10 Times Marvel Comics Lost Their Damn Minds
5. The Punisher Becomes An Angel
Turns out a forced race change was far from the weirdest thing to ever happen to the Punisher, so welcome back Frank.
Once again this debacle came about during the 90's (1998) and an attempt to reinvent a character whose comic was floundering in sales. The thing about the Punisher though is that he's a pretty simple concept; he doesn't like criminals and he expresses that emotion through the medium of guns. Maybe that's why this story was so out of left field.
In what was possibly a misguided attempt to capitalise on the popularity of Spawn, the Punisher was turned into an angel of vengeance. In the story, Frank killed himself and was brought back to life by the angel Gabriel to serve as an agent of God. This conveniently included gunning down criminals, only now using the "weapons of heaven", a pair of over-designed sci-fi laser guns.
The plot also included some ludicrous gubbins about demons from hell secretly being behind the murder of Frank's family as part of a plot to get him to kill people for them.
Much like the events of the other entry, all this nonsense was quickly abandoned a couple of years later when new writer Garth Ennis took over. Frank was back to being a human with lots of guns and the only time the previous series was ever mentioned again was a quick line explaining he quit the whole angel business.