Comic Book / Punisher (2022)

Punisher (subtitled The King of Killers for collected editions and interior titles) is a 2022 comic book series by Marvel Comics, written by Jason Aaron, with art by Jesus Saiz and Paul Azaceta, and colors by Dave Stewart. The series is the thirteenth volume of The Punisher.

The series, set in the shared Marvel Universe, stars the titular Punisher, Frank Castle, and takes the series in a new direction, appointing Frank as High Slayer for the demon-worshipping ninja clan known as The Hand.

The Punisher's new role is accompanied by a new logo and a shift from his usual guns to blades.

Castle's not the first well-intentioned vigilante to become part of the Hand, though. And it hasn't ended well for any of the others. Can he do better?

The first issue was released March 09 2022. The run concluded with Punisher #12, in May 2023.

The series was followed by Punisher (2023), in which a new character adopts a version of Frank's mission and costume.

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Punisher (2022) provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Just as Lord Deathstrike is about to kill him, the Punisher manifests another Beast-infused power, namely Playing with Fire, which he uses to stab Lord Deathstrike in the heart with a Flaming Sword.
• A Day in the Limelight: Half of Issue #7's focus is on Maria and how she adjusted to life after Frank came home from Vietnam (or wherever).
• Alas, Poor Villain: While killing Jigsaw (again) in the Brother one-shot, the Punisher somberly states, "I'm sorry, Billy. It's better like this."
• Adults Are Useless: When he was ten, Frank tried to tell his parents about the brutal double homicide he witnessed. They told him to forget about it.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: The reason Maria Elizabeth Falcione initially became interested in Frank was that he was the most brutal hockey player in any rink.
• An Arm and a Leg: Frank dismembers several of the Apostles of War. One even tries to grab a fallen gun that's still clasped in his other, severed, hand.
• Arc Words: "God bless the Beast."
• Arms Dealer: Ares and his Apostles of War, though Ares makes it clear that he only cares about the "fun" part of War for Fun and Profit.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Archpriestess gives a subversion when she comments that America is famous for its genocide, slavery, and mall shootings.
• Art Shift: Jesus Saiz is the main artist, but all of the flashbacks are illustrated by Paul Azaceta.
• Back from the Dead: The Hand have resurrected Frank's murdered wife Maria. By the end of the story, she is still alive, but reiterates her decision never to see him again and leaves.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Ares leads the Apostles of War wearing a fancy suit while keeping his signature Cool Helmet. He's still the same force to be reckoned with.
• Bad Boss: One of the traps that Finn Fratz set for the Punisher involved hydrogen cyanide, which Frank notes killed way more of Fratz's own men than Frank's. And when Frank lays siege to Fratz's Alaskan stronghold, Fratz starts killing his own non-combatant staff just to screw with Frank.
• Bathroom Stall Graffiti: Where a teenaged Frank apparently scratched the arc words, among allegations that the principal sucks eggs and that someone named Jem Sanders is a mutant.
• Berserk Button: Ares is not selling weapons for money, but simply to sow conflict, so he gets mad when a gang that he had sold weapons to just used its ownership of them to scare its rivals into signing a peace treaty, instead of waging war with them.
  Ares: How dare you use the P-word in my presence.
• Body Horror: The attempted resurrection of Frank's children has them looking like swollen lumps of flesh with extra eyes.
• Call-Forward: When he's fifteen blaring music in his room, Frank's parents tell him to just wait until the Army gets ahold of him.
  Unseen parent: Some war would do you good!
• Came Back Wrong: Every attempt at bringing back the Punisher's children has resulted only in The Grotesque. According to the Archpriestess, resurrecting children is hard, and in this case things are further complicated by the fact that Lisa and Frank, Jr. have been dead for far longer than they were alive. Every failed resurrection also leaves the Hand with less and less material to work with for the next attempt.
• Chest Insignia: While leading the Hand, Frank adopts a new logo with horns and fangs.
• Child Soldiers: Several Hand ninja were children from various countries who were sold, found on the streets, or given to the organization. Frank immediately orders a stop to that.
• The Chosen One: The Archpriestess has been keeping tabs on Frank since he was a boy, having seemingly correctly deduced that he is the latest incarnation of the Fist of the Hand.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Archpriestess of the Hand initially addresses the Punisher as Francis Castiglione, not Frank Castle.
  • Ares brings up being a father, an Avenger, and trying to live in peace in the Elysian Fields. None of it really working out prompted him to re-embrace being the God of War.
  • Daredevil brings up when he was possessed by the Beast in Shadowland.
• Continuity Overlap: Aaron's Punisher runs parallel to Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto's Daredevil (2022). The Hand is the main connective tissue between the books, as Frank leading the cult has created complications for Matt and Elektra's brewing campaign against them over in their book (and Frank is well aware here in his book that his enemies are gathering).
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The Punisher only manages to actually harm Ares once during their fight, when he stabs him with Shinsuke Ishiyama's dagger. Ares takes this rather personally, however.
  Ares: The Punisher did the unthinkable. He made me bleed. He angered his God. And what do you get when you anger God? You get Armageddon!
• Crazy-Prepared: Issue #7 reveals that after the events of Shadowland, Matt Murdock was very intent on ensuring he or his closest allies never got possessed by the Beast again. To that end, he went to Doctor Strange to cook up a countermeasure (one that blended the Mystic Arts with Catholic Exorcism Rites). Good plan — except it ultimately doesn't work on Frank.
• Departure Means Death: Maria will die again if she leaves the Hand's Citadel. The final issue reveals that the archpriestess lied about this.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: The Punisher has Shinsuke Ishiyama's broken dagger reforged into bullets, just one of which was able to blow-up one of Ares's tanks.
• Disappointed in You: In the last issue the Archpriestess expresses disappointment in Frank for not living up to her expectations as the Beast's champion because he refused to kill a child.
• Dragon with an Agenda: The Archpriestess acts as the Punisher's confidante, but her true loyalty lies with the Beast.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: According to Frank, when he was eight, he began having dreams about "ninja and red armor and a gnarled dagger stabbing into his enemies again and again and again."
• Elite Mooks: As the Hand is preparing for its grand assault on the Apostles of War, the Archpriestess presents Frank with ninja who have all been decked out in Punisher-style uniforms. She explains that she made them watch as she slaughtered all of their loved ones in front of them in order to make them like Frank.
• Enchanted Forest: The woods around the Hand's citadel are cursed so that anyone who ventures into them without being invited or having visited the citadel before will become hopelessly lost and never be seen or heard from again.
• Enemy Civil War: The Sickly Ones are established early on as an extremist faction (even by Hand standards) and are considered to be heretics. The other Hand factions finally make their move to try and stop Frank in Issue #3 before he brings the entire organization crashing down. Except, it's then subverted when it's revealed it's actually a False Flag Operation orchestrated by the Arch-Priestess.
• Fake Memories: Invoked in issue #4. Ares accuses the Archpriestess of using Hand magic to manipulate Frank's memories to help ensnare him in the cult. If Ares is right, then all the flashbacks of Frank's past in the earlier issues have all been edited or rewritten in their entirety.
• First-Episode Twist: The Hand have resurrected Frank's murdered wife Maria.
• Flashback B-Plot: Flashbacks throughout the series show scenes from Frank's life, mostly from the time before his family was killed.
• Forgotten First Meeting: In the Base one-shot, Frank, while on leave from the war, is revealed to have bumped into Ma Gnucci and the Russian when his dog peed on Ma's car.
• Head Crushing: After a Hand ninja who he had enslaved leads him to the group's hidden citadel, Ares crushes the man's head with just one hand.
• Hockey Fight: Frank was convinced by his childhood friend, Steadman, to join a hockey team as an outlet for his aggression, and ended up becoming an incredibly violent "enforcer."
• Hollywood Exorcism: Daredevil performs one on the Punisher. We get a little bit of Holy Burns Evil, but, other than that, it fails.
  Daredevil: You're right, Frank. It's not the Beast I should be worried about. It's you.
• Hypocrite: Maria condemns Frank and divorces him for killing evil people in her name, despite the fact she previously shot Frank dead, making both her logic and views on killing being wrong extremely muddled. Neither the story or the superheroes call her out for it.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Frank puts a katana all the way through the last of the Apostles of War.
• In Love with Your Carnage: The Archpriestess frequently acts like a giddy fangirl around the Punisher.
• Insane Troll Logic: In Maria's mind, killing people, even if they are evil, makes you just as bad as them, but killing vigilantes who only target evil people is perfectly okay. The reason why her logic is so twisted pretty much speaks for itself.
• I Will Fight No More Forever: When he sends himself to Weirdworld in the last issue, he renounces both his war and the Punisher moniker. Instead, he's spending his days rescuing refugees from the war and just goes by "Frank".
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: The Punisher tortures a Hydra agent to get intel on the Apostles of War. The man refused to break, but Frank still got what he wanted thanks to the new powers that he had been given by the Beast.
• Jerkass: Maria Castle, of all people, after being resurrected from the dead. While she has every right to divorce Frank for his war on crime in her name, she goes about it in a way that is nothing short of vindictive and cruel, by shooting Frank, killing him, and then going out of her way to verbally break him and make him fall into despair, after Doctor Strange brings Frank back to life.
• Kick the Dog: While Maria Castle isn't wrong when she tells Frank that killing evil people in her name is not the right way to honor somebody, and is technically justified in divorcing him for his actions, she unfortunately does it in a way that is unnecessarily hate-filled, vindictive and condescending by going out her way to try and kick Frank while he is still down, from shooting him dead, to verbally abusing and demeaning him to the point of making him fall into despair, before ultimately abandoning him and telling him to "stay dead".
• Kill the God: After using his new powers to beat down Ares, the Punisher kills him by shooting him in the head with Depleted Phlebotinum Shells.
• Legacy Character: The villain of the Blitz one-shot is yet another Hate-Monger, this one a war profiteer named Finn Fratz. He has the original Hate-Monger's costume (or a replica of it) on display in his safehouse in Alaska.
• Like a Son to Me: Ares laments this during his fight with the Punisher.
• Meet Cute: Frank and Maria first met during a hockey game... when Frank slammed another player up against the glass hard enough to leave it smeared with blood, right in front of Maria.
• Modesty Bedsheet: The first two issues feature Maria Castle just wearing a bed sheet.
• Mook Horror Show: The Punisher's never been a stranger to these. This series starts with the Apostles of War armed with a terrifying array of hi-tech weapons. And then the lights go out...
• Moral Myopia: Maria Castle views killing people, even if the victim is evil, as wrong, and condemns Frank for it. Then she decides to gun down and murder Frank herself, despite her still holding onto her belief that killing is wrong, even after shooting Frank. The story treats this as an elephant in the room, for some reason, despite how blatantly contradictory it is to the reader.
• Mythology Gag: After coming home from the war, the only job that Frank could get was in a slaughterhouse, just like in Aaron's The Punisher MAX. The series also inverts the twist of Aaron's MAX run; there, Frank's last words to Maria were that he was leaving her and the children, while here, Maria's last words to Frank were that she was leaving him and taking Lisa and Frank, Jr.
• Never Found the Body: Enforced. When cornered, after being left by his dead wife who has since tried to kill him, Frank extends a prayer to the Beast and is given just enough magic to disappear into Weirdworld. Strange tells the others that Frank is no longer on their plane of existence.
• Never Mess with Granny:
  • The Archpriestess personally killed everyone who opposed her decision to appoint Frank Castle the head of the Hand.
  • An old woman once saved Frank's life in the Blezkvish Forest by blowing the head off of one of Finn Fratz's men.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Frank used to lie to Maria about going out to do things like run errands when in reality he was watching executions at Ryker's Island.
• Not Even Human: The Archpriestess, already indicated to be unnaturally old, turns into a Tentacled Terror with More Teeth than the Osmond Family when attacked by Frank.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We don't know what Frank told a priest while giving confession in a flashback in Issue #7, but whatever it was scarred the priest for life and caused Frank to backslide on all of the progress that he had made in readjusting to civilian life after coming home to Maria.
• Once More, with Clarity: Early on, the Archpriestess told a ninja that Frank didn't believe the resurrected Maria was her at first, but that something she said convinced him. In the last issue, we learn what it was.
  Maria: You're the one who keeps us safe.
• Only Friend: The closest thing to a friend that Frank had growing up was Steadman Sternberger, a nerdy boy who convinced Frank to join a hockey team, and whose forged love letter ("Here, he wanted me to give you this note") is what got Maria to finally approach Frank. Unfortunately, Frank's relationship with Maria caused him to drift away from and stop looking out for Steadman, whose death in a car accident caused by bullies who had browbeaten Steadman into going joyriding with them caused Frank to snap back to his usual dark self, killing the bullies and then joining the Marines.
• Personalized Afterlife: Played with. Though he's not technically dead, just disappeared into a dimension he's not coming back from, Frank's stay in Weirdworld manages to grant him a customized Heaven while also giving him Hell Is War. He loves war.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Deconstructed; Once Maria finds out about Frank's mass murdering in the name of her and their children, she's horrified and shoots him in a rage. After an issue of rebuffing the other heroes trying to get him to admit his wrongs, all it takes is a dressing down from Maria to underscore how selfish Frank was being. Because it was never about avenging his family, it was about indulging his desire to fight an endless war. She punctuates it by saying she's actually honoring their children by liquidating his assets to donate to charity in their name, not going on mass murder.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Punisher finally realizes that he has made a terrible mistake when the Archpriestess presents him with new Elite Mooks whose families she murdered in front of them in an attempt to make them like Frank.
• Self-Imposed Exile: The story ends with Frank giving up his Punisher identity and exiling himself to weird world to start a new life, after having his heart broken by Maria and being verbally abused by her. Whether he did so because he realized the error of his ways, or because he finally grew sick and tired of the universe he lived in after being constantly beaten down, in ambiguous.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: In the finale issue, Frank rebuffs the heroes' attempts to get him to admit his wrongs. Saying it was Worth It, that they're being hypocritical or plain They Just Dont Get It. However, Maria gets the final word in illustrating that what he did was never to honor them, he barely did that in life which is why she wanted to divorce him, it was just about indulging himself with a convenient excuse.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: The Punisher's usual skull symbol is now replaced by a horned demonic version.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Subverted. Maria has no wish to remember Frank. Nevertheless, when she drives away she has a positive pregnancy test in the car.
• Something We Forgot: Maria struggles to remember her life, but she gets flashes, and becomes convinced that she and Frank forgot their children in Central Park.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Aaron's The Punisher MAX run. Like that series, the Hand figure heavily in this book, as does Frank's feelings towards his family. However, while the MAX title concluded with a redemptive tone that leaned towards the notion that Frank had always loved his wife and children, this volume has Maria herself decry him as a monster before plundering all his assets as recompense for using her and their kids as fuel for what she views as a selfish crusade. Whereas Frank dies an inspirational figure for vigilante justice in MAX, he exiles himself to Weirdworld in disgrace at the end of this story, casting away his Punisher persona.
• Start of Darkness: As a child, Frank witnessed a brutal mob-related double homicide, which no one tried to stop, including Frank (who was playing on his rooftop with a rifle when it happened). Frank spent the next few days haunted by the incident, and decided to enact his own form of justice after attending the victims' Lonely Funeral.
  Narrator: He went to the funeral for the murdered couple, hoping it would help him bury them for good. No one else came. That's when Frank knew... he was the only one who still heard the screaming. And the only one who could make it stop.
• Stripped to the Bone: The Banner Cannons that Ares is selling vaporize all soft tissue, reducing their targets to nothing but a skeleton with a Sickly Green Glow.
• Stunned Silence: Frank, when he finally comes face to face with the Beast.
• Taught by Experience: Jigsaw is the only one who notices that there is something off about the Punisher's behavior in the Brother one-shot, and he comes the closest to killing Frank, only failing due to his need to engage in Evil Gloating (something which Frank points out).
• Teen Pregnancy: Maria tells Frank that she's pregnant shortly after their high school graduation.
• Troubling Unchild Like Behavior: A flashback in Issue #2 shows Frank already had very strong ideas about using violence and murder even at age 12. He had even started drawing his signature skull logo.
• Undead Child: Subverted with Lisa and Frank Junior. The Archpriestess tries, but repeatedly fails to resurrect them. Maria is very confused when she finds multiple graves for them.
• Ungrateful Bitch: After being resurrected by Doctor Strange, after being shot dead by Maria, Frank still can't bring herself to stop loving Maria, and even requests the Avengers to protect Maria from harm's way and to make sure she remains alive and safe. Despite this, she repays Frank by giving him a vicious "Reason You Suck" Speech, before divorcing him, pushing him into a state of despair.
• Vigilante Execution: Each day the Hand brings Frank a batch of murderers, rapists, and abusers who've escaped justice around the world. They're delivered bound and gagged. He personally executes them with a katana.
• Villainous Breakdown: Finn Fratz remains cool as a cucumber throughout the Blitz one-shot... up until Frank throws him to hungry polar bears, at which point he lets out an undignified shriek of, "Dear God, no!"
• What the Hell, Hero?: There is not a single person within the superhero community that approves of Frank's campaign to use the Hand as his own personal army against crime, with both the Avengers and Daredevil enacting their own efforts to free Frank from the Hand's influence and failing that — bring him down for good. But the most notable example of Frank getting chewed out is by none other than Maria Castle, who upon finally finding out about all the horrific things Frank has done in her name and the name of their children, decides to pick up a gun and shoot Frank in issue #11.
• You Remind Me of X: Only stated in the narration box, but Frank's initial fascination with Maria was that, especially through the blood-stained glass, she reminded him of the woman who was beaten to death in front of him when he was a child.

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