In Left Unresolved, I spotlight storylines that have been, well, left unresolved.

Reader Luy W. wrote about the weird non-response to the big ending of the Punisher: War Zone miniseries, which pitted the Punisher against the Avengers.

It all began with the 2011 Punisher ongoing series by Greg Rucka, Marco Checchetto and Matt Hollingsworth. That series introduced Rachel Cole-Alves, a Marine sergeant much like Frank Castle who returned home only to see her wedding become the centerpiece of a battle between members of the Owl's gang and a new gang in town known as The Exchange. All of the people at the wedding were killed, including Rachel's husband (since the attack occurred after the ceremony itself, Rachel still took her husband's last name). Rachel decided to get revenge on the Exchange. While initially dismissive of her attempts to become a vigilante, the Punisher ultimately found himself taking her under his wing.

The two vigilantes end up taking down the Exchange, but Rachel accidentally shoots a cop during the final battle and so she surrenders herself and is arrested and tried and convicted for murder.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man is so disgusted by the death of the cop in the Punisher's attack (and the fact that the Punisher used one of Spider-Man's old webshooters in the attack) that he decides to enlist the other Avengers in finally taking the Punisher down in Punisher: War Zone #1 (by Greg Rucka, Carmine Di Giandomenico and Matt Hollingsworth)...

Wolverine warns the Punisher before the others come for him...

The Punisher's plans, though, are not to stop the Avengers are keep himself free, but rather to make sure that Rachel doesn't remain in prison. Therefore, he manipulates the Avengers (even using a stolen Iron Man armor at one point) into allowing Rachel to go free (Black Widow and Wolverine end up helping Punisher in that part of his plan). Eventually, the Avengers overpower him...

The Punisher is then put into a special super-prison...

While we see that, even with Frank in custody, Rachel is continuing his mission...

Okay, so that's a pretty big deal, right? We see earlier in the story that Wolverine is specifically worried about how, if the Avengers capture Frank, they will put him into a jail that he will be stuck in and it will drive him crazy. Therefore, the fact that he is willing to do that to himself so that he can cause a distraction that will allow Rachel to escape is this big sacrifice on his part. His big Jean Valjean moment. Or maybe his big Sydney Carton moment? I dunno, some big French-style sacrifice.

And then...?

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='So how did he escape?']

Here's the biggest issue with the timing of the story, the Punisher actually joined up with the Thunderbolts WHILE PUNISHER: WAR ZONE WAS COMING OUT!

So while he's being locked up in a super prison, he is being recruited by Thunderbolt Ross to join Ross' new team of ruthless heroes in Thunderbolts #1 (by Daniel Way and Steve Dillon)...

He runs into Spider-Man a month or two after Punisher: War Zone (during the time that Spider-Man's body had been taken over by Otto Octavius) in Avenging Spider-Man #22 (by Chris Yost and David Lopez) and it wasn't like it was weird that they were meeting up with each other again...

Heck, there was even a two-part story around this time by Marc Guggenheim, Leinil Francis Yu, Mico Suayan and Sunny Gho that involved the Punisher turning himself in and getting arrested so that he could be at a court room when a vicious killer turns State's Evidence was testifying!

So, in other words, obviously he DID escape that super prison, but we never actually got to learn how. Apparently the big bad super prison that was a major plot point of that miniseries really didn't matter either way in the end.

Thanks to Luy for the suggestion!

If anyone has a suggestion for an unresolved comic book plot, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!