Frank Castle returns as the Punisher in a Red Band title this fall

Benjamin Percy and Julius Otha bring the original Punisher back to the streets this September.

After being whisked away to Weirdworld at the end of the 2022-2023 Punisher miniseries by Jason Aaron, Jesús Saiz, Paul Azaceta and Dave Stewart, Frank Castle will return to comics in Punisher: Red Band this September.

Billed as the “most violent” comic “in Punisher history,” the limited series is by the Hellverine team of writer Benjamin Percy and artist Julius Otha. Whether or not it will address the events of the previous Punisher miniseries featuring Frank Castle — or the reboot miniseries featuring Joe Garrison — remains to be seen.

“Frank Castle—that dark-hearted, vengeance machine, that monster who fights monsters—is one of my all-time favorite characters, and Punisher is a series I’ve been gunning to write for a long, long time,” Percy said. “Not only is Frank back in black, but this is a Red Band book. You know what that means. I’m going to lean in fully and push the very limits of my favorite genre: hairy psychopaths. This is going to be as gritty and bloody as it gets. Street-level mayhem awaits you. And Julius Ohta—who I collaborated with previously on Hellverine—is bringing all the blood and fire and rage to the page with his beautiful, terrifying art.”

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Marvel returns to ‘Battleworld’ in September

Christos Gage and Marcus To bring together Hank Pym, the Maestro, Starbrand and more for a ‘Secret Wars’ style battle royale.

The mighty Marvel tradition of pulling a bunch of characters to a strange planet and making them fight it out will return in September, as Christos Gage and Marcus To bring back Battleworld in September.

Battleworld is the term used to describe the hodge-podge worlds seen in the 1980s Secret Wars series and its successor, the Jonathan Hickman-led Secret Wars event that occurred in 2015. In both cases, pieces of different worlds were called together to form a new world, a “battleworld” where, as the name suggests, battles took place.

This five-issue miniseries will feature characters from around the Marvel multiverse, including Hank Pym, the New Universe’s Starbrand, Days of Future Past Storm, the Future Imperfect Hulk dubbed the Maestro and many more.

“I was a rabid consumer of the original Secret Wars when it came out in 1984, so a chance to revisit the Battleworld ‘destroy your enemies’ concept was irresistible. Then they offer me Hank Pym, one of my favorite Marvel characters to write, and the amazing Marcus To on art?!” Gage said. He wrote the character when he was part of the cast of Avengers Academy as well as in Avengers: The Initiative, with co-writer Dan Slott.

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