The Punisher was conceived of by Gerry Conway, writer of The Amazing Spider-Man, who helped design the character's distinctive costume. As Conway recalled in 2002, that, "In the '70s, when I was writing comics at DC and Marvel, I made it a practice to sketch my own ideas for the costumes of new characters — heroes and villains — which I offered to the artists as a crude suggestion representing the image I had in mind. I had done that with the Punisher at Marvel.[3] Conway had drawn a character with a small death's head skull on one breast. Marvel art director John Romita, Sr., took the basic design, blew the skull up to huge size, taking up most of the character's chest, and added a cartridge bandolier that formed the skull's teeth.[citation needed] Amazing Spider-Man penciller Ross Andru was the first artist to draw the character for publication.
Stan Lee, then Marvel's editor-in-chief, recalled in 2005 that he had suggested the character's name:
Gerry Conway was writing a script and he wanted a character that would turn out to be a hero later on, and he came up with the name the Assassin. And I mentioned that I didn't think we could ever have a comic book where the hero would be called the Assassin, because there's just too much of a negative connotation to that word. And I remembered that, some time ago, I had had a relatively unimportant character ... [who] was one of [the cosmic antagonist] Galactus' robots, and I had called him the Punisher, and it seemed to me that that was a good name for the character Gerry wanted to write — so I said, 'Why not call him the Punisher?' And, since I was the editor [sic; Lee had been named publisher in 1972], Gerry said, 'Okay.'[4]
Appearing for the first time in The Amazing Spider-Man #129 (Feb. 1974), the Punisher was initially an antagonist of the titular hero. He was a bloodthirsty vigilante who had no qualms about killing gangsters, something that most superheroes of the time refrained from doing. J. Jonah Jameson described him as "the most newsworthy thing to happen to New York sinceBoss Tweed." In this appearance, the Punisher was determined to kill Spider-Man, who was wanted for the apparent murder of Norman Osborn.[5] This version of the Punisher was shown as an athletic fighter, a master marksman, and an able strategist. All he would reveal about himself was that he was a former U.S. Marine. He had a fierce temper but also showed signs of considerable frustration over his self-appointed role of killer vigilante. In particular, he was engaged in extensive soul-searching as to what was the right thing to do: although he had few qualms about killing he was outraged when his then-associate, theJackal, apparently killed Spider-Man by treacherous means rather than in honorable combat. Spider-Man, who was himself no stranger to such torment, concluded that the Punisher's problems made his own seem like a "birthday party."[5]
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The character was a hit with readers and started to appear on a regular basis, teaming up with both Spider-Man and other heroes such as Captain America and Nightcrawlerthroughout the 1970s and early 1980s. During his acclaimed run on Daredevil, writer and artist Frank Miller made use of the character, contrasting his attitudes and version of vigilante action to that of the more liberal Man Without Fear
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