The Punisher Limited Series #1,
Jan 1986
I bought my copy of this at the Red Food grocery store at the foot
of Signal Mountain, TN during one of my mother's seven hour shopping
sprees. When I saw it sitting in the magazine display, I
literally could not believe my eyes! When I was a teenager, the
Punisher was my favorite character. He was wild and crazy and killed
people for j-walking! Nobody classified as a "Hero" did
that in any of the comics I was reading at the time. And although I
didn't know the back room discussions at Marvel regarding the character, I
suspected it was for good reason. A Super-Hero who killed
people? Sure, Wolverine did from time to time, but it was always
attributed to his feral, non-human side and it was generally related to
some alien monster de jour. But no, the Punisher was just a normal
crazy guy who decided that the law wasn't good enough and that all
criminals should die. Up to this point, the only exposure I had to
the character was in Amazing Spider-Man where he was basically portrayed
as a gray-market villain who ended up being treated as an anti-hero.
And from what I understand now, that's the way many at Marvel wanted to
keep it. But rumor has it that Mike Zeck was being courted by DC
Comics at the time and that he and Steven Grant wanted to produce a series
devoted to the character. Apparently to keep Mike, Marvel agreed to
produce a series devoted to this serial killer but would not promote
it. Little did they know that all of the teenage boys in America
were like me!!! The Punisher limited series sold like hot cakes and
Marvel did a 180 on their previous stance and pushed the Punisher
hard. Soon, he had his own regular series, then several spin-offs,
and a crappy movie starring Dolph Lundgren. Nearly twenty years
later, the character is still trucking along strongly and just had another
movie hit the screens. This comic was also my first exposure to the
fickle comics collectors market. A couple of years after I got this
comic, when the big Punisher comics explosion hit, the value on the
limited series skyrocketed. Apparently, since Marvel did no
promotion for the series back issues were highly sought after. I
think the high point was when each issue of the Circle of Blood five part series was worth around
$70.00 a piece! Since then the market cooled drastically and now I'd
be lucky if I could get $15.00 for the first one and $5.00 for all of the
others. Such is life...