Written by Alan Grant and John Wagner, Art by Cam Kennedy, Lettered by Jim Novak and Edited by Nel Yomtov and Richard Ashford. Published December 1991

Frank Castle is stumbling through an inch of snow in the Scottish Highlands, strung out cocaine and drunk on whiskey. He blames this predicament on Crime before promptly passing out. Until proven otherwise this is the greatest first page of any Punisher story.

This was cute. Frank Castle is forced to vacation in Scotland to catch a drug lord and ends up running afoul of the ghost Edinburgh Castle.  While the ghost is just as driven to fight crime as New York’s infamous gunslinger, Old Frank is convinced the big difference is that this phantom is crazy. While The Punisher is, in his own estimation, the most rationally, motivated serial killer in human history. Blood on the Moors reads like an action movie peppered with the type of cheek and irreverent humour you’d expect from 2000AD veterans. There’s a very Dreedian quality to Frank’s stone-faced reactions to everything that ensure everything out his mouth is dry sarcasm or moral certitude with no inflection. Either a total acceptance of his own hypocrisies or being completely oblivious to them, leaving the audience uncertain if Frank has any self awareness or not.

The real star here is Cam Kennedy, who’s bold colour choices allowed to book a shift between realistic affections of Edinburgh, ghoulish greens of the undead champion and neon flooded hotel rooms where purple light drench the Punisher’s targets in a near purgatory before he makes his move.

Like most action movies I get bored by the end. Once you find out about how The Punisher mixed booze and blow in a blizzard the story has resolved everything except showing the punishing. And while the sword-wielding ghost is present he never feels like a worthwhile addition.  Still, Frank Castle accidentally kills a wealthy Mr Murdock in the rafters of a football stadium. So if you want to see old Rupert’s canonical death in Marvel comics then go for it.