What's Frank Castle Get Out Of The Afterlife?

Late in 2008, Marvel released a Punisher: War Zone mini-series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. In it, there's a sequence where Frank asks the fellow who's been after him why he thinks Frank would be haunted by the people he kills. His next two lines are 'I send them to Hell. I sleep just fine.' I saw the page originally in one of Chris Sims' "Ask Chris" columns, and I've been thinking about it periodically since then. Last week, it struck me as strange that the Punisher basically admits he believes in Hell. I've been sorting out my thoughts on that since then.

My thinking was Frank is focused, but also very practical about what he does. He tries to bury the emotional part of himself, because it'll make him stupid and get him killed more quickly. For as many as he kills, he's knows there will always be more criminals, long after he's dead. Even while he's alive, there are numerous ones he'll never catch up to, and the most he can hope for is what he does might give them a moment's pause. He knows he's gone too far down this path - willingly, it's worth noting - to turn back, which is why he can't be part of the life of the daughter he learned he had with O'Brien. It's not so much that Frank couldn't believe in an afterlife, but more I didn't think he would bother to. He's focused on his mission, and doing it efficiently as possible.

Today, it occurred to me that War Zone was under the Marvel Knights imprint, the same as the "Welcome Back, Frank" mini-series Ennis and Dillon did several years earlier (which lead to a Punisher ongoing under the Marvel Knights heading, and eventually the ongoing Ennis wrote in the MAX imprint). At the very start of "Welcome Back, Frank", Ennis addresses Castle's previous status quo: acting as a killer of paranormal stuff under Heaven's direction. Ennis deals with it quickly, basically stating "Yeah, it happened, but Frank's alive again, back to killing mobsters and such. Moving on!" The idea that Frank Castle believes in the afterlife wouldn't come as any surprise, considering he'd seen it, acted in service of it, even.

I'm not clear on what connection there might be between Ennis' Marvel Knights and MAX Punisher work. Costumed superheroes are never mentioned in the MAX stuff. Neither is the Russian, or Frank once making a French military officer drop a nuke on an island. However, Frank's SAS buddy Yorkie Mitchell showed up in both titles, though more often in the MAX book. Still, MAX imprint Frank believes in something, too. In Punisher: The Tyger one-shot, at the end, as Frank begins his war on crime, he thinks to himself that he'll show them something not made by God. it's a reference to a scene earlier in the book, when Frank attends a poetry class as a kid. After hearing Blake's "The Tyger", he asks who made the Tyger, because he doesn't believe it could have been made by the same being that made lambs, meaning God*. It could be a product of his upbringing he hasn't shaken, the same way there are certain things he learned as a kid he honed as he's grown older.

There's always the possibility that Frank believes because he likes the idea that after he's done with the crooks, they wind up someplace worse, where they suffer more than he could ever inflict. By and large, Ennis' Punisher doesn't torture. When he does, he doesn't hold back, but it's rare enough that it even worries him how easy it was. Normally, he's trying to do things as quickly and cleanly as possible, so there wouldn't be time to drag it out. So those he kills could fall under the category of "At least it was quick", if that's a consolation. But he can tell himself there's more waiting for them on the other side.

I don't think that's it, though. He's killing them, and that should be satisfaction enough, in its own way. It's another scene in the MAX run I was thinking of as evidence of his beliefs I think is the reason. At the end of the "Up is Down, Black is White" arc, Frank's captured Nicky Cavella, the mobster who dug up the remains of Frank's family, urinated on them, then sent a recording of it to major news stations. Frank went wild for a bit, not killing civilians wild, but being much more showy and careless (with himself) in how he did things. Now though, he's leading Cavella into the woods, and he thinks to himself (I don't have it in front of me, so paraphrasing) that the clouds had gone and he could think clearly again. He remembers Maria and the kids are someplace people like Cavella can never touch them.

That's the key to it, because Castle isn't just the Punisher, unstoppable, remorseless, emotionless killer. Frank Castle, husband and father, is still in there, but buried as deeply as possible. Because when that part of him comes to the surface, takes control, he gets careless. He does things less intelligently, puts himself and others at risk. It isn't a strict revenge thing, because that would end with the ones responsible for his pain**. It's a mission that doesn't end with the death of one criminal, but hypothetically ends with the death of all criminals (though it really ends with Frank's death), and so emotion can't enter into it. In that way, the belief that his loved ones are somewhere else, in peace and happiness, safe from the sort of violence that killed them, is a soothing measure for that emotional part of Frank. They aren't simply dead and gone, they're dead, but in a better place, so he doesn't need to be angry over them. It keeps that part of Frank Castle quiet, so the soldier can do what he has to, how he has to do it.

* The teacher, a priest, responds that God made everything, and that's all there is to it, as far as he's concerned.

** As it did for Jenny in the Widowmakers arc. She'd trained herself to be very good at killing, but once she killed the specific people she hated, there was nothing left for her, and she killed herself.