We all know him. Skull on his chest, mean as hell, pistol at the ready and willing to finish off anyone who crosses his path, Punisher has been one of Marvel’s flagships since his debut in 1974, in the pages of issue 174 of The Amazing Spider-Man. Since then, Frank Castle has done everything, from becoming an exterminating angel to being a vengeful Frankenstein. What not everyone knows, though, is that his origin isn’t in the police or in a crazed version of superheroes, but in a gigantic saga of novels.
Punisher, the executioner
Only five years before the antihero’s creation, novelist Don Pendleton started writing mass-market paperbacks that came out every so often about a character named Mack Bolan. Back then, these kinds of novels, easy to write (and to read), that barely went through any editing, but that you could buy anywhere cheaply and that ended up selling in huge numbers, were famous all across the United States, in all sorts of genres: western, crime, action, romance… I mean, by the mid-70s everyone knew The Executioner.
To give you an idea: from its debut in 1969 to its end in 2020, the whole saga had sold around 200 million copies. And that total was spread across a lot of books, because The Executioner alone grew to 464 titles (which from 1983 onward became monthly), and on top of that, it also ran Super Bolan titles alongside it, extra-long novels with 178 published. But there’s more: 5 spin-offs that added up to 469 more novels, a magazine that lasted 4 issues and the odd comic. And the list goes on.
In total, 1111 novels in 51 years, which works out to a little over 21 books a year. I mean, you have to be a huge fan to know The Executioner’s entire body of work. Curiously, it almost got made into a film but the idea came to nothing. It did, however, take shape in the character of the Punisher. After all, Bolan was a tough guy who killed 90 enemies in the Vietnam War, but who also showed compassion for Vietnamese civilians who needed support. A bit like Frank Castle, if Castle gave a damn about anyone else.
Besides, both of them have military pasts marked by trauma, they fight crime and they have trouble keeping the people they love alive. Well, Bolan not so much these days, because he sleeps with someone different in every novel. Castle isn’t so sure about that, and his family’s death was what awakened his murderous fury and his desire to do good, even if it’s in his twisted way. So yes, Marvel took an already successful character and turned him into one of its own heroes. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time, of course, because if there was one thing Stan Lee and his team had in abundance, it was gall… and knowing the ins and outs of copyright.
