Here is an archive of all the past top five lists I've one over the years.
With the debut of the Punisher in the second season of the Daredevil Netflix television series, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the five best in-continuity Daredevil/Punisher fights. I have decided to choose individual fights within overall stories (like ranking each individual fight within the Daredevil vs. Punisher mini-series rather than counting the entire mini-series as one huge fight). If you prefer to consider each overall story as one fight, I've included five overall stories on the countdown for that very purpose, so just go by the overall stories for an alternate top five.
Enjoy!
HONORABLE MENTIONS
First fight from Daredevil #292 (D.G. Chichester, Lee Weeks and Fred Fredericks)
Daredevil is hunting down some super-villains who are involved in an assassination contest, but the Punisher is hunting them down, as well. It is kind of surprising just how easily Daredevil goes down in this particular fight...
He later tracks the Punisher down while the Punisher is on top of a bus that Tombstone and Taskmaster had commandeered to make their escape. Daredevil is thrown from the bus, though, which eventually leads to...
First fight from Daredevil #293 (D.G. Chichester, Lee Weeks and Fred Fredericks)
Now it is Daredevil who wins the fight a bit too easily...
but it DOES lead to an awesome scene where Daredevil uses the confiscated gun to shoot Punisher's knife, to keep it from killing Taskmaster...
Second fight from Daredevil #293 (Chichester, Weeks and Fredericks)
The Punisher hunts down the remaining killer to a circus performance...
This is barely a fight, as they both just sort of give up quickly enough once Punisher's original assassination attempt is foiled.
Daredevil foils another assassination attempt (Daredevil #184 by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson)
The Punisher is insistent on killing a drug dealer known as the Hogman. Daredevil erroneously believes the Hogman to be innocent. This has an awesome opening visual by Miller and Janson, but it's not much of an actual fight...
Second fight from Daredevil vs. Punisher: Means and Ends (issue #2 by David Lapham)
Daredevil vs. Punisher: Means to an End was a very good mini-series by David Lapham (who wrote and drew the book), but what was particularly interesting to me (besides the clever commentary on how violence can ruin people's lives, as a young man slowly descends into some bad territory, in a very similar way to some characters in Lapham's Stray Bullets) was how Lapham managed to get four significant Daredevil/Punisher fights into the six issues. Most other writers would have condensed the fights. It was impressive that Lapham did not.
All of the fights were handled well, but the "worst" one was likely from issue #2, as it is interrupted by a fire bomb pretty quickly....
First fight from Daredevil vs. the Punisher: Means and Ends (issue #1 by Lapham)
What I like about their first fight from the very first issue is that it is more of a traditional superhero fight. As the series progresses, their fights become more and more brutal and more "realistic." Lapham even seems to draw Daredevil more like John Romita here. It was a clever approach by Lapham...
Third fight from Daredevil vs. the Punisher: Means and Ends (issue #4 by Lapham)
This is a rough fight, as it comes down to the Punisher escaping due to him accidentally shooting an innocent civilian...
The top five begins next page!
5. The final fight from Daredevil vs. the Punisher: Means and Ends (issue #6 by Lapham)
Like I said, after starting the series with a more traditional fight, their final fight was a particularly brutal one...
If you're thinking, "Wow, this is dark. Does the kid end up dead, being cradled by the Punisher?" then you are thinking correct.
4. Punisher (Vol.4) #3 (by Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon and Jimmy Palmiotti)
This fight wasn't necessarily any better than any Lapham fight...
but it ends with the Punisher messing with Daredevil's head so much that I figured I had to feature it higher than the Lapham fights, as the Punisher has him trapped and forced to decide whether to kill the Punisher or let the Punisher kill a bad guy...
Go to the next page for the top three!
3. The Creep and the Bully (Punisher (Vol.2) #10/Daredevil #257 by Mike Baron, Whilce Portacio and Scott Williams and Ann Nocenti, John Romita Jr. and Al Williamson)
This is one of those stories where we see it from both character's perspectives (as Daredevil tries to stop the Punisher from killing some psychopath who has been poisoning people). The first look at the fight came from Punisher #10, where Portacio/Williams do a good enough job...
but Daredevil #257 is a whole other level, from Nocenti's decision to have the fight narrated by the psychopath to Romita Jr. and Williamson's brilliant artwork...
On strict artistic depiction of a fight, this should likely be #1, but I just can't dismiss the historical impact of the first two fights on the list...
2. Punisher's first fight with Daredevil (Daredevil #183 by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson)
I mean, come on, the dude SHOT him! Can you imagine how cool that fight was when it first came out? Not to mention Miller's excellent layouts, that is just an epic moment right there, outdone only by the rematch...
1. Punisher's third ever fight with Daredevil (Daredevil #184 by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson)
So the Punisher has the Hogman cornered, but a kid whose sister was murdered by the Hogman's drugs is also on the Hogman's trail...
That's just an epic moment in both Daredevil and Punisher's history, and it also led to one of the most awesome covers ever (I put it as the third most iconic Daredevil cover of all-time).
Okay, that's the list! Agree? Disagree? Let me know (as if I had to say that)!
NOTE: Again, if you're splitting it up into overall stories, then the list goes:
DD #293-294
DD vs. Punisher: Means and Ends #1-6
Punisher #3
Punisher #10/DD #257
DD #183-184
Feel free to suggest future top five topics to me! E-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com!