The Punisher

The Punisher is a vigilante who considers killing, kidnapping, extortion, coercion, threats of violence and torture to be acceptable crime-fighting tactics. Driven by the deaths of his family, who were killed by the mob when they witnessed a gangland execution in New York.

The Punisher’s brutal nature and willingness to kill made him a novel character in mainstream American comic books in 1974. By the late 1980s, he was part of a wave of psychologically troubled antiheroes and was featured in several monthly publications, such as the Punisher War Journal.