Crisis musing that it "alienated many readers and made the character toxic until Garth Ennis engineered his revival some years later". Nick Nadel of Comics Alliance wrote, "Even horror legend Bernie Wrightson's artwork couldn't make Angel Punisher and his weird spiky guns not look completely silly and dated". Cracked.com's Maxwell Yezpitelok opined that the storyline "completely undermined the intent of the character who had the simplest goal of any superhero ever" and that it felt like "the sort of bullshit premise that could have only come from the mind of a coke-fueled TV executive pitching a toy-friendly Punisher animated series where they don't actually show him killing people". Ethan Kaye of Topless Robot succinctly stated in regards to the volume, "Thank God we have Garth Ennis to give us back the Punisher who liked guns and bombs again". 4thletter's Gavin Jasper said, "Purgatory still doesn't get as much hate as it deserves. Angel Punisher isn't a completely unusable idea. As a fan of Franken-Castle, I'd be a hypocrite for suggesting such a thing. If Ennis felt like it, I'm sure he could come up with a way to make it work. Remender and Ostrander (the last guy to write Punisher before this status quo) could make it work. Here, though, there's nothing that redeems such a bonehead concept." Chuck Dixon, writer of various Punisher comics throughout the early 1990s, criticized the alterations made to the character's backstory, asserting, "I don't think origins like Batman's or Punisher's should be visited over and over again with everyone adding their two cents until the sum of all added details don't fit any more" and "Punisher's origin has been similarly screwed up, changing in the identities of his family's killers, making it a purposeful rather than random act". References External links Comics set in New York City Defunct American comics Punisher Punisher Punisher Science fantasy comics