Here we go with Punisher Noir #1. This one's interesting because, while the previous Noir stories all heavily featured flashbacks, this series regularly jumps between three time periods. That, and unlike many of these it primarily draws the character's more recent history, and you'll see what I mean when we get to that point.
As you can see from the cover, the Noir Punisher is a slightly different beast from the Frank Castle we know. He doesn't have a skull insignia on his shirt; instead, he wears a mask with a skull stitched into it. As he does an Unflinching Walk from a massive inferno, guns smoking, his shadow forms a skull on the ground.
Our story begins in 1935, Manhattan, where a man staying in a sleazy hotel turns on the radio, tuning in to the Punisher radio drama. The man is naked as he sits on his bed, listening intently. "He feels no pain. Mere bullets do not even faze the likes of him", the narrator boasts - as we see this appears to be true of the listener as well, as the scars from bullet wounds in his back can attest.
As the narrator mentions the Punisher's deadly arsenal, our listener shows us one of his own. Knives of various sizes, brass knuckles, a garrote, hand grenades... and two semi-auto pistols with skulls on the grips. "His pistols... legendary throughout all of gangland. Their aim is ever true." Loading his guns, our man gets down to business. He gets dressed, strapping his weapons to his body. Who is this man? Nobody knows. But he'll never stop. Never give in. "Oh, it's already too late for criminals, loyal listeners. He's here." The listener dons a leather jacket and a mask. A mask with a skull on it. "The Punisher is upon us!"
But enough of that. Now, we cut to 1918. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, near the city of Verdun. American and British forces are encroaching upon German encampments. Right now, however, Frank Castelione sits in a trench, staring wistfully at a picture of his wife back home. They call this the Great War. The Big One. The War to End All Wars. They can call it whatever the Hell they want. All he cares about is keeping his promise to her. To get back home in one piece. He kisses the photo, tucks it away in a pouch, and grabs his pistols with the skull grips. He charges out of cover and starts fighting like a man possessed. If killing a bunch of the Kaiser's bootlickers is what it's going to take, then they're gonna get killed.
He rushes his way behind enemy cover, kicking one doughboy in the face and getting another via lead poisoning. Then one of them slashes him with a bayonet. Frank says his woman always talked about the angel of death being out to get him. "That crazy religion of hers." He'd always tell her the same thing, he thinks as he outruns the fireball caused by allied grenades. He doesn't have anything to worry about - because, as we can see from the winged skull tattoo on his chest, bared by that bayonet slash... he is the Angel of Death. He takes that photograph back out and looks at it again. "My beloved Ruth."
Ten years later, in the Bronx, Frank finds himself looking at that picture again in a photo album, drink in his hand and with a noticeable paunch. He thinks about how he kept his promise... but Ruth didn't hold up her end. "What happened to 'happily ever after'?" He thinks about what happened when he came back from the war. She hated his tat, which he'd gotten over there. Decoration of the flesh, she called it. "That crazy religion" Frank mentioned earlier must be Judaism, then. Frank wished she could have realized it was his way of "takin' the piss outta [her] boogeyman." She was always so worried about the angel of death coming to get him... and yet she was the one he hit with the big C.
He thinks about his son, Frank, Jr — Frankie. He wants Ruth to know he tried his best with that kid. It was always hard on the two of them, her being Jewish and him being Italian. "To Hell with everyone", they said; they wanted to be together. They'd never figured that "everyone" would include Frankie. The only people who ever accepted him were the exact wrong crowd. Frank looks out the window, and hopes Ruth can see that he tried to keep Frankie away away from all that... when he sees Frankie running with a local band of urchins who proceed to bum-rush a Hasidic man and pick his pocket. They play innocent to the guy, acting like they bumped into him by accident.
Eyeing their take, the kids have never seen that much money before. Frank takes it right out of Frankie's hands: they aren't gonna see it now, either. The other kids run away, and Frank tells Frankie that they're going to find that man and return his money. Then he yells at his son for involving himself with those miscreants when he's supposed to be minding their store. Frankie says they're his friends and his dad can go screw if he dosn't like it. That wasn't a smart thing to say - Frank's about to take off his belt right there on the street... when suddenly he seems stricken with conscience. He tells Frankie that if he keeps hanging with those clowns, he's gonna end up in jail — or worse. He asks if Frankie closed up the store before he left, but he left that to Mr. Bumpo.
In 616 Marvel, Mr. Bumpo was a neighbor of Frank's for one of the better-known Punisher story arcs. There, he was a cheerful, morbidly obese man. Here, he's just a chubby guy with an appetite who works at Frank's store, "Ruth and Frank's Grocery." Frank and Frankie drop in and find Bumpo having one of his "snacks" instead of working again. Frank tells Frankie to put up the "Closed" sign and has a look at the take for the day - a single bill in the register. "That good, huh?"
As Frankie closes the door, a guy sticks his foot in. Two men walk in the room, both wearing suits. The tall guy with a mustache has pinstripes on his. Between the mafia and the New York Yankees, pinstripes are synonymous with villainy. The short guy leans on the counter and says he hears Frank won't pay anybody for protection. Frank smiles: he heard right. The short guy says the neighborhood's under new management, and that changes things. Frank doesn't see how that changes anything, and smashes a big jar of pickles into the guy's face. As the tall guy pulls out his gun, Frank ducks under the counter and pulls out a baseball bat, delivering a mighty swing to disorient the guy and another to teach him a lesson.
The short guy's on the ground and grabs his own piece, only for Frankie to knock him on the head with the "Closed" sign. The gun falls out of his hands, and Frankie grabs it. He points it at the two thugs and tells them to get the Hell out of their store. They run off with their tails between their legs, but this isn't over. Bumpo gets the broom to clean up, and Frankie asks why they didn't just pay them. It'll cost more to clean up the place than the protection would've. He also says those guys aren't like the others Frank chased away, either.
Everybody else in the neighborhood goes along with all this. Why not him? Frank says he isn't like everybody else. He didn't almost get blown up dozens of times in the war to give away his hard earned money to creeps like that. "It ain't right, understand? And when somethin' ain't right, ya do somethin' about it. Ya can't just sit an' do nothin', Frankie."
That night, at the Hub Social Club, the two gangsters who tried to give Frank the shakedown are reporting to their boss, who isn't too happy to hear that this Castelione dope is still holding out. The boss-man speaks Yiddish as a Second Language, calling the two of them "golems" and expressing anger that they bring him "bupkes". He calms down and offers them cigars. When they reach for them, he uses the cigar cutter to slice off the index fingers on the hand they reached with. Every day he doesn't see that money, it'll be another finger. That money belongs to him, and if this Castelione bastard isn't paying, it's like he's stealing from him. "An' nobody steals from Dutch Schultz and gets away with it." Dutch Schultz is a real gangster from this period, as it happens - so get ready for an Alternate History lesson as the story goes on.
End of Issue 1
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