On March 18th, Marvel will once again attempt to bring the much beloved and controversial antihero, Frank Castle to the screen, albeit the small one.  Jon Bernthal will be the 4th actor taking on the role, following in the footsteps of Dolph Lundgren, Thomas Jane, and Ray Stevenson.  All three are good actors (well Lundgren has presence at the very least) but were stuck in unmitigated failures that consistently drove home the fact that Hollywood had no idea what to do with The Punisher.  The Lundgren film is a low budget action movie that features a high body count and an energetic pace but it botches the character completely.  He uses remote controlled cars, has a drunken homeless actor for an informant, and sits naked in the sewer when he isn’t killing bad guys.  So…yeah that didn’t work.  The Thomas Jane film is a little better, but it turns Big Frank into some kind of low rent Iago who uses a portable fire hydrant to help him get revenge.  And the villains are woefully underwhelming.  Punisher: War Zone with Ray Stevenson is undoubtedly the best of the three but that’s only because it’s a psychotic gore fest with big laughs.  As a solid Punisher story, it’s weak.  Ever since Bernthal’s casting announcement, fans have been foaming at the mouth to see if someone will finally get it right.  He even stated that people keep walking up to him in the street and saying, “you better not mess this up.”  Being a long time fan of the Punisher myself, I understand how they feel.  The outlook is good though, as early reviews have praised him and the second season of Daredevil as a whole.  He’s the perfect foil for Matt Murdock, who spent season one coming to the conclusion that murder is not the way to bring justice to the streets.  Castle should shake that up quite a bit when he starts murdering criminals left and right.  Say what you want about the character and his methods, it cannot be denied that he gets results.

The Punisher is a character who frequently gets labeled as “problematic”, especially in this day and age.  He is, after all, a white man with a military background and a lot of guns who wanders the streets killing people.  I can understand why that makes some people uneasy but there are a few things to remember: (1) He’s a fictional character.  (2) The comics abhor what he does as much as they condone it. (3) Watching a tough guy kill the worst pieces of shit on the planet is extremely cathartic.  I’ve always been a fan of the character because I find his simplicity and rage refreshing.  There’s no moral quandary about what action to take, no long standing rivalry with an insane villain who should have been killed ages ago, and no dopey love interests.  There’s just a very scary man killing scarier people in horrific and darkly comical ways.  It’s a simple formula that works when you have the right tone.  The best comics take one of two approaches to the character.  They either place him in a gory, over the top, black comedy filled with sight gags and loony supporting characters or they go the full mile with his inner darkness and pit him against the absolute worst people on the planet, such as human traffickers.  My guess is that Daredevil will go with the latter approach.

So, in honor of my favorite comic book character and to get you all pumped for season 2 of Daredevil, I hereby present the best Punisher stories.  These are the ones that should be essential reading for anyone who wants to familiarize themselves with the character before March 18th.  One thing to keep in mind is that the names “Garth” and “Ennis” are going to pop up a lot below.  Few writers know how to handle Big Frank (case in point: Frankencastle) and it’s the firm opinion of most fans that Garth Ennis is hands down the best.  As evidenced below, I do not disagree.

Welcome Back, Frank

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: Steve Dillon

The 90’s were not kind to Frank Castle.  His stories got sillier and sillier, culminating with him being killed and sent back to Earth as an avenging angel who hunts demons (yes, this really happened).  After repeatedly scratching their heads, Marvel executives made the wise move to bring on Garth Ennis, who instantly returned the character to his roots.  His initial twelve issue run features everything we love about The Punisher: over the top kills, ridiculous villains, and batshit crazy humor.  The run starts with Frank throwing a mafioso off the Empire State Building and only gets zanier from there.  How zany? Take a look.

Yep.  That’s Frank punching a polar bear after being chased into the zoo by a few goons and deciding that some angry bears might help him thin out the bad guys. Ennis constantly shows Frank doing things like this and it proves to be a solid way of lightening the mood.  He also gives us one of the most hilarious villains of all time in The Russian, a hulking monster of a man who loves American superheroes and breaking men in half.  When The Russian is given two assistants, he accidentally crushes one to death when he attempts to hug him.  It’s this kind of absurd humor that makes the series so much fun to read as it feels no need to wallow in the moral implications of what The Punisher does.  It’s just insane, goofy fun.

The Squid

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: Steve Dillon

After his initial run, Ennis stayed on with the character under the Marvel Knights imprint for close to 60 issues before moving onto the MAX imprint.  The Knights series runs out of steam after awhile but it does feature a few gems, namely this single issue.  Told from the perspective of a put upon hood who miraculously survives a Punisher massacre, The Squid is so damn silly it borders on camp.  Sid the Squid is the loser in his gaggle of Mafia buddies, a nerdy man with a dream of one day finding and getting a picture of the fabled giant squid that he believes to reside right off the coast of New York City.  After his buddies are killed, their ghosts come to haunt Sid and demand he get revenge.  The little fool shockingly comes up with a solid plan and soon finds himself face to face with a wounded Frank Castle and…it’s then that Ennis provides an absolutely hilarious sight gag that leaves even our stoic anti-hero completely befuddled.  It’s a one joke story to be sure but what a perfectly constructed and executed joke it is.

Vertical Challenge/Aim Low

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: Darick Robertson

One thing that makes Frank Castle and Garth Ennis such a good match is that they both have complete and utter disdain for most superheroes.  This is evidenced to no greater extent than in this two issue trifle of a story that features The Punisher teaming up with ‘Ol’ Canucklehead’ himself, Wolverine, to take down an army of evil midgets.  You read that right.  That part of the story is not half as interesting as the interactions between the mutant and the vigilante.  Castle can’t stand Logan, or ‘the rodent’ as he refers to him, and takes drastic action to get away from the guy by doing…well…see for yourself.

That’s The Punisher for ya.  Piss him off and he’ll shoot your balls off.  They’ll grow back though, so what’s the guy crying about?

The Tyger

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: John Severin

Switching gears to the very dark side of things, Ennis did here what no other writer has ever done with Frank Castle: he went back to his childhood.  We follow an 11 year old Castle as he tries to protect a local girl only to discover that the violence inherent in his Brooklyn neighborhood is cyclical and far more dangerous than he first suspected.  This is juxtaposed with Frank sitting on a rooftop with a sniper rifle the night of his first kill as The Punisher.  He recalls the time a teacher asked him for his take on William Blake’s famed poem ‘Tyger, Tyger’.  His answer surprises the teacher and his classmates while also providing a chilling insight into the character: he knew he was different from a very young age.  It’s a mournful and tragic look at a boy who could have never avoided his fate…and maybe didn’t want to.

Born

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: Darick Robertson

For many, this is The Punisher story to end all Punisher stories.  Set during his last tour in Vietnam, it’s as much about the war as it is about Frank Castle.  Ennis and Robertson depict a harsh and brutal environment that destroys everything and everyone it touches.  It’s here that Castle begins the one man war that will consume the rest of his existence and Ennis makes his plight feel as tragic as it is inevitable.  Told through the eyes of a naive young soldier, Born is a tough read and a delicate balance.  Using a fictional character to comment on a real world atrocity is a tricky thing to pull off but Ennis hits all the right notes.  He does so by understanding that Castle is a figure who couldn’t exist without Vietnam.  His creation was a direct result of how people felt back then; angry, afraid, broken, and violent. World War II gave us the heroic and noble Captain America.  Vietnam gave us The Punisher.

Barracuda/Long Cold Dark

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artists: Goran Parlov

Obviously, The Punisher doesn’t have many long standing villains due to the fact that he kills them all.  However, Ennis did find the time to create the ultimate foe for Frank Castle with Barracuda, a psychotic mercenary with a penchant for extreme violence and sadism.  Barracuda is another example of Ennis pulling off a delicate balancing act.  He’s hilarious and terrifying, often in the same moment.  His entire arc is collected in the two trade paperbacks listed above and they pack quite a wallop when read back to back.  Vietnam comes into play once again as it’s revealed that hero and villain were twisted by the war in ways that ruined them both for life.  When Castle finally does kill Barracuda, there’s no victory, no celebration, just “one monster standing in another’s gore”.   There’s also a positively haunting sequence where Castle dreams what his life would have been like if his family had survived.

The End

Writer: Garth Ennis

Artist: Richard Corben

Set at the end of days, this one-shot features the only possible end for Frank Castle that makes any sense.  After spending decades locked up in prison, a nuclear holocaust sets him free.  Well into his seventies and dying of radiation, he nevertheless sets off on his quest to punish the guilty.  When he finds them holed up in a bunker, they present him with a dilemma.  Yes, they destroyed the world but are now the only ones who can repopulate it.  Killing them would effectively end life as we know it on this planet.  What Castle decides to do should come as no surprise.  Afterwards, he walks through the flames towards Central Park, hoping that maybe this time he’ll be able to save his family.  It’s the perfect conclusion to his tortured, violent existence.

That’s it! If you want to check out some other Punisher titles, Circle of Blood by Steven Grant isn’t bad and Jason Aaron’s MAX run is very solid.  Still, neither of them touch Ennis.  And we’ll see on March 18th if the fourth time will prove to be the charm for Big Frank! We’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t shoot Matt Murdock’s balls off.