All the way back in 2023, Jason Aaron wrapped up his run on The Punisher by sending Frank Castle to another dimension. Since then, there’s been a new Punisher (Joe Garrison) and nary a peep from the picnic-adverse avenger. That is, until now, as Marvel has announced Punisher: Red Band a new series from Benjamin Percy and Julius Ohta that brings him back to the Marvel Universe.
“Frank Castle—that dark-hearted, vengeance machine, that monster who fights monsters—is one of my all-time favorite characters, and Punisher is a series I’ve been gunning to write for a long, long time,” Percy said via a press release provided to Comic Book Club. “Not only is Frank back in black, but this is a Red Band book. You know what that means. I’m going to lean in fully and push the very limits of my favorite genre: hairy psychopaths. This is going to be as gritty and bloody as it gets. Street-level mayhem awaits you. And Julius Ohta—who I collaborated with previously on Hellverine—is bringing all the blood and fire and rage to the page with his beautiful, terrifying art.”
As Percy notes, this isn’t just the return of Frank, it’s the return of his classic skull costume, which went away for most of Aaron’s series. And as Marvel teases, Frank has “no memories, a full clip and a thirst for wrathful vengeance.”
So…. Listen. This is a great team on this book, and given Jon Bernthal’s successful appearance as The Punisher on Daredevil: Born Again, it makes sense that Marvel would want a brutal Punisher book on the stands. However, there’s a reason Frank had his skull excised, and was put on the shelf for a while, and that is because some of the worst people in real society were coopting the Punisher symbol to justify them brutalizing “criminals” whether those people were criminals or not. It is frankly (no pun intended) hard not to think now that we are supposedly in a post-woke society or whatever that Marvel thought, “eh, it’s fine,” and are bringing The Punisher back, skull costume and all.
Is this a shift in priorities in terms of what is and isn’t appropriate? The answer will be in the book, of course, so it’s too early to say. But bad actors haven’t stopped using the Punisher symbol, to the point that it was a plot point in Born Again. Here’s hoping the comics don’t forget about that, too.
Punisher: Red Band #1 (of 5) will hit stores on September 10. You can check out covers by Marco Checchetto, E.M. Gist, and Mark Zeck, as well as several interior pages, below. Click for larger versions.
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