The Punisher cancel culture’s next target

[RemyR]

I usually vote Democrat but liberal pussies really make me hate the party sometimes.

best thing for Marvel to do is to release a scathing statement denouncing the use of the Punisher logo for far right terror activities and not some “stand down, stand back” bs

 

[brackis1]

I bought myself a new Punisher Skull t-shirt. I'll be rocking that bad buy while watching the BBC's live coverage of Civil War 2.0, aka Inauguration Day

#TeamFrankCastle

lollll

https://screenrant.com/marvel-polic...Sq4PLe8ZqLwInfXoF9haanyGpiaXCVQvLClZPxWMx3-mI

Punisher Creator Responds To Police With Black Lives Matter Campaign

Punisher Co-Creator Gerry Conway has created a new charity campaign called "Skulls For Justice" with all proceeds going to Black Lives Matter.

BY LIAM MCGUIREJUN 10, 2020

Punisher co-creator Gerry Conway is fighting back against police use of Marvel's Punisher logo. The comic book legend has unveiled a charity t-shirt campaign, where all profits will be directly donated to Black Lives Matter. Conway announced the project this week with three different shirt designs currently available for sale online.

Bizarrely, some police officers have decided to use the Marvel vigilante’s logo on decals and emblems to show support for Blue Lives Matter. The choice to co-opt the logo makes little sense, as Punisher represents everything you'd think the police would not want to be associated with. He's a stone-cold killer, who doesn't follow the law in order to commit acts of violence. Still, police officers have continued to wear the logo as protests continue in the United States and around the globe. In the comics, even Punisher has expressed frustration about cops using his logo.

 

[Deleted member 539235]

they could do a punisher vs "patriots" storyline, but also one where he busts up a drag queen stripclub pedo ring...

everybody gets to be happy! everybody gets to be outraged!

 

[Beechwood]

Different topic, but saw this morning a sad mention of another cancel culture incident.

Dumped over Trump: Man claims working on president’s campaign cost him dream job

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/man-claims-working-trumps-campaign-cost-him-dream-job

 

[KnightTemplar]

Punisher is a victim of the Taxi Driver syndrome, which is to say that a lot of losers embrace him for all the wrong reasons.

There’s nothing wrong with Frank Castle as a character, you just have to frame him as what he is, a lost soul.

I haven’t watched the Netflix series so I can’t speak to how they characterized him but... there are a lot of knuckleheads out there who think he’s just some unencumbered Narc with a bloodlust. It’s actually really annoying as someone who grew up reading him.

Garth Ennis summed it up perfectly,

"No one really wants to be the Punisher. No one wants to do three tours in a combat zone, the last one going catastrophically wrong, come home with a head full of broken glass, watch their wife and kids get machine-gunned into bloody offal, and spend of the rest of their life locked in a never-ending cycle of bleak, meaningless slaughter.

The cops who wear the Punisher Skull just wanted to pretend to be Bad Ass for a few hours, then go home to their families".

 

[KnightTemplar]

Very true. On a lesser scale the same happened with the Joker in his last movie.

It was hilarious watching people trying to claim the Joker was racist, InCel etc. With one exception, all his victims are white men. We only see him kill one woman; his mother. It's implied he kills a black psychologist at the end of the movie, but the whole point of the movie is that the Joker is a completely unreliable narrator. So we don't even know if he did kill her or if it's just a fantasy.

 

[KnightTemplar]

Oh there's definitely something wrong with Frank Castle. He enjoyed killing long before his family was taken away from him.

In Garth Ennis' seminal run on the comic, it's heavily implied that not only is Frank a high-functioning psychopath, but also the avatar of the Angel of Death himself. As Micro tells him,

"You kill because you like it, Frank. Maybe it was in you all the time, or maybe it was Vietnam. I know all about that Scout-Sniper work in your second tour. I know something happened on your third.

You see, I think some...darkness reached out to you, Frank. And I think you told it...Yes"

 

[flashNsmash]

It was hilarious watching people trying to claim the Joker was racist, InCel etc. With one exception, all his victims are white men. We only see him kill one woman; his mother. It's implied he kills a black psychologist at the end of the movie, but the whole point of the movie is that the Joker is a completely unreliable narrator. So we don't even know if he did kill her or if it's just a fantasy.

not to mention the media-induced 'joker shooter' panic

 

[BlankaPresident]

Born is the pinnacle of Ennis' run with the Punisher, a true masterpiece.

 

[Kforcer]

The Punisher's roots lie in Mack Bolan, aka, The Executioner, the hugely popular men's fantasy line. People who equate The Punisher with Taxi Driver because of spins later writers put on the character are missing the point of what he was created to be; Boland is someone that readers are supposed to like and root for and so too was Frank Castle. They are supposed to, at least to some extent, imagine themselves in the places of Boland or Castle. Gerry Conway literally said that he created The Punisher because he liked The Executioner and wanted to use a similar character in Marvel. He was going to call him The Assassin, but they changed the name because from the get-go, they wanted him to ultimately become a hero and that name didn't seem appropriate to that.

Some earlier Punisher writers that picked up the ball from Conway, like J.M. Dematteis, emphasized Punisher's psychological issues (such as during his 'Trial of the Punisher' storyline in Spiderman), but the fact is that the character was intended from the start to sympathetic, if edgy, and to act as if people are misappropriating him by wearing his logo or relating to him is to misunderstand what the character is supposed to be in the first place.

Gerry Conway went further when he created The Black Spider, who was willing to kill innocents in order to get at the drug dealers he targeted, but The Punisher himself was, from the beginning, intended to be a popular character that sold comics, just like his paperback counterpart and predecessor. If his creators didn't want people to admire him, then they wouldn't have imbued him with the same near-superhuman level of skill that Boland shares with him or kept him from doing truly reprehensible things like the Black Spider. Physically, The Punisher represents the pinnacle of male physical performance and of course, he also does things that many men wish they could do or even want to do. He's not nearly as morally flawed as Homer's Achilles, but look at how many people have admired Achilles down through the ages and attempted to identify with him, despite his flaws. That's an inevitable byproduct of making a character a paragon of physical prowess.

Basically, as great a character as he was, he was created for popular consumption, just like Mack Boland. And I don't think it is fair to get mad at people for identifying with him in some way, wearing merchandise based on him, etc., when that is exactly what his creators wanted people to do.

 

[Kforcer]

When it comes to inherently flawed characters with mental health issues, I think Spiderman, at least in terms of the character's conception, ranks up much higher than The Punisher. Peter Parker's neurotic nature was a core part of his character, full of uncertainties and sometimes falling prey to petty fits of anger. If you look at Amazing Fantasy 15, that's a character that was poised to become an almost entirely selfish individual, but for the death of Uncle Ben giving him a wake up call. And even then, he continued to walk a tight-rope between heroism and nihilism, which was only decisively resolved to some extent in the classic "The Final Chapter."

Frank Castle did evolve beyond his pulp roots with Boland and his mental demons did become a major part of the character, but his origins undeniably lie with the harsh, powerful vigilantes of the pulps, of which Boland and his male fantasy genre counterparts marked a continuation of. And I'm not saying that the pulp magazines didn't feature superb writing and characterizations that ranged from heroic to diabolical and everything in between, because I'm a huge fan of the pulps, but in the case of The Punisher, the character he was lifted from was the best-selling book series in America at the time whose mental health wasn't really depicted as an issue and who, as part of such a huge seller, was definitely supposed to appeal to male readers as much as possible and wasn't even going to carry some of the darker aspects of the pulp heroes that preceded him such as The Spider or The Shadow.

I guess what I'm saying is that, long story short, getting mad at masses of people for like The Punisher is like getting mad at them for liking a Big Mac.

 

[Kandyland]

I usually vote Democrat but liberal pussies really make me hate the party sometimes.

best thing for Marvel to do is to release a scathing statement denouncing the use of the Punisher logo for far right terror activities and not some “stand down, stand back” bs

LOL or they can just sit back and ignore the 5 people on Twitter that "offended" over this. Don't give cancel culture more power by feeding into their bullshit fears.

 

[Denter]

Isnt the punisher an armed vigilante who murders people? I mean, that may be a gray area, but being associated with the Right....well, we must have some standards.

 

[Kforcer]

Isnt the punisher an armed vigilante who murders people? I mean, that may be a gray area, but being associated with the Right....well, we must have some standards.

He also operates in a much more black and white world, populated by supervillains and by organized crime figures that are even more malignant than their real-life counterparts. So within his context, his actions aren't nearly as insane as they'd be in ours. He kills bad-guys that are legitimately bad because they were created as such. He's only killed good-guys in the pages of What If...?.

And actually, when he does run into the odd humane or morally tortured gangster, he usually treats them differently. In his mini-series in the 80's, he talked some gangster's son out of following his father into the life, basically.

 

[Fronk]

They should just cancel Marvel and superheroes in general. Mainly because of the embarrassing fact that grown men enjoy it.

 

[Gregolian]

I'm aware. Some dude from DC was really against Marvel using him because the Punisher kills people.

Figured someone might know more, it seemed interesting. I always felt Marvel had way better characters/writing but I'm sort of new to that medium.

It became a huge issue in an alternate timeline crossover where Punisher kills Joker in front of Batman.

The whole time Batman is trying to do his "if you kill a killer there's still 100 killers in the world" shtick and Frank's response is:
"And how many has he killed and how many more will he kill? You're complicit. And if a killer kills 50 murdering psychopaths then there's only 51 left"


I paraphrase but that line where Frank basically accuses Batman of being responsible for the deaths of the people Joker kills cause Batman can't "pull the trigger" on Joker himself is the line DC lost their shit about.

 

[Gregolian]

In Garth Ennis' seminal run on the comic, it's heavily implied that not only is Frank a high-functioning psychopath, but also the avatar of the Angel of Death himself. As Micro tells him,

"You kill because you like it, Frank. Maybe it was in you all the time, or maybe it was Vietnam. I know all about that Scout-Sniper work in your second tour. I know something happened on your third.

You see, I think some...darkness reached out to you, Frank. And I think you told it...Yes"

They highlight it in season 1 and then fully talk about it in season 2 in conversations with Karen and Frank's hallucination convo with his dead wife.

"Come home Frank"
*keep in mind, Frank is getting basically beaten to death
"I am home"

Then in season 2 with Karen:
"I think, I was always like this and my wife knew, and she loved me anyway. Then when she was killed, the only cork holding back my true self... was gone and I directed this thing inside of me back out at those responsible"


Punisher has been referenced as the Angel of Death and not just by fans of the character but by Marvel's own characters themselves. Pretty sure Blade described him as such and Blade's a pretty ambiguously moral character as well.

 

[Denter]

He also operates in a much more black and white world, populated by supervillains and by organized crime figures that are even more malignant than their real-life counterparts. So within his context, his actions aren't nearly as insane as they'd be in ours. He kills bad-guys that are legitimately bad because they were created as such. He's only killed good-guys in the pages of What If...?.

And actually, when he does run into the odd humane or morally tortured gangster, he usually treats them differently. In his mini-series in the 80's, he talked some gangster's son out of following his father into the life, basically.

Right, the Punisher himself is an expression of that kind of vigilante fantasy where the corrupt keep letting the bad guys get away with it. The Punisher is, after all, a hero, if a flawed one. It's a very cool story and interesting character, but I can see why they'd be worried about the Punisher narrative now.

 

[Gregolian]

Right, the Punisher himself is an expression of that kind of vigilante fantasy where the corrupt keep letting the bad guys get away with it. The Punisher is, after all, a hero, if a flawed one. It's a very cool story and interesting character, but I can see why they'd be worried about the Punisher narrative now.

I don't think Disney is worried at all. The damn logo has been used by righty dipshits (and keep in mind I lean right) who hide in the woods claiming to be Sovereign Citizens for years. Punisher, for such a violent and dark "hero" in the world sells a ton of merchandise. I'm not sure of the copyright/trademark on the iconic skull but the amount of firearm stuff you can buy witht that skull or the Mandalorian Mythosaur skull on it is stupid levels high. I would wager the more above board brands like Spikes Tactical and others that are more mainstreamly known have to pay something to Disney in order to use those.

The only issue this brings up is if Disney makes a show with Frank and he isn't just a one off or every now and then appearance in Daredevil and Moonknight (given Murdock is showing up in the new SpiderMan with Charlie Cox reprising the role you know Disney is going to use the character) is they might force Frank's opponent for a season or movie to always be an extreme righty. Like the Slavers arc from Garth Ennis run, Castle is killing human traffickers out of like Belarus and other former Soviet satellite nations and I am pretty sure he blows up a brothel or two in like the UAE or some other stand in fake Arab nation that looks like Dubai. That might change to be rich white elites in the US or something.

I just hope if they use the Slavers arc, they let Frank do what he does in the comics.... murk motherfuckers no hesitation.

 

[Kforcer]

Right, the Punisher himself is an expression of that kind of vigilante fantasy where the corrupt keep letting the bad guys get away with it. The Punisher is, after all, a hero, if a flawed one. It's a very cool story and interesting character, but I can see why they'd be worried about the Punisher narrative now.

I guess that is sort of the other side of the coin when it comes to taking comic-books, pulps and men's fantasy novels as serious works of literature that accurately capture the human condition. Taking the characters seriously invites people, on some level, to identify with them in a more literal fashion than they would with characters they acknowledge as existing only in a fantasy world.

And I say that as someone who loves comic-books and grew up reading them from a very young age. I actually think that the great comic creators are indeed, great and so to are the characters, but the more you remove them from their traditional conventions and attempt to place them in the real world, the less they become symbolic and allegorical and the more they inherently ask their characters and their rationales to be taken seriously. It gets weird though, because with a lot of modern comic-books and comic movies, you want people to take the rationales and principles of the characters seriously, but they still exist in the comic-book world with different consequences and different mechanics.

Like with the Nolan Batman trilogy, it almost seems to be making the argument that people, or at least some people, ought to actually behave the way Batman does in those movies, whereas in the case of the classic comic-books, I never got that feeling. The writing and characterizations were often great, but because of the conventions and the clear fantastical context, you never took his behavior as something anyone should literally try to ape, except in terms of trying to be a good person, etc.

I don't know. It's all a sort of weird, fine line.