The following contains spoilers for Punisher #3, now on sale from Marvel Comics

The Punisher has killed countless people over the years, dealing death like a force of nature as opposed to a single man. His war on crime has left plenty of bodies, and even before that his wartime service saw him rack up an impressive kill count.

But it turns out the Punisher's lethal intent predates those periods of his life by decades. Punisher #3 (by Jason Aaron, Jesus Saiz, Paul Azaceta, Dave Stewart, and VC's Cory Petit) revealed that Frank Castle's first confirmed kill came while he just a boy -- and was willing to use some Home Alone-style trickery to take out his targets.

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The Punisher Home Alone Killer 3

Frank Castle's first kill came decades before his service in the military. Egged on by the Archpriestess of the Hand while he's executing a captured Hydra soldier, Castle ended up recounting how he fought against evil for the first time. While on a roof playing with a BB gun while he was ten years old, Castle witnessed a man attack a married couple in the street. Later confirmed by his parents to be a criminal with deep connections, the man was able to beat them to death in broad daylight. Fearful of retribution the neighbors all did nothing. Castle was haunted by this event, and found that he couldn't stop hearing the screaming of the couple, so he came up with a plan.

Roaming around the neighborhood, Castle collected supplies to make a surprising trap. The ten-year-old Frank tied a string to the gangster's doorknob, which turned over a bucket of diesel fuel on his head. The criminal barely had time to look at Castle, wearing a Captain America Halloween mask, before the young boy was able to use a lighter and a can of spray paint to light the criminal aflame. No one in the neighborhood went to help him, allowing him to burn to death with only Frank watching from the rooftop. It's an absolutely brutal story, and one that coupled with his admission that in those years he'd had dreams potentially connected to his place as an agent of the Beast -paints a very dark picture of the child Frank Castle really was.

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The Punisher Home Alone Killer 2

In one sense, it's a creepy take on something like Home Alone. The Home Alone films typically focus on a young boy, left alone to his own devices, forced to improvise in a bid to outmaneuver criminals who've attacked them. This usually involves laying household traps, similar to the bucket plan used by Castle. But those films, while leaving the criminals severely injured, don't usually end with the child burning the criminal to death. In fact, the young Frank taking the initiative to set the trap outside the criminal's home removes any sense of security. This wasn't about getting justice or fighting for one's own safety it was pure revenge, hinting at the hatred that would come to define Castle.

It's incredibly unsettling, especially considering that Frank Castle was at the time nothing more than just a boy with some very dark ambitions. It speaks to the potential influence the Hand and the Beast have quietly had on him his entire life, casting all of his previous brutality in a very different light. The Punisher has always been an impressive chaotic force, but it increasingly looks like his lethal intent didn't come from pure anger -- revealing that he effectively became a pointed killer before he'd even hit puberty.