I gotta weigh in some more on this. Did you know that Punisher #20 will be released the month that I’ll turn 42 this year? A way to celebrate my birthday, eh? Punisher #20 being both the final issue of Edmondson’s Punisher run and a tie in to Secret Wars.
When I first saw how Secret Wars would play out accompanied with the tagline “The Marvel Universe will come to an end.” I got upset. I thought that all of the Marvel characters, including Punisher, will die in some catastrophic event and there would be no more Marvel Comics. But as the updates wore on and made somewhat clearer, it turns out that The Main Marvel Universe (Earth 616) and The Ultimate Universe (Earth 1610) will collide to form BattleWorld which is also made up of a chunk of other worlds from Marvel’s “What If..?” and Elseworlds series. All of the Marvel characters will be affected, including The Punisher, with some becoming survivors while others will perish.
You know, the way Marvel have been giving out multiple teasers to the upcoming storyline, it has been giving me the impression that Marvel Comics won’t do any Punisher series anymore and that they’ll just kill off the character, like what they did with Wolverine, and not bring him back again. They been doing such teasers like this ever since they announced the upcoming event back in February. And I’ve been at times very upset with Marvel over their teasers since. Especially when I’ve just became a fan of The Punisher almost a year ago. But this is nothing more than just Marvel pulling my leg. Sure they killed off the character before, but they also brought him back to life to punish once more. No, with a large global fan base The Punisher has, there’s no way Marvel can keep good ol’ Frank down no matter how many times they kill off the character in various stories. I’m glad to see that there will be several Punisher incarnates that will be found in BattleWorld.
But I’m still worry about the fate of the main Punisher from Earth 616. It seems Issue #20 will indeed be the last issue we will see Frank alive. But we could be wrong. According to the map of BattleWorld, what’s left of Earth 616 and Earth 1610 will be converted into a moon-like object orbiting the planet where many of the Marvel characters from those 2 worlds will reside after they survive the incursion, and I would like to believe that The Punisher from the Main 616 universe will be among those who managed to survive.
My prediction for Secret Wars is that The 616 Punisher will not be killed off at the end of Issue 20, but instead be among the main characters who will survive to witness the formation of BattleWorld and eventually do battle against the planet’s mysterious ruler to hopes of finding a way to reverse the affects of the incursion and collision of the planets and restore all of the Marvel Universe to exactly what it once was before the Beyonders came along and launch the incursion that resulted in the end of the Marvel Universe as we know it and the formation of Battleworld.