The Punisher

First appearance

The Punisher was created by Gerry Conway and his first appearance was illustrated by Ross Andru, at that time the regular writer and artist, respectively, for The Amazing Spider-Man. Conway states he also helped design the character's distinctive costume:

“

In the '70s, when I was writing comics at DC and Marvel, I made it a practice to sketch my own ideas for the costumes of new characters — heroes and villains — which I offered to the artists as a crude suggestion representing the image I had in mind. I had done that with the Punisher at Marvel.[3]

”

Conway had drawn a character with a small death's head skull on one breast. Then-Marvel art director John Romita, Sr. took the basic design, blew the skull up to huge size, taking up most of the character's chest, and added a cartridge bandolier that formed the skull's teeth.

Appearing in Amazing Spider-Man #129 (Feb. 1974), the Punisher was initially an antagonist of Spidey. He was a bloodthirsty vigilante who had no qualms about killing gangsters, something that most superheroes of the time refrained from doing. J. Jonah Jameson described him as "the most newsworthy thing to happen to New York since Boss Tweed". Tricked by the Jackal into attempting to kill Spider-Man,^[4] this version of the Punisher was shown as an athletic fighter and a master marksman. All that he would reveal about himself was that he was a former Marine. He had a fierce temper and was engaged in considerable soul-searching as to what was the right thing to do. Spider-Man, who was no stranger to such torment, concluded that the Punisher's problems made his own seem like a "birthday party".

The character was a hit with readers and started to appear on a regular basis, teaming up with both Spider-Man and other heroes such as Captain America and Nightcrawler throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]} During his acclaimed run on Daredevil, Writer and artist Frank Miller made use of the character, contrasting his attitudes and version of vigilante action to that of the liberal Daredevil