The Punisher and The Phoenix #1

The cover of the first issue of ‘The Punisher and The Phoenix,’ showing The Punisher (“played” here by an action figure of John Bernthal) extending a hand to Rachel Summers in a space filled with smoke and flame. The text, “A toy comic by Phil Wrede,” is visible at the bottom of the image.

A page of backstory, the text of which reads, “Previously, in the Phil Wrede Marvel Action Figure Comic Universe… The Battle of Washington, D.C., saw heroes emerge victorious. The X-Cutioner and Reverend William Stryker were arrested. And President Kirby seemed to have changed his tune on mutants in America. But, the Fantastic Four are missing! And the Mayor of New York never officially disavowed HYDRA. The City’s relationship with metahumans has hit the skids ever since the Baxter Building vanished. X-Force continues to offer a safe haven to any mutant who can reach New Mexico.”

In narration-style caption boxes, the context of the story is further explained: “New York City. The disappearance of the Fantastic Four threw the balance between the city and her superheroes out of whack. The reveal of the identities of the Starjammers gave the government a fresh excuse to be suspicious. Suspicion bolsters prejudice. Weak leaders love to offer the public an easy target for their troubles. Thus, was the agency of Mutant Citizenship Enforcement reborn…” As the villain Crossbones and an MCE officer stand on a street at nighttime, Crossbones orders a pair of robotic Sentinels to approach a nearby building.

Hiding inside the building are the future Phoenix, Rachel Summers (the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey from an alternate, dystopian future, who has traveled back to our time in the hopes of preventing that future from ever coming to pass) and a nameless mutant companion. They try to sneak through the darkness as the Sentinels near their location.

A Sentinel punches through the wall of the building; Rachel and her compatriot are discovered!

The Sentinels order the two mutants to exit the building with their hands up. Rachel uses her telekinetic abilities to lift debris from the floor, raising one of her hands as she does so.

The Sentinels correctly interpret Rachel’s actions, and attack with terrible laser beams shot from their hands. Rachel is able to form the debris into a shield that protects her, but her friend is struck by one beam, and immediately vaporized.

Rachel lies among the scattered debris, exhausted from the effort to defend herself against such an attack. Crossbones enters the building and shoots her in the chest with a stun bullet.

Crossbones marches Rachel out of the building with a mutant power suppressing collar strapped around her neck. The Sentinels begin to walk down the block, as from a rooftop, the Punisher watches all the action.

Clicking a button on his phone, the Punisher activates some remote explosives he’d planted earlier. The Sentinels are temporarily confused, but Crossbones knows who’s responsible. One of the MCE officers looks terrified when Crossbones mutters the Punisher’s name. From his phone, the Punisher coordinates with a friend whose identity is hidden in silhouette (although, it’s probably very easy to figure out who it is).

The MCE officers immediately bail on the mission, putting their safety and lives ahead of getting to act out their prejudices via a government-sanctioned power fantasy. As he communicates with his friend, it’s clear that the Punisher hoped this retreat would happen.

Unsure of where the Punisher is located, Crossbones orders the Sentinels to destroy the building in which Rachel Summers had been hiding. Crossbones also coordinates with a sniper on a rooftop, who signals that he’s spotted the Punisher…

…just as the Punisher gets a bead on him, and fires on the sniper first. The Punisher’s shot is fatal, and Crossbones is down yet another ally. Rachel mocks him for this, and Crossbones hits her across the face with his pistol. Furious at this, the Punisher stands up from his hiding spot and opens fire on Crossbones.

The Punisher’s bullets are stopped by Crossbones’ body armor. His location compromised, Crossbones is easily able to order the Sentinels to attack him.

The Punisher barely manages to duck out of the way of laser fire as the Sentinels close on his position. Taking out his phone again, the Punisher orders his ally into action.

From behind the Sentinels storms Piotr Rasputin, the Russian mutant called Colossus, with his skin transformed into virtually indestructible organic steel!

The Punisher stands up with a rocket launcher in hand, and shoots one of the Sentinels. Off-balance already, it’s easy pickings for Colossus as he crashes into its ankle, taking it out of the fight.

Crossbones draws a knife and advances on Colossus, as the Punisher tries to figure out how he’s going to fight the remaining Sentinel by himself.

Luckily, the Punisher had a plan for this looming situation, too, and pulls out a laser rifle that, according to him, has just enough juice for one shot. He shoots the Sentinel straight between the eyes, as Colossus and Crossbones advance on one another.

The laser shot from the Punisher’s rifle glances off of Rachel Summers’ control collar, temporarily weakening it. She’s able to call on her mutant powers again, pulling the damaged Sentinel into the air telekinetically, as Colossus and Crossbones trade punches.

Rachel lets the Sentinel drop to the ground; its head breaks off in the impact. Just then, though, the control collar experiences a surge of power that causes Rachel so much pain, she falls to the ground.

Colossus and the Punisher converge on Rachel to help her, even though neither one of them knows anything about this technology. Crossbones uses this opportunity to escape into the night.

As the power surge subsides, and Rachel Summers is able to sit up again, Colossus observes that one person who would know how to disable the mutant control collar is Dr. Hank McCoy, the Beast. Punisher asks Colossus if he’s proposing they take Rachel from New York all the way to New Mexico. Colossus replies that they could take Rachel to her mother (Jean Grey) instead, but neither Rachel nor the Punisher like this plan.

The credits for the comic, citing the Unsplash users whose photographs were the background art, the use of fonts by Blambot, acknowledging the human creators of the characters of Marvel Comics, the ownership of Marvel by Disney, the use of stock visual effects by Action VFX, and that the figure photography/script/lettering were by me, Phil Wrede.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Punisher, “frankly.” I like him as a storytelling element, when he forces the more upright and moralizing Marvel heroes to articulate their values and stand by them; the first comic I remember reading with the Punisher in it was Captain America #241 (I love that cover!), and every time he pops up to make life difficult for Cap, or Spider-Man, or Daredevil, I always knew I was in for a good read. Heck, he’s another member of the reluctant “team” in the first multi-part adventure I ever bought, ‘Round Robin: The Sidekick’s Revenge,’ which introduced me to Moon Knight, and the New Warriors (previously mentioned here).

But, enjoying him when he shows up in a story is a far cry from idolizing him. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be the Punisher, and when Gerry Conway started his crusade to reclaim the character and his iconography from people who absolutely weren’t supposed to embrace him, I felt a little vindicated.

My favorite live-action version of the Punisher is probably always going to be Ray Stevenson’s in Punisher: War Zone. The Punisher isn’t the most interesting character in his own story; that’s why he’s surrounded by lunatics and madmen like Dominic West’s phenomenal Jigsaw. The only way to make the Punisher even slightly reasonable, I think, is to set him against the most vile, violent, cartoonish villains that you can conceive of, and Stevenson’s hang-dog approach to the character of Frank Castle really resonated with me. War Zone has so much in common with the Tim Burton Batman movies that I think I was destined to love it!

I really like the Dolph Lundgren Punisher, too, although that’s almost all because of Dolph, rather than the character he’s playing, and the Thomas Jane version has the distinction, to me, of being both a bad movie and a mediocre take on the character. 2004, what a time!

(On a side note, at a comic convention one time, I saw Jane and Lou Ferrigno getting into a big van together after the show, and ever since, I’ve wondered what a team-up between his Punisher and Ferrigno’s Hulk would look like.)

When Jon Bernthal’s Punisher got introduced in the second season of Daredevil, it felt like the people making the show had a similar understanding of Frank Castle to mine: he’s not the star of the story, he’s here to challenge aspects of our hero and create friction to make the story more compelling and give Daredevil another challenge to overcome. Bernthal so totally dominates the screen in every scene that he’s in that it’s no surprise his Punisher got as popular as he did, as quickly as he did. I call him our current greatest thoughtful meathead actor, and while, if I’d been in charge of the MCU, I would have cast him as John Walker, (then, domino-like, Frank Grillo as the Punisher, and Wyatt Russell as Jack Monroe), I’m not going to go finding fault with his performance. Especially when he gets to share screen time with a marquee co-star: Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, and especially Deborah Ann Woll.

My favorite bits about the Bernthal Punisher are his relationship with Woll’s Karen Page. The two of them are so much fun to watch (especially on that podcast episode where she teaches him about D&D), and, to me, reinforces my stance that the Punisher shouldn’t really be the star of his own story, or at least not a solo act. It’s my biggest gripe with One Last Kill, that he’s on his own, and in his own head for so much of the runtime. It wouldn’t be the most aggressively 90’s thing that Marvel TV has ever done if it weren’t, though, and that’s what I found most charming about it!

So, finally, we come to the first story in the PWMAFCU (Phil Wrede Marvel Action Figure Comic Universe) in about a year and a half, the first issue of The Punisher and The Phoenix! I’m obviously trying to cope with how I feel about the state of the world, and how I think the Punisher would feel about it (if he knew and ran into mutants). Telling this story, I get to put my theories about Punisher stories into practice, letting him butt heads with all sorts of morally-minded superheroes (if Colossus thought he had it bad with Deadpool, boy, he didn’t know what he’d get into, teaming up with the Punisher). And, for a while, he’ll get the opportunity to care for somebody who really needs his help (though, it probably goes without saying that Rachel Summers won’t be wearing the Genosha-like collar the whole time).

I’m pretty pleased with how this issue turned out; even if you just compare it to the last issue of my Marvel comics, I think it’s a more visually interesting, better-edited, and overall more dynamic comic than I was putting out in 2024. I hope you agree, and I hope you’re excited to come back for the next one. Thanks for reading!

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