10 Comics That Saved Hated Characters

As much as watching a stoic, endlessly violent badass with a tragic backstory is fun, it's not exactly difficult to find a character who fits this description within the medium.

As such, the move away from the Punisher being yet another character cut from this cloth turned out to be a massively refreshing one. While many previous comics paved the route for a more three-dimensional Frank, it is Born that marks a particularly unique development that the Punisher gets to move him away from the conventional embittered anti-hero.

The strikingly named series covers Frank Castle's life prior to him becoming the relentless vigilante, instead focusing on his time in Vietnam and how it affected him. What it does decidedly different to comics that came before it, however, is to suggest that Castle's thirst for blood is not a product of his anguish at his murdered family, but instead a dark urge for violence that had resided within him far before that event came to pass.

It's not the most favourable portrayal of Frank, sure - but then the best Punisher comics tend to revolve around his moral complexities.