The Punisher (1985) #1-5

 The Punisher #1-5

Originally released in 1985

Written by Steven Grant

Art by Mike Zeck

I haven't read much of the Punisher, so I thought I'd try to change that.  Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of the premise - I find it works in an isolated setting (plenty of action movies have been built on "a lone grieving person sets out to do what the justice system can't by killing criminals" - take the Death Wish series with Charles Bronson, for example), but when that premise is dragged out over forty or fifty years, and it takes place in the same world as Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four, it becomes increasingly implausible that other characters would put up with Frank Castle's crusade.  You could take half of Spider-Man's rogues gallery, excluding Carnage or the Green Goblin, and the Punisher likely has a higher body count than that half combined.  He seems to work well when contrasted with Daredevil, but with New York City having an insanely high population of super-powered heroes and villains, you'd think that eventually one of them would be tired of his nonsense and kick him out of the city by force, or arrest him and throw him in a maximum security SHIELD prison in the middle of nowhere.

The mini-series starts off strong, with the Punisher getting himself sent to Ryker's Island to find out who drugged him.  The man responsible is Jigsaw, the closest thing that the Punisher has to an arch-enemy - not because he's a credible threat to the Punisher, but because he keeps surviving everything that the Punisher puts him through.  There's a prison break, which the Punisher thwarts, and in the process, he learns of an organization called the Trust that's trying to do the same thing that he is - wipe out all crime.

From the moment that the Trust is introduced, you can tell that they're going to do something that goes too far in Frank's mind, and he's going to set out to kill them all.  However, the story is a little inconsistent on what qualifies as "going too far".  Their ultimate goal is to kill the various mob bosses of New York City in one fell swoop, taking big steps without caring about innocents who are caught in the crossfire.

However, shortly after being released from prison, Frank sets out to murder the Kingpin, figuring that the mobsters will tear each other apart in the power vacuum and he'll be there to kill whoever survives.  At no point does Frank consider how open mob warfare will lead to innocents getting caught in the crossfire; he claims that he's not much of a big picture thinker, but he's still guilty of the exact same thing that he's condemning the Trust to death over.

There are moments where it seems like Frank realizes that his crusade is futile, and that he can never truly end all crime by murdering every criminal, only for him to double down.  The closest he gets to development in this series is convincing a reluctant revenge-seeker to not kill him, since it would get that man pulled into a cycle of revenge, but even then, Frank himself continues his endless quest despite pointing out that every criminal that he kills could possibly have someone who would want to avenge them.  Maybe Frank figures he's too far gone and can't back out now, and the fact that the man who's trying to avenge his father doesn't have a criminal background likely keeps Frank from considering him to be another target, but it seems like an odd note to end the story on considering how many unrelated people Frank has killed in his quest to avenge his family.

The action was well-choreographed and the plot was straightforward, but having read this mini-series, I feel like the Punisher just isn't for me, at least as a solo character.  When I was looking up the character's appearances, I saw that he appears in Frank Miller's Daredevil run, so I might find him more enjoyable as a supporting character, but as a series lead, I found it difficult to connect with him.