The Four Color Media Monitor

The Conversation published another negative take on Marvel's most notable vigilante without superpowers, Frank Castle. And it begins with anti-police propaganda:

In Travis Linnemann’s book The Horror Of Police, he quotes David Grossman, founder of the “bulletproof warrior” seminar series, notorious for teaching police that killing is “just not that big of a deal.”

At the end of a long day, Grossman says, police should “look out on your city and let your cape blow in the wind”.

This suggests police should see themselves as superheroes. In reality, they seem drawn to one superhero in particular: the classic Marvel comics character, the Punisher.

Let us be clear. Of course being a law enforcer doesn't make you a saint. There's plenty of police officials in the western world who committed offensive crimes themselves. But this seems to downplay - or throughly obscure - the seriousness of the violent criminals the police are supposed to be on the lookout for, and that's disturbing. As is the following attack on police officials who wore skull symbols similar to the Punisher:

It’s a skull that a group of rogue officers in Milwaukee wore while on patrol in 2011. They were characterised as "brutal and abusive” by a police academy supervisor. In 2017, the logo was added to police cruisers in Lexington, Kentucky – morphed together with a Blue Lives Matter flag – and only removed after public outcry.

A Chicago officer wore a Punisher skull in 2019 while pointing his weapon at teenagers, and police wearing the same skull were spotted at the crackdowns after George Floyd’s death in 2020.

Before you think this is limited to America, the skull has appeared on an Australian police car, too.

And that's a problem why? It's sad how they obscure the violent criminal record of Floyd in this article along with various other incidents involving violent crime, all for the sake of tearing down on a comics creation whose approach to crimefighting was no different from what Wolverine could be seen doing at times in his own solo adventures. Of course, there can be no doubt that, if police wore symbols similar to what the X-Men's prominent member also wore, the MSM would rip down on Logan as well. Ironically, the Conversation's writer was willing to acknowledge the origin given to the Punisher decades before:

What makes the Punisher so appealing to these police? Created by writer Gerry Conway and artists John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru, the Punisher first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #129 in 1974. He was the gun-toting, ex-soldier Frank Castle, determined to wipe out crime with deadly force after his family were murdered in front of him.

While initially an antagonist, it wasn’t long before he graduated to anti-hero. By 1986 he starred in his own Marvel miniseries, by the late ‘80s he was popular enough to have multiple ongoing comic books at once.

This included ten issues of The Punisher Armory, one of the strangest series Marvel has ever published: just page after page of flat, technical drawings of weapons. As Professor of Political Science Kent Worcester wrote in Law Text Review:

It is difficult to think of another comic book figure, in any universe, that could inspire such a relentless, militaristic, and fetishistic series.

Umm, what about Wolverine, again? He's depicted slashing away with his claws in past renditions, debuted just several months after Frank Castle did, and nobody thinks he's an issue? Well, give these SJWs time, and I'm sure Logan will be targeted next. And all this from the kind of people who likely don't have an issue with Hollywood's romanticization of violence. That's why this is so hypocritical, and even if they ostensibly panned movies based on villains like the Joker (and even Lobo, which might be adapted to film next), the way they retain such a bizarre double-standard on violent movies that do more to trivialize violence than make a case against it why this whole PC argument falls flat. Also annoying is how they downplay the seriousness of Frank's family being violently murdered, and make it sound like Punisher was depicted making no distinctions between murderous/sexually violent criminals and mere petty thieves. I think there was a story in the books published during 1987-97 where Frank let some shoplifters off the hook; doesn't that count as an example where he doesn't kill minor felons? Also funny how they obscure that, IIRC, Frank debuted targeting Spider-Man over suspicions he'd been responsible for the death of Norman Osborn (whose Green Goblin costume may have been removed by Harry Osborn, so nobody would know for certain his father had been a costumed criminal). That's not exactly portraying Frank as an "antagonist" in the genuine sense. When determining Spidey was innocent, their relations improved. Predictably, these MSM sources won't get anything straight.

A Marvel editor, Stephen Wacker, once noted the Punisher had killed around 48,502 people since his first appearance. Compare that to Batman, who refuses to kill – much to the annoyance of some fans. According to critic Glen Weldon, this is more than a moral decision. It’s also a “deliberate storytelling choice: it would be easy to mow down a roomful of bad guys with an uzi”.

We honestly don't need to hear a SJW like Weldon droning on and on. After all, he's somebody who supports the left's hijack of comicdom for the sake of LGBT propaganda. By the way, if memory serves, the Incredible Hulk was portrayed killing at least a few people up to the turn of the century, and so was Daredevil, so what's the point? Oh, and how interesting they claim "some" Bat-fans are unhappy the Masked Manhunter in contrast doesn't kill criminals. That runs the gamut of villifying even certain portions of fandom, which has become common and sad staple among many MSM writers over the past decade. And then, look what else the columnist employs to justify his positions:

A recent Punisher series suggests it wasn’t his family’s deaths that created the Punisher. It shows teenage Frank as a pathetic loser in grimy flashbacks, sulking in a Captain America mask. Instead of allowing him to become “braver and bolder”, we see Frank was always prone to fits of extreme violence.

In this version, the Punisher didn’t begin as a “bulletproof warrior”. He was a disturbed child – more Dexter Morgan than Dirty Harry.

This is appalling, but not unexpected at all. Instead of depicting Frank as a guy who, while not a saint, was still motivated by a horrible tragedy, they retcon him into an unlikable, dismaying personality. "Suggests" is no excuse either. But, as anybody recognizing this is a fictional character in focus knows, the Punisher perished as a storytelling vessel long ago, and these newer renditions are just a pale shadow of past renditions. There's no need to waste money on the newer, PC portrayals of a guy who was originally depicted as a Vietnam vet, an origin which became dated later on, and needed to use fictionalized war stories in order to make more sense (which reminds me that the fictional Asian country of Madripoor might later have been established as a way to get around the previous difficulty of using real life settings). It's a shame comics franchises like Marvel/DC couldn't have been allowed to end 2 decades ago, and then we wouldn't have to see most of these embarrassments now occurring under PC advocates.

Labels: bad editors, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, Punisher, violence