Marvel Makes Another Change to The Punisher's Origin

The latest issue of Jason Aaron, Jesús Saiz & Paul Azaceta's The Punisher series has arrived and in doing so has added another wrinkle to Frank Castle's origin story. As readers know, this series has been re-writing the entire history of The Punisher and his origins while telling the story of Frank's ascension to become the leader of ninja death cult The Hand. Part of Frank agreeing to lead the group was not only being able to achieve his goals, but also the promise that the magic of The Hand could bring his family back, with his late wife Maria being resurrected and trying to remember their life together.

Told in dual timelines, showing Frank's time leading The Hand and his past pre-Punisher days, the series has finally gotten to the time when the big event happens, when Frank's family is gunned down in the park. Preceding this however Maria was getting real with Frank, how things have changed for them since he came home from the war, how different he is. Then comes the bombshell, the revelation that literally one second before the shooting began, Maria was telling Frank that she wanted to get a divorce. This stands in stark contrast to Aaron's earlier work on PunisherMAX, which flashed back to Frank's early days with his family and told a version of the story where HE told Maria he wanted a divorce before she and their children were killed. That series however is not canon to the main Marvel Universe.

Throughout the series there have been allusions to the fact that Frank's path toward becoming The Punisher was something orchestrated by The Hand from the very beginning. What remains to be seen though is how much of this is factual, concrete canon for Marvel Comics and how much of it is false memories created by The Hand to manipulate Frank and Maria.

Not only does the past-storyline feature that big reveal, the present day-storyline also its own mic-drop, with the revived Maria Castle learnign the truth about what Frank did after she and their children died. She reacts poorly to this as one might think, and even takes a gun and turns it on her husband, shooting him. This leaves Frank in a bad place as you can imagine, and only one issue left in the series. Is this really the end of The Punisher?

Punisher #12
MAR230875
(W) Jason Aaron (A/CA) Jesus Saiz
PUNISHER... NO MORE.
Rated T+
In Shops: May 31, 2023
SRP: $4.99