The Punisher: Is there a place for Frank Castle in a violent world?

Should one of Marvel’s darkest heroes, The Punisher, have a place at the table?

After a string of hit-and-(mostly)-miss movies, the Punisher, one of Marvel’s darkest and most violent anti-heroes, is back in the spotlight, guns blazing, thanks to Jon Bernthal’s strong performance on the hit television series Daredevil. On the back of that generally positive reception, Marvel has Bernthal donning the iconic skull shirt again, this time in a stand-alone series that released just this month.

While the show has proven popular, it’s not without its detractors, with several outspoken critics deriding the show as insensitive and out-of-touch considering the main character’s excessive brutality when juxtaposed with the recent climate of violence in the United States, an atmosphere that has seen gun control and mass shootings become hot-button topics of national debate. Causing some, like Allie Gemmill and Graeme McMillian, to lament the show’s release or boycott it entirely.

Which bring to the forefront the question: what is the social responsibility of comic books and comic book characters? Have these constructs of ink and thought bubbles, once relegated to second-tier status, literarily speaking, grown in popularity to the point that they hold enough cultural influence to support guilt and blame? And if so, what is the responsibility of that influence?

The Punisher is, of course, no stranger to controversy. He emerged in the 70’s, an antagonist to lovable everyman Spiderman. Even in this original guise, the Punisher is a tortured villain, caught between honor and duty, violence and civility, and it’s this contradiction (an unexpected complexity in an era of simple comics) that led readers to fall in love with the character, leading the bearer of the white skull to appear again and again, teaming up with various heroes, a dark foil to their untarnished light.

It was during the 80’s, however, during the Dark Age of comics, when superheroes were being unmasked and deconstructed, that Punisher really found his footing. There, sandwiched between the births of Dark Horse and Valiant Comics, and the rise and fall of Image’s iconic Spawn, amid such brutal events as the death of Superman and the breaking of Batman’s back, Punisher and his bleak form of justice flourished along with his fellow gritty anti-heroes–Wolverine, Hellboy, Judge Dredd, and Venom.

It has been said that during hard times people prefer light fare, and during the robust periods we want our entertainment heavy. Well, during the prosperous, trickle-down days of the late 80’s and early 90’s, we wanted our heroes with some real substance, to reflect the weighty truth we knew lurked behind the perfect, polished veneer of the new Commercial Age. Comics, while yet to come into the mainstream like they have now, were suddenly getting attention within intellectual circles, were becoming seen as “edgy” and “rebellious,” something previously unimagined in the squeaky clean heydays of Superman and Captain America, who, armed with their unbending, uncompromising morality, perfect teeth and ready smiles, represented a black and white world that seemed ever more archaic and quaint.

More from Opinion

We wanted truth instead of comfort. We wanted to know why heroes never bled. We wanted to know what would happen if Batman simply killed the Joker. What would happen if, in the face of his arch-enemy’s unavoidable escape and inevitable future crimes, the Caped Crusader chose to tarnish his own conscience to prevent the death of thousands. The inquiry was logical if troubling, and at the time it seemed we had no recourse but to follow the thread.

The Punisher, and those like him, answered that question as emphatically as they were able. They answered it again and again. Until we were sick of hearing it. Until we couldn’t stand to hear it anymore. Until the newness and shock value wore off, and the fat, easy times started to look lean once more, and caught in changing world with fewer certainties, we suddenly wanted our heroes to act like heroes again.

Now, here we are.

The explosion of mainstream superhero popularity, above and beyond anything we could have expected in that Dark Age, has brought the genre into the spotlight as a true force in American culture. Not a niche obsession to be explored and obsessed over by a small, devoted few, but a national phenomenon that has put superheroes on the cover of TV Guide, atop the box office, and on t-shirts sold at every major American superstore.

Having exhausted the traditional heroes–the shiny, easy to package ones–studio executives and producers are now digging deep, scrambling to find more properties and new heroes. Inevitably, the Dark Age heroes are being pulled out of their forgotten boxes. But unlike Spiderman or Superman, or even the aggressive Hulk or brooding Batman, these heroes cannot simply be sanitized and updated for the times. Their issues are intrinsic, essential. Necessary even. Without their violent, unsettling flaws they aren’t characters at all.

Heroes like the Punisher were forged with their questions ingrained in them. Is this man a hero? Should he be? When is justice justified? There is no Punisher without violence, without rage and revenge. Without guns. You do not add the Punisher to a story, you unleash him.

How then can we unleash such a character on a society that already has more than enough violence?

Simply put, because comics aren’t only about entertainment, about making the reader (or the viewer, in the case of shows or movies) feel better. They’re also about making the reader uncomfortable, about making them think. A good comic, or book or movie, is one that ends with the reader looking over at the person next to them and asking, “Hey, what do you think about this?” Because stories don’t exist in a vacuum.; they’re meant to be shared.

The Punisher has always been this type of comic. No Frank Castle story has ever facilitated a warm fuzzy feeling. That’s not his role in the Marvel Universe. Instead, the Punisher asks hard questions. He exists to resemble that angry part of you–of your neighbor, of the thousands of nameless people in impregnable, unknowable houses–that scares you a little, that doesn’t know when, or how, to stop. He exists to worry you, to make you root for him, despite yourself, even as your stomach turns.

The Punisher is a cautionary tale, a tragic one, and I, for one, still think there’s a place for that in a fictional universe where Thor and Hulk have a galactic road trip and Star-Lord loves 70’s jams. In a space this big, there is room for light and dark, and even something a little in between–something uncomfortably gray.

Superheroes are no longer merely the fluffy bits of cheer that once delighted children and disinterested clear-headed adults. Nor are they the serious, drool ultra-violent tales that delighted the grim-minded elite of the early 90’s and no one else. Like any true entertainment, any art, they no longer have a proscribed identify. They have outgrown their previous role.

Superheroes are now a part of the American psyche. They have the power to bring joy or the power to spread fear, the capability to uplift and terrify in equal measure. More importantly, they have the capacity to encourage conversation, to foster learning and understanding.

The Punisher wasn’t created to prompt gun violence anymore than Spiderman was created to promote swinging on ropes. He was created to ask a question: what if our heroes were different? Would they still be heroes? Would we want them to be? Set against a world where real life vigilantes break our hearts weekly, and men are capable of violence to rival anything we’ve seen on the page, that question may not be easy, it doesn’t mean it isn’t vital.

Next: 50 greatest super heroes in comic book history

Good entertainment distracts us from our lives. Good art brings our attention to the important aspects. The Punisher has always been as much the latter as the former, and to disagree with some of the critical assessments, there couldn’t be a better, or more relevant, time for him to step into the national spotlight.

Where does the Punisher belong? Right at the center of the controversy, right where he’s always been. Where he was meant to be.

Home/Opinion