Who Is the Punisher? Frank Castle's Comic History Explained

Frank Castle is back in the MCU, and I'm so glad to have the boy back. Frank Castle, the Punisher, has been around since the 1970s, so this is a very quick and brief rundown of who he is and where he came from.

He was introduced in 1973 in an Amazing Spider-Man comic, so there is a lot of ground to cover. I'm going to cherry-pick moments to make a cohesive story, which means not everything Frank Castle has ever done is in this piece. Near the end, I'll explain why I think his comic history points to a more unhinged Frank in Daredevil: Born Again.

Frank Castle's anger and violence began in his Queens childhood

Frank Castle was born in Queens in New York City. He was a pretty good kid, even though he was socially awkward, but he still had an issue with anger and violence. He also had a love of reading that he got from his mother, along with a weird love for apex predators that kind of leads into who he becomes later as the Punisher.

After witnessing the death of a couple, he goes and finds the mafia members who killed them and kills them at 10 years old. Not only does he kill them, he sets them on fire, which is a trend in these Daredevil characters I keep covering.

A hockey romance calmed Frank down until his best friend died

In high school, Frank took up hockey at the suggestion of his best friend, and that's where he met his future wife, Maria. She definitely helped calm his anger and violence issues, which is nice.

That lasted until his best friend died in a car accident. Frank then tracked down the people responsible for the accident and killed them.

Frank served in Vietnam alongside Marvel heroes, which makes him really old

While his wife was pregnant with their first child, Frank joined the Marine Corps and trained under Captain America, who is kind of his idol. He ended up fighting in Vietnam alongside Ben Grimm, Reed Richards and Tony Stark. Tony has been retconned since then, so he's no longer a veteran of the Vietnam War, but Frank still is. That makes him really old, but it also makes him an interesting character because he is so old.

When he returned from deployment, he was really distant from his family because of the trauma, going as far as sleeping in a tent in the backyard. Healing isn't linear, so he goes back and forth between doing better and relapsing. He tries to get along with his kids again and spend time with them, and he takes a job in the meatpacking district to support his family, but it's that constant struggle of healing.

The Central Park mafia attack turned Frank Castle into the Punisher

Maria planned to ask for a divorce, or she would have if the day, time and place she chose to do it hadn't involved her getting killed. If you know anything about the Punisher, you know this part: his family is killed in the middle of Central Park in a mafia attack, leaving Frank the sole survivor. It deeply traumatizes him.

Frank wanted to testify in court against the mafia that killed his family, but he couldn't, because the NYPD was so deeply entwined with that mafia that it just wouldn't work. That's when he vows to spend the rest of his life avenging his family and takes up the mantle of the Punisher.

The Punisher has never seen himself as a hero

One of the things about the Punisher is that he doesn't value himself as a hero. He never became the Punisher to be a hero, he knows that, and he won't feel guilt about it either. He wants to punish the worst of humanity, which is what he does, but he knows that's very different from what heroes like Captain America and Iron Man do. He is not a hero.

That's why he usually tells people not to use his symbol. People want a symbol that represents them. They want Captain America, they want anybody but him, because he's not a hero and he's not an icon. He knows he is not a role model, and he doesn't intend to change his ways until he dies or is killed.

Frank's clashes with Daredevil and Kingpin ended in a psychiatric ward

To speed things up: a lot of the time, Frank is in and out of jail. He gets arrested, escapes, gets arrested and escapes again. I'll mostly gloss over that unless something interesting happens while he's there. He's in jail so much because he's a vigilante, and he's murdering people, so it's still a crime.

He meets Matt Murdock while going after a drug lord who is being defended by Nelson and Murdock. Daredevil and the Punisher end up working together to take that drug lord down, but then Daredevil shoots Frank and takes him to jail.

After escaping, Frank vows to take down Kingpin, and he goes a little crazy because he was drugged in prison and isn't himself. He starts attacking anybody committing any crime, including petty crime, which means going after people for littering and jaywalking. He sneaks into Kingpin's headquarters, threatens Vanessa, and is almost beaten to death by Kingpin.

He goes to trial for those crimes, and the court debates whether the death of his family and the trauma from it is enough to plead insanity. Hearing that, Frank fully breaks down, and he's sent to a psychiatric ward after being deemed unfit to stand trial. There, the prison drugs wear off and he's pretty much right as rain. When he's moved back to a normal prison, he breaks out. That was in 1986.

In 1994, Frank blamed Nick Fury and turned on the superhero community

By 1994, Frank has lost his sanity once more. He doesn't have allies per se, but he does have a network he gets his intel and weapons from, and he starts lashing out at them.

He comes to believe that Nick Fury killed his family, not the mafia members he'd been going after for so long. His vengeance shifts away from criminals and toward the superhero community.

Civil War, Secret Invasion, FrankenCastle and the Thunderbolts

He's done a lot since then. He was part of Civil War, only jumping in when the government started getting superpowered criminals to enforce its laws, and he sided with Captain America and the Secret Avengers. He was also in New York for the Skrull invasion in Secret Invasion.

He was also Frankenstein's monster for a little bit, and they called him FrankenCastle. He died and was resurrected by Morbius as a Frankenstein's monster creature, then was turned back by Elsa Bloodstone. It's a "cool fun little funky Marvel side quest." He also joined the Thunderbolts but was betrayed by his teammates there, and the whole team ended up disbanding.

Why I think Daredevil: Born Again might give us a less sane Frank Castle

Going into Daredevil: Born Again, I firmly thought that the insanity storyline, maybe the idea of him thinking superheroes were the cause of things, might be something they take from. That's especially because Muse is in it, and in the comics the Punisher was blamed for a lot of the things Muse did.

So he might not be as sane as we've seen him in the past, especially since we already saw him attacking Matt without really knowing it was Matt. "I do think we'll get a little bit of an unhinged Frank Castle."

As for my own favorite Netflix Marvel show, mine's Jessica Jones. I love Jessica, and Kilgrave is the most terrifying villain ever.

Which Netflix Marvel show is your favorite?