25 Things You Need to Know about The Punisher on Netflix

15. The Most Acclaimed Punisher Stories Had Nothing To Do With Supervillains

Interestingly, the one thing that the movies got right, despite their critical failings, was keeping The Punisher’s feet firmly placed on the ground. Yes, his killing sprees in the films remain a little hard to believe at times but everyone he killed was an ordinary man, and there was nothing supernatural or comic-bookish about his adventures.

A lot of this comes down to the Garth Ennis comic book run. One of the things that Ennis wanted to do was to remove Frank Castle from the world of superheroes. He still had to deal with The Punisher meeting up with a Daredevil or Spider-Man along the way but most of his stories – the best ones – had to do with Frank Castle battling real-life issues.

One of the best stories from Ennis’ run on The Punisher was “The Slavers” (2005-2006). This series was a five-issue run where The Punisher was staking out a drug dealer from Europe, but a woman fires upon the dealer before Frank can take him out.

When Frank leaps in and finishes the job, the woman tells him that these men forced her into prostitution and slavers kept her and women like her in New York City. SHe then said that, when she escaped, they chased her down and killed her child. This story led The Punisher to take down the forced prostitution ring by killing everyone who forced their will upon these women.