various other writers and artists
This collection is in black and white, but the images I found online were in color.
Why is the Punisher trying to kill Spidey? It’s all a setup by a super villain at the time called The Jackal, who managed to convince The Punisher to waste Spidey because he thought he was a criminal, a lie helped into credibility by the terribly yellow journalism of J. Jonah Jameson’s editorials against the wall-crawler in The Daily Bugle. Thankfully for Spidey this misunderstanding is cleared up and he helps the Punisher eventually take down a foreign bad guy called The Tarantula and his cohorts, with extreme prejudice. Yeah, they never really brought the fact that Spidey was an accessory in the Punisher’s vigilante killings that much after that.
Then the Punisher got his own title - sort of - with Marvel Preview Presents The Punisher #2 (after Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 I guess)
Apparently Pendelton knew about this character and some agreement was reached, but the interview with him was not reprinted in this collection.
In these first issues it was revealed what the Punisher’s origin was. Frank Castle was a Marine Captain who had undergone SEAL training (amongst others) and was twice decorated with both the Bronze and Silver Stars, four Purple Hearts (!), and was going to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (!!) when something horrifying happened. While on leave with his wife and children in New York City’s Central Park they stumbled upon a gangland slaying and were slaughtered by criminals. None of the killers made sure that Frank was dead and that was the worst mistake in the history of crime in the Marvel Universe. Ever.
Frank deserted the Marines and disappeared for a few months and when he resurfaced he was The Punisher, a one-man army waging a war on crime.
I always choose not to call the Punisher a superhero since superheroes manage to save many, many lives using their powers and are defined by that above all else. That’s basically their job when they’re not nabbing up criminals or fighting supervillains.
Frank isn’t one. He’s a killer. I’ll just say that Frank Castle is like John Rambo crossed with Jason Voorhees rolled into one character because he has extensive military training and experience, kills people with ruthless efficiency, and is very cold-blooded in his work. Frank sees things as black and white. He even has a black and white costume (the death’s head insignia is an intentional target for criminals to shoot at backed up with body armor). His gloves are white as if they were pure and can do no wrong (despite how much blood is on his hands).
Frank Castle is a serial killer vigilante. His sociopathic inner monologues kind of stand against any nobility in his war on crime. Sometimes he does save lives, but is pretty much defined by how he kills so many criminals. He has no superpowers, just training and weapons anyone could get coupled with grim determination.
I like these comics because it’s like a slasher movie with guns most of the time. Frank does seem to run on the hatred of the criminals he targets, and unlike the mildly or severely annoying cannon fodder of a slasher film the criminals Frank targets are usually the worst of the worst. He is a predator preying on other predators.
Anyway, he started getting his own comic with this one, which saw him trying to stop an assassination and stumbles onto a conspiracy involving guys from his old outfit in Vietnam being the paid killers. And that leads back to someone trying to overthrow the U.S. government. Then Frank decides to take down one of the people responsible for his family’s murder which takes him on an explosive mission to the Florida coast where someone learns not to fire at Frank when he’s in front of a shark tank.
Then another adventure with Spider-Man and Nightcrawler tangling over an assassin being brought to justice and the Punisher getting involved in a face-off with the villain Jigsaw. Frank threw this guy face-first through a plate glass window and now the criminal with the stitched-up face is gunning for Frank.
This shows how Frank hasn’t got that many recurring villains (natch) and his life is pretty uncomplicated compared to Spidey, who has a very convoluted mess of a life where people are either dying or becoming his nemeses. Another adventure with a face off with Captain America shows that even Steve Rogers has a more complicated life. The juxtaposition with Frank’s lonely war is like night and day.
This also shows how approachable Punisher comics are as he doesn’t have a rogue's gallery of enemies. Most guys Frank targets are getting killed one way or another. In another story Punisher and Spidey face off against the Hitman, another Vietnam veteran whom Frank owes his life to, but has to take him out before he wastes J. Jonah Jameson leading to a final showdown at the top of the Statue of Liberty. This is the first I’ve heard of this Hitman guy since he has a bland name, and any villain can be a hitman if the price is right.
Also in this volume Frank begins his feud with Daredevil (written by Frank Miller) While Frank Castle thinks that criminals should just be killed (something a bit easier to accept when it is shown that drugs are being sold to schoolchildren by them with fatal results) Matt Murdock/Daredevil believes that the law should bring them to justice. This puts these characters at odds for years to come. It’s a great way to generate stories for the two.
Also, Frank goes to prison a few times here. He should probably be kept in isolation until he can be transferred to a military prison where the authorities would know how to deal with him. But don’t worry as he gets busted out by secret cabals of high-ranking men, like The Trust, who think that his particular set of anti-personnel skills would be useful in wiping out criminals that the courts cannot keep locked away. For some reason this seems like a good idea in the Marvel Universe. In real life this guy would get a lot of innocent people killed in his war. There is no war without collateral damage.
At one point Frank goes after the big fish of crime in the MU, Wilson Fisk a.k.a. The Kingpin. But it doesn’t work out as Spider-Man and Cloak & Dagger interfere. Then something else happens to Frank that calls his sanity into doubt.
He fires on a man beating his wife (both of them), a couple littering, and then at a cab for running a red light because the driver was distracted by the gunfire. It looks like someone who didn't like the Punisher was put in charge of writing his stories here as it's absurd that he would do such a thing after seeing how disciplined he is when targeting organized crime specifically.
Frank gets arrested and arraigned with the defense arguing that he must be mentally ill.
Oh, crap.
Then Frank beats up two guards and confronts the judge with the crime in the streets and the defense has to talk him down.
This comic is from 1983, so someone must have seen the devastating ending of First Blood (1982) and Frank has this breakdown, which seems poignant and powerful to understand this character.
But forget all that deep character stuff, this leads into the first Punisher TPB collected here.
The Punisher: Circle of Blood
By Steven Grant, Mike Zeck, and John Beatty
Remember, Frank is always totally ripped because it takes more muscles to frown than to smile.
It turns out that Frank had been given time-release drugs the last time he was in Ryker’s Island Penitentiary and now that he’s back, he’s going to make the guy who gave him that stuff pay.
This is what I call a “backflip,” where the writer has to un-write some bad writing in a previous issue. It happens a lot in comics with different people leaving a title and new ones coming in to make sense of the story. Superman didn’t kill these people, they killed themselves. Batman didn’t kill that guy, he was dead already. The Punisher isn’t crazy, he was given some sort of magical time-release drugs that take effect long after ingestion. Whatever. Let’s get this story started.
Fun fact, this was supposed to be a four-issue miniseries, but they must have wanted to expand it for more profit so the covers are corrected.
So Frank is back in prison, the tiger taken to the meat. No one thought that surrounding the brutal military-trained serial killer who knows how to kill guys several different ways with his bare hands with the criminals he would normally be killing, so Frank can’t be pushed around by them without the ex-soldier decimating their numbers. There’s a short confrontation with an incarcerated Jigsaw and his gang, that ends bad for the patchwork-faced guy.
Then there’s a mass riot organized by a jailed crime boss that Frank can’t let happen, so he does what he does best, use his skills and limited resources to get these guys killed. Then the warden gets Frank to work for The Trust, a secret organization that re-equips him and lets him back on the streets to continue his war. I guess it’s easy to explain how Frank can escape from prison at this point so let’s move on.
Frank goes after the Kingpin first, but another dead man is there already, but Frank calls Ben Urich at the Daily Bugle to put out the word that he killed the crime boss anyway to throw the criminal underworld into chaos. But this truns out to be a bad idea as innocent people are getting caught in the deadly crossfire. While Frank is being stalked by the son of a mob boss he’d slain he tries to restore some sort of order, but that just leads to a conspiracy where other criminals (including Jigsaw) are being brainwashed into thinking that they’re also the Punisher for death squads. Frank has to shut this down before more innocent people get killed.
So this is a super-action comic now, not that it wasn’t before, but now it’s all about Frank. Things are going to be different in the MU now as this vigilante is like reading a ton of action movies in comic form. It’s awesome and naturally this new series begins in the 80’s and the excesses of that time lead into this story. Recommended.
statistics: Posted by Tomatto — 7:08 AM - 1 day ago — Replies 0 — Views 183