Remembering When The Punisher Was Also Frankenstein
Haunted anti-hero Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, has taken many forms since his first [...]
Haunted anti-hero Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, has taken many forms since his first appearance in 1974's The Amazing Spider-Man #129: the gun-toting vigilante has been depicted as a cowboy, an angel, a zombie, and the murderer of the entire Marvel Universe. In 2010, the mainstream version of Frank Castle was re-imagined as FrankenCastle, obviously inspired by Frankenstein's monster.
Norman Osborn (a.k.a. the Green Goblin) sent the mutant Daken, son of Wolverine, to eliminate the Punisher, who had been gunning to assassinate Osborn ever since the villain was appointed to the position of national security officer. Unable to overcome Daken's fast healing factor, Castle was killed and dismembered by the villain.
Castle was then reconstructed by the vampire Morbius and the Legion of Monsters, who hoped to enlist the Punisher's help in combatting Hunter of Monster Special Force, a Japanese group that sought to exterminate nonhuman entities. As an undead monster with superhuman strength and endurance, FrankenCastle tracked down Daken to enact punishment from beyond the grave.
Tony Moore (Fear Agent, the first six issues of The Walking Dead), who provided the art for The Punisher #11—#15 scripted by Rick Remender, invited fans to "take a stroll down memory lane" with an Instagram post featuring an original FrankenCastle sketch:
"Rick Remender and I have worked together for many years, and we were trying to cook up a really big and really weird event with our pal Jason Aaron,"
Moore wrote of FrankenCastle's conception in a blog post dated May 2016. "Rick had some ideas for a gigantic war with Dracula, with a handful of rough-and-tumble headliner superheroes, and we had concocted the idea for Dracula's secret weapon to be a newly rebuilt Frankenstein's Monster, powered by Ghost Rider's Spirit of Vengeance. I though it would be really cool to make his body like a locomotive, with a big furnace and and a greasy engine belching smoke and fire."
"I was doodling around trying to flesh out this hotrod idea and I thought what if Frank Castle's ruthless and well-trained brain was put into this monster to make the ultimate weapon? In a flash of brilliant idiocy, the name 'FrankenCastle' popped into my head, and I immediately called Rick. He was all about it, and informed me that he was about to have an opening in PUNISHER that could allow us to retrofit a lot of this pitch for use in the main Marvel universe book."
Moore detailed the pitching process and furthering the design, writing:
"Axel Alonso was the PUNISHER editor at the time, and he loved to go against the grain. Rick pitched him our ridiculous idea and he ushered us aboard. Through some confluence of perfect conditions or divine providence, we had found the exact right ears to hear our ideas, and had the perfect lead-in to put them into action! Axel saw my concept drawings and said for it to work, it definitely had to feel like Punisher first and foremost. So, I set forth on cobbling together some of these ideas into something visually cohesive and polished enough for the book.
My first draft leaned much more toward the Monster side of things. The costume was classic Frank, but the man inside was lanky and dessicated, not to mention heavily augmented, as I had cannibalized most of my Deathlok design for the project at hand. I merged the electrical insulators with the hotrod engine from my earlier monster design, and more or less transferred all the other elements directly over to Frank.
Marvel liked the direction I was heading but felt I needed to go way more toward the Frank Castle everyone knew and loved. I toned down the death in his face considerably and bulked him up a bit, trying to strike a better balance between Frank Castle and the monster. At their request, I ditched the massive robot claw. I hated to do it, but I agreed that for him to ever heal and return to normal, it made sense (as much as any of this can make sense) that he not be missing entire limbs.
They much preferred this version, but still did not want to see Frank's face so disfigured. So, I cooked up one last version that kept his lips intact and struck what I ultimately believed was the balance we had all sought.
They still expressed concerns about his lankiness, and wanted a more squat bodybuilder physique. I assured them I could do this, and proceeded to purposefully ignore the request, drawing it as I saw fit for the rest of the time, with no regrets on my part or complaint on theirs."
In the end, Moore writes, "I was able to cook up some pretty cool (if not headache-inducing to draw repeatedly) designs for FRANKENCASTLE, which Rick and I will forever be proud of as our best effort to produce a damn fine run on the PUNISHER."
The Punisher will star in his self-titled Marvel Netflix series available for streaming this fall. The series stars Jon Bernthal, Amber Rose Revah, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ben Barnes, and Deborah Ann Woll.