Marvel’s New Punisher Explained: Who Is Joe Garrison?

by #AI November 8, 2023 · Automatic

The Punisher franchise has evolved a great deal over the course of 2023. Frank Castle is no longer holding claim to the Punisher name, having renounced his war on crime at the end of Jason Aaron and Jesus Saiz’s series. In his place, a new character called Joe Garrison is taking up the Punisher mantle. And after just one issue in action, he’s already proven himself quite adept at punishing evildoers.
Who is Joe Garrison, and why has he taken Frank Castle’s place? Read on to learn more about Marvel’s new Punisher, but beware of full spoilers for The Punisher #1 ahead!
How Joe Garrison Became the Punisher
Written by David Pepose and drawn by Dave Wachter, The Punisher #1 introduces readers to former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent-turned ruthless vigilante Joe Garrison. Before S.H.I.E.L.D. was disbanded, Joe was known as “The Gravedigger,” an elite agent with a reputation for taking down targets others couldn’t. It quickly becomes clear that Joe has a talent for weapons and battlefield tactics to rival that of Frank Castle himself.
Joe is, in many ways, cut from the same cloth as Frank. He’s a man of war who returned home in an attempt to set up a new, quieter life for himself with his family. Also like Frank, Joe witnesses his family being brutally murdered before his eyes. In this case, Joe returns home just as a gas explosion claims the lives of his wife and children. The forensic evidence points to sabotage, and the police believe Joe himself might have murdered his family. But Joe knows it was the work of an arms dealer known as The Sokovian.
Issue #1 follows Joe as he pursues The Sokovian across the city and leaves a trail of bodies in his wake. He makes use of a series of abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. storehouses and reteams with an old colleague codenamed Triple-A (for “Arms and Analysis”). Frank Castle had Micro, and Joe Garrison has Triple-A. The media quickly takes to labeling Joe as the Punisher due to his skull-shaped body armor.
There is one key difference between Joe and Frank, however. Whereas the old Punisher mainly used traditional firearms and weapons against ordinary criminals, the new Punisher has no qualms about taking on New York’s supervillains. His S.H.I.E.L.D. tech helps level the playing field. Joe massacres a group of Mister Negative’s Inner Demons, and he even manages to kill Mister Hyde after force-feeding his opponent a massive dose of Mutant Growth Hormone.
Issue #1 culminates with Joe confronting The Sokovian inside a subway station. The Sokovian takes a hostage, believing that the new Punisher shares the original’s aversion to harming innocents. Joe responds by making an impossible shot through a moving subway car and right into the Sokovian’s skull. His family’s killer has been punished, but the mission still remains. Now Joe has to hunt down the villains who were pulling The Sokovian’s strings.
Where Is Frank Castle?
Where is Frank Castle in all of this? Why did he abandon his war in the first place? The previous volume of The Punisher established a very different status quo for Frank, one where he became the leader of the fanatical ninja cult known as The Hand and a servant of The Beast. Frank’s devotion to that ancient demon unlocked superhuman powers and resulted in his wife Maria being resurrected.
By the end of the series, Frank gained the ability to sense sin in the hearts of men, allowing the Hand to become a ruthless force that punished the wicked before they even committed their crimes. However, Frank finally reached his limit when called upon to murder a child indoctrinated by hate. He renounced his war and tried to flee with Maria. Maria, for her part, shot and subdued her husband after bearing witness to every act of murder Frank committed in the name of his family.
With help from Black Widow and the Avengers, Maria dismantled Frank’s underground network of safehouses and liquidated his assets. She left to start a new life for herself and attempt to do some good with the Castle name. But before the Avengers could bring Frank to justice, he escaped and fled to the dimension known as Weirdworld. When last we see Frank Castle in the final issue, he’s leading a group of war-displaced children across a battlefield to safety. His days of punishment are over.
Fans are no doubt wondering how long Frank Castle’s retirement will last. Will he return to Earth and resume his war on crime, or is Joe Garrison Marvel’s new Punisher going forward? It’s a little too early to say. Certainly, the Punisher character has been the source of controversy in recent years, and the retirement of Frank Castle and the creation of Joe Garrison appear to be part of Marvel’s larger effort to change the conversation around the franchise.
Still, it’s hard not to be reminded of another recent attempt at having a new character take over the mantle of a familiar Marvel anti-hero. Marvel’s 2016 Venom series introduced new Venom host Lee Price, but it was only a matter of months before the series pivoted to having Eddie Brock return and reclaim the Venom symbiote. Will Joe Garrison’s tenure as Punisher outlast Lee Price’s short-lived stint as Venom?
Only time will tell. The new series’ sales figures may be the determining factor. If readers embrace the new Punisher, then Frank Castle will likely stay in retirement for the foreseeable future. If not, then perhaps the franchise will return to a more traditional status quo in the next year or two.
What do you think? Are you intrigued by Marvel’s new Punisher so far, or would you rather have Frank Castle back in action? Cast your vote in our poll above and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
For more on what’s coming in the world of comics, check out our exclusive preview of Hellboy Winter Special: The Yule Cat and see the biggest new comic books of November 2023.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.