The following contains spoilers from Punisher #2 (2022), on sale now.
While he is a part of the Marvel Universe, the Punisher doesn’t target super-powered villains very often. It makes sense that Frank Castle prefers to stick to murdering gangsters and leave the super-powered threats to people like his childhood hero, Captain America.
That changed when Castle joined The Hand in the latest Punisher volume, by the creative team of Jason Aaron, Jesus Saiz, Paul Azaceta, Dave Stewart and VC’s Cory Petit. Allying with the ninja clan hasn’t just set up another battle with his old sparring partner Daredevil. He’s also drawn the ire of someone well out of his usual street-level weight class, former Avengers villain and literal Greek God of War, Ares.
Ares only makes a brief appearance at the end of Punisher #2, but it’s a memorable one. Ares wipes out an entire tiger masked gang before appearing on panel. The gang insulted the war god by buying weapons from his Apostles of War but not using them when rival gangs surrendered at the sight of them. After that vulgar display of power, Ares realizes that an assassination attempt on the Punisher by one of his apostles failed, reasoning that he would have heard Castle’s arrival in Hades if he had died.
With The Punisher rejecting the olive branch of a free Banner Cannon, the machine gun equivalent of The Hulk, Ares realizes that he’s now at war with Castle and The Hand. Anyone else would, at the very least, take an impending war with The Punisher and his ninja army as a grave matter. Ares is positively giddy that his brand of diplomacy failed.
The Marvel Universe version of Ares was introduced in Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s Thor #129. That story set the tone for most of his publication history, as he was cast as an antagonist to his half-brother Hercules and his allies. That group quickly grew from Thor to his teammates in The Avengers, a group Hercules would become a longstanding member of. Ares’ opposition to Hercules and his teammates saw him team up with another villainous god, Asgard’s Enchantress. Their partnership included an attempt to conquer Olympus, which saw Hercules exiled and the rest of the pantheon turned to crystal. It took The Avengers’ intervention to thwart his plan.
Ares’ plans against Hercules and The Avengers also took more earthly forms. He formed a group called The Warhawks to cause war on Earth. His use of Satyrs to incite violence ensnared members of The Avengers before Thor and The Vision were able to free them. The Warhawks are a precursor to The Apostles of War, although Ares’ current group is more business-focused in its warmongering than its predecessor.
After he won the superhero Civil War, Iron Man put together a new team of Avengers with Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) as the leader in Brian Michael Bendis and Frank Cho’s The Mighty Avengers #1. Looking for someone who could fill the roles of Wolverine and Thor, the duo recruited Ares. The God of War was initially incensed that the duo ruined his civilian identity and that Iron Man threatened to deport him to Olympus if he failed to register.
Iron Man won Ares over by not backing down but acknowledging that he would need a small army of heavy hitters like She-Hulk to make good on his threat. It didn’t hurt that Stark matched Ares’ $44 an hour salary. Although Ares’ initiation in The Avengers was unusual, he quickly became a vital member of the team, playing a key role in defeating the team’s arch-enemy Ultron in his debut mission.
Ares’ Avengers membership meant that he took part in World War Hulk, joining both Avengers’ teams in a losing effort against The Hulk’s alien allies, The Warbound, and the small number of superheroes who sided with him over their peers. After The Hulk’s defeat, Hercules became a fugitive alongside The Hulk’s biggest human supporter, Amadeus Cho.
This led to the role reversal of fighting Hercules as an Avenger. Beyond getting another chance to pummel him, it gave Aries a chance to air some grievances, too. Ares demanded to know why humanity scorned him the same way The Olympians did but loved Hercules, even though he had committed a multitude of sins over his long life.
Reading off his brother’s rap sheet, which included everything from murder to thievery, Ares demanded to know what people saw in Hercules. When Hercules responded that his flaws made him relatable, Ares declared that it proved humanity’s weakness. While that may have made the war god feel better about himself, Ares’ righteous anger and Avengers status didn’t change the outcome of the battle.
Ares remained a member of The Mighty Avengers until Stark was blamed for the Skrulls’ invasion. He was replaced as The Avengers’ leader by the once and future Green Goblin, Norman Osborn. While most of his teammates followed Ms. Marvel’s lead and resigned, Ares didn’t join them, choosing to follow the man that dealt the killing blow to the Skrull Queen Veranke instead.
Unfortunately for Ares, he wasn’t the only Mighty Avengers powerhouse to follow Osborn. The Sentry also joined Osborn’s Dark Avengers. That ultimately led to Ares’s death during the Siege of Asgard. Enraged that Osborn’s invasion was hinged on false pretenses, Ares threatened to rip his head off. The Sentry arrived at Osborn’s behest and pummeled Ares before tearing him in half.
Aries spent some time in the afterlife of Elysium with his son Alex after his death. Like any superhero worth his salt, his death didn’t last. Ares was resurrected to take part in the multiversal The Contest of Champions. After his team defeated the evil future version of The Hulk known as The Maestro, Ares returned to his native reality. Ares’ appearances were confined to guest appearances after his return.
Ares appears to have slid all the way back to villainy after his most recent appearance. He is not just serving as an arm’s dealer, which is problematic by itself. He’s arming the likes of literal supervillains such as the Hate-Monger and his old foes, Hydra. Ares’ new business venture is amoral at best. On the other hand, the Punisher is working for the Hand, who are not concealing the fact that they’re a death cult that worships a monster called The Beast. While it’s easy to sympathize with Castle’s reason for joining them, this is a rare Marvel Universe conflict with no real heroes involved. None of that makes the impending battle between Ares and Castle less compelling.
The new supernatural powers Castle is developing as leader of The Hand should make their eventual battle more evenly matched than it would be otherwise. It should be a brutal battle between two men who live to wage their own brands of war with enough firepower to make it a spectacle. Given their history, there’s no guarantee either one will walk away from it in one piece, if at all.