Following a controversial revamp of the Punisher franchise that saw Frank Castle give up his war on crime and another anti-hero take up the mantle, Marvel is bringing Frank back in September 2025.
Frank will again don the iconic skull emblem in a new five-issue limited series called Punisher: Red Band. As the title suggests, the new series will be heavy on violence and gore and will ship inside a polybag due to explicit content. Get a closer look at the first issue in the slideshow gallery below:
Punisher: Red Band is written by Benjamin Percy and drawn by Julius Ohta, who previously collaborated on the Hellverine miniseries. The first issue features a main cover by Marco Checchetto and variant covers by E.M. Gist and Mike Zeck.
Here’s Marvel’s official description of the new series:
Reread and reload, True Believers – Frank Castle is BACK. With no memories, a full clip and a thirst for wrathful vengeance, his violent search for answers could only be chronicled in a Red Band series! Bullets will fly, blood will flow, and the citizens and criminals of New York City alike will fear the name THE PUNISHER!
“Frank Castle—that dark-hearted, vengeance machine, that monster who fights monsters—is one of my all-time favorite characters, and Punisher is a series I’ve been gunning to write for a long, long time,” Percy said in Marvel’s press release. “Not only is Frank back in black, but this is a Red Band book. You know what that means. I’m going to lean in fully and push the very limits of my favorite genre: hairy psychopaths. This is going to be as gritty and bloody as it gets. Street-level mayhem awaits you. And Julius Ohta—who I collaborated with previously on Hellverine—is bringing all the blood and fire and rage to the page with his beautiful, terrifying art.”
With this new series, Marvel is seemingly pivoting away from its revamp of the Punisher franchise. Jason Aaron, Jesus Saiz, and Paul Azaceta’s 2022 Punisher comic transformed Frank into a super-powered agent of The Hand, before ultimately leaving Frank demoralized and forsaken by his resurrected wife, Maria. With his network of safehouses liquidated and his bloodlust finally satiated, Frank is last seen in the battle-scarred realm of Weirdworld, acting as a bodyguard to orphaned children.
Marvel followed up that series with a new volume of Punisher by writer David Pepose and artist Dave Wachter. That series saw ex-SHIELD agent Joe Garrison take up the Punisher mantle after suffering a similar family tragedy. Garrison has gone on to make a handful of other appearances in the Marvel Universe, but it appears he’s ceding the Punisher mantle back to Frank.
This pivot comes as Marvel continues to deal with the misappropriation of the Punisher logo in the real world. That serves as a major plot point in Daredevil: Born Again, where Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle confronts a rogue group of NYPD officers using his symbol. It remains to be seen how or if the comics will deal with the subject going forward.
Punisher: Red Band #1 will be released on September 10, 2025.
Elsewhere at Marvel, Percy is gearing up for the final act in his ongoing Predator saga, Predator Kills the Marvel Universe.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
