National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Lionsgate released The Punisher in April 2004, arriving during a wave of Marvel adaptations that tested how dark mainstream superhero cinema could go. Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, the film leaned into crime-thriller territory rather than spectacle, earning a devoted cult following that separates it from the era's glossier comic properties. It remains a notable artifact of mid-2000s genre filmmaking.

Joan Holds the Knife captures Joan mid-conversation, wet hair suggesting she has been pulled from a moment of ordinary life into something urgent. Across three consecutive frames her distressed expression holds steady, the interior setting closing in around her. The repetition across the strip gives the cell an almost suspended quality, as though time itself has stalled at her moment of crisis.