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My friend at the shop keeps calling the Punisher a hero, and it's driving me nuts
He was showing me his new Punisher figure yesterday and said 'this guy gets it, he just cleans up the streets.' I had to point out that Frank Castle is a broken man who kills people, not a role model (the comics make that pretty clear). It matters because it changes how you see the whole story, you know? Has anyone else had to correct a friend on a character's whole deal?
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the_anthony1mo ago
Honestly, I was right there with your friend for a long time. I thought the Punisher was just a cool, tough guy taking out the trash. Then I read the story where he goes after a guy for selling fake medicine, but the guy's family was starving and he was desperate. Frank didn't care about any of that. He just saw a rule broken and put a bullet in the guy's head. That's when it clicked for me. He's not fixing anything, he's just adding more bodies to the pile because he's too broken to stop.
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elliot_johnson311mo ago
Yeah, the "cleans up the streets" line is the exact thing. I just asked my buddy who said that if he'd want to live next door to the Punisher. That got him quiet. Then I mentioned the scene where Frank almost kills a kid for stealing. That's not a hero, that's a warning.
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the_elliot1mo ago
Oh, come on now. I gotta push back on this one. I think your buddy @elliot_johnson31 was onto something before you talked him out of it. The whole point of the Punisher is that he's not for polite society. He's not supposed to live next door to you. He exists because the system fails people, and sometimes justice just doesn't happen in a courtroom. Yeah, Frank almost killed that kid, but that's exactly the point - he's a broken man in a broken world, and he's not trying to be your pal. The fantasy isn't that he's a good neighbor, it's that he's the last resort for the worst people imaginable. You don't have to like him to see why people latch onto the idea.
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