Writer: Gerry Conway; Artist: Tony DeZuniga; Letterer: Uncredited; Editor: Marv Wolfman; Editor in Chief: Roy Thomas; Cover Artist: Gray Morrow
From a rooftop overlooking Wall Street, the Punisher watches a politician give a speech. The Punisher had received a tip that the politician would be assassinated, and sure enough he finds a sniper on an adjacent building. Castle shoots the sniper and quickly makes his way to the other rooftop to interrogate the man, only to discover that the sniper is a Vietnam veteran named Mike Hauley that served with Frank during the war. Hauley tells Castle that he was bitter from the attitudes of people after he came home from Vietnam, and he had been contacted by someone offering him a job as their assassin. Before Castle can extract any more information, a helicopter flies by and drops a napalm bomb on Hauley, incinerating him while the Punisher manages to dive to safety. Later, back at his safehouse, the Punisher records his latest War Journal entry, stating that he's going to Evanston, Illinois to speak with Hauley's wife in hopes of finding answers.
Back on Wall Street, police are taking away Hauley's body while an F.B.I. agent named Dave Hamilton tells his partner that this assassination attempt is the third he's seen in recent months, with both of the other two assassins being killed by police during their escape. All of the men were Vietnam soldiers that had been discharged, none of them with criminal records. In Chicago, Frank meets an informant named Grundy and tells him he needs information on the assassinations, but a bullet that is meant for Castle instead kills Grundy. The Punisher chases the shooter down, who accidentally blows himself with what he believes to be a secret weapon provided by his employer.
Meanwhile, on a plane to Chicago, Agent Hamilton and his partner have learned that the Punisher is involved and are looking at his military file that explains how his wife and two children were killed. In his van, Castle thinks back to the day in Central Park when he and his family stumbled upon a mob execution and were gunned down to keep them from being witnesses. The Punisher arrives at Mike Hauley's home and is invited in by his children, but is recognized by Mrs. Hauley as the man believed to have killed her husband. While Frank tries to explain the situation, a napalm bomb is thrown through the home's window, catching it afire. Frank manages to rescue the Hauley family, and in return the mother tells him the name of a man her husband had recently been in contact with. Hamilton arrives with the fire department, but the Punisher had already left the scene.
Later, at the isolated mansion home of Mark Christanson, the Punisher discovers an army of personal guards surrounding the compound. He kills a guard and slips into his uniform, arriving in time to listen to Christanson as he explains his plan to his partners. Christanson's company has developed the Mark VI Laser Cannon, which they will use to overthrow the United States Government in the name of their organization, the International Industrial Alliance. The Alliance has been using ex-service men to act as their agents and as decoys for their own army. Suddenly, Christanson points at the Punisher as a spotlight opens on him, the group having led him into a trap. He fires at the Alliance, but a force-field blocks his shots while a group of guards enter to apprehend him. Castle beats down the guards and leaves to find the house's power generator, which he finds located under the tennis court. He places a time bomb on the generator and runs for the tree-line, escaping just as the house explodes, killing the Alliance and their men. Afterward, the Punisher is in his van listening to news reports on the explosion, and an interview with Dave Hamilton reveals Castle's involvement, ending with Hamilton vowing to track down the vigilante.
Review:
The Punisher receives his own solo story after just a handful of prior appearances, and creator Gerry Conway turns in a story that serves a precursor to what would be some standard Punisher tropes in later years.
Marvel's magazine department in the 1970s was where the company could experiment with more mature subject matters than their color comics, a lot of horror characters thrived in the pages of these black-and-white mags. Theoretically, it was the perfect place to showcase a character like the Punisher, who had the potential to offer more than the standard masks and superpowers, and I'm assuming that Marvel hoped to have a break-out hit with this. While it was enough to get the Punisher a second magazine story, it would be another 10 years before he would hit the big time. That's not to say that this is a bad story, because it's actually quite good; it just came at the wrong time, when readers weren't as open to such a violent "hero" that wasn't afraid to kill. When crime rates started to climb in the 1980s, when movies like "Commando" and "First Blood" had already cemented those kind of characters in the public mind, Frank Castle naturally fit the zeitgeist. But in 1975, the Punisher was an obscure property to gamble on, and Marvel tried to exploit him in the only way they knew how: by advertising his similarity to characters like the Executioner and the Destroyer. After all, as the cover to this issue states, the Punisher was "America's Greatest Crime Destroyer" (emphasis theirs, not mine), and a chunk of this mag is devoted to an interview with Executioner creator Mack Bolan.
So, as I said before, the story here by Gerry Conway and Tony DeZuniga is actually pretty good, even if there are a few problems evident in hindsight. Conway keeps the Punisher as the same surly avenger that he'd been during his Spider-Man appearances, but it's obvious that he still wasn't quite sure just what kind of threats this guy should be going after. "Death Sentence" gives us a story that wouldn't be out of place in a James Bond movie, with political assassinations and organizations trying to overthrow the government, it has a real spy/espionage feel to it. The Punisher hasn't reached the point where he's killing mobsters and drug dealers yet, though that eventual direction gets hinted at when Conway relates the character's origin. While the Central Park origin story would get fleshed out quite a bit more by Archie Goodwin in the next magazine, it's really kind of amazing how much of what Conway established here became solid parts of the character's continuity. You go back and read Punisher: Year One and the events there are exactly as they're shown here, 20 years after the fact.
Where Conway falls down is the actual plot itself, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The first half of the story is about disgruntled war veterans being used as political assassins, that's the mystery that the Punisher's trying to solve, but what he finds is a group of evil industrialists who are going to overthrow the US government with a big laser cannon. There's a throwaway attempt at connecting the war vets to the plot, but nowhere does Conway explain why they're assassinating politicians. The Alliance doesn't seem that interested in a covert takeover by replacing dead politicians with their own people, considering the crux of their plot is a big honkin' laser gun. There's two different plans there, and nothing is done to connect them at the end aside from a one-sentence handwave. Still, Conway does a great job with the Punisher himself, he's essentially the same character we're still reading about today, which shows how strong Conway's take on his creation was.
Artwork for the story was by Tony DeZuniga, who did a lot of work for Marvel's black-and-white magazines around this time, and he does a solid job working within the company's house style of the time. I think the lack of color enhances his artwork, in fact, giving it a noirish sense of style amidst the explosions and action sequences. The best part, for me, was seeing the Punisher use realistic guns and weapons instead of the "comic book" guns he'd been using in the Spider-Man appearances.
The Punisher as a concept was pretty pure at this time, and while he may have failed to catch on way back then, what eventually did catch on in the 1980s wasn't much different than this.
Grade: A-
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