Heritage Set to Auction Near-Mint First Appearance of Punisher Just in Time for His MCU Return

Even before the first trailer dropped for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, fans were buzzing about the prospect of Jon Bernthal’s Punisher appearing in the film. And while trailers and the Disney+ Punisher: One Last Kill special helped build this hype, the character himself really deserves the credit. Punisher is a unique figure in the Marvel Universe, a dark antihero who poses the uncomfortable question of whether the strict code of honor heroes like Spider-Man operate under does more harm than good. 

The Punisher debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #129, emerging at the height of Gerry Conway’s seminal Spider-Man run, a byproduct of a decaying New York City and films like Dirty Harry. His Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) debut has only enhanced Amazing Spider-Man #129’s collectibility, and eBay sales always see a bump when the character makes a return to the screen. This Friday, at the same time as Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in theaters everywhere, fans have the chance to bid on a CGC (Certified Guarantee Company) graded Near-Mint copy of his first appearance through Heritage. 

The Punisher’s Origins On & Off The Page

Stan Lee’s decision to bring Gerry Conway on as The Amazing Spider-Man’s writer should have been a disaster. Conway was nineteen years old when he took the reins of Marvel’s top-selling and most-celebrated hero, only the third ever regular writer for the character after Lee and co-creator Steve Ditko. Instead, Conway breathed new life into the comic, bringing Peter Parker’s life and relationships into a new decade with his still-controversial “Death of Gwen Stacy” storyline. And while fingers have been pointed about who signed off on Gwen’s death for more than fifty years now, one thing happened for sure: Lee demanded Conway bring her back. 

This was disagreeable to Conway, who was well on his way to setting up the (more interesting, he thought) Mary Jane Watson as Peter’s new love interest. Still, he acquiesced … but he would do it his way. Conway conceived a story that would run for almost the back two years of his Spider-Man run, pitting Spidey against the demented “Jackal,” a geneticist and Empire State University professor named Miles Warren. Jackal was madly in love with Gwen, and though his long-term plan was to clone her (coming to a head in Amazing Spider-Man #142), he first contented himself by setting all manner of villains and assassins against Spider-Man. The first of these was the Punisher, debuting alongside Jackal himself. 

The Punisher is a threat from the first panel he inhabits: we meet him on the issue’s attention grabbing opening splash page from Ross Andru, demolishing a plaster statue of Spider-Man with a single shot from his high-powered rifle. Jackal looks on, watching Punisher with sadistic glee. On the next page, Conway establishes Punisher’s creed: Jackal tries to goad Punisher ahead of the kill, telling him “You like the death – the killing – the joyful revenge.” Punisher snarls back that “I kill only those who deserve killing, Jackal.” A Marvel legend was born. 

In an interview with fellow Spider-Man scribe Tom DeFalco, Gerry Conway recalled that Punisher was “an afterthought.” The villain filled Conway’s need for a physical threat to Spider-Man that would allow Jackal to remain a shadowy puppet-master in his debut appearance. Unequivocally, Conway said that “the Punisher was intended to be a one-shot character.” He recalls taking inspiration from the harder-edged “mystery men” of thirties pulp magazines, especially the Shadow, who “thought he was a law unto himself.”

How the Punisher Went from One-Shot Villain to Comics’ Most Iconic Anti-Hero

Gerry Conway puts it plainly: “I wrote the story, I decided I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.” After coming to a truce when Spider-Man helps Punisher see that he’s been manipulated by Jackal, the pair parted ways. Punisher vows revenge against Jackal, and Spider-Man is left thinking to himself that “That man’s got problems that make mine look like a birthday party.” 

Punisher returned six months later in The Amazing Spider-Man #135, this time fighting alongside Spider-Man to capture the hijacker and assassin known as “Tarantula” – who will also be appearing in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, perhaps in a nod to this very issue. Conway teamed Spider-Man and Punisher again in Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 the following year, and penned Punisher’s first solo story four months later. 

In the pages of magazine Marvel Preview #2, Conway at last revealed Punisher’s origins.  He was Frank Castle, a Vietnam veteran whose family were killed after accidentally bearing witness to a mob hit. With nothing left to live for, Castle waged a one-man war on crime, determined to clean up the streets and spare other innocents his family’s fate. The magazine format was not subject to the regulation of the Comics Code Authority, and enabled Conway to depict the harsher, darker world Punisher inhabits – a staple of the character adopted by later Punisher writers like Carl Potts and Garth Ennis. 

The Punisher came at the wrong time to capitalize on the Marvel magazine range, whose popularity was largely ebbing by the mid-seventies. In comics, Punisher’s violent nature meant editors were unsure how to sell him to Marvel’s broad reader base. Punisher was therefore relegated to guest appearances in Amazing and Spectacular Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Captain America until 1986. 

What Made Punisher Into An A-List Character — And Why He’s Just As Popular Today

The emergence of “direct market” (only sold at comic and specialty stores) comics in the mid-eighties gave Marvel confidence they could sell more mature, adult-oriented titles. Punisher was a natural fit for this format, leading to writer Steven Grant’s 1986 Punisher mini-series, a runaway hit that led to a monthly Punisher comic the following year. The comic cemented Punisher as one of Marvel’s biggest stars of the 1990s. 

It was the popularity of this monthly Punisher title and its spin-off, Punisher: War Journal that inspired New World Pictures to bring The Punisher to the screen in 1989. Lionsgate Pictures would later acquire the rights, producing two Punisher reboots: 2004’s The Punisher and 2008’s Punisher: War Zone. Neither film quite satisfied fans of the character, and the rights to him reverted to Marvel after War Zone’s box office failure. 

Netflix’s 2015 Daredevil series introduced Jon Bernthal’s Punisher in its second season – the first time Punisher crossed over with another Marvel hero in live action. After the demise of Netflix’s “Defenders Universe” in 2019, fans assumed they’d have to wait for another reboot to see Punisher finally face off against Spider-Man in live action. The 2021 appearance of Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home gave fans hope. Finally, in 2025, after appearing on Daredevil: Born Again, it was confirmed that Jon Bernthal had joined the cast of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. 

This was over a year ago, and now that Spider-Man: Brand New Day looks poised to break box office records, the price of Amazing Spider-Man #129 also looks poised to break records. With three days left to bid, this auction is already at a price of $3.8k, putting it a couple bids away from the $4k value it’s currently estimated to hold.