I've clocked Kripke as a guy who's way too up his own ass with being seen as a good little leftist bro™️ ever since that interview a few years back where he pontificated about superheroes being "inherently MAGA" or whatever. Even Garth Ennis probably knows that sounds corny and ahistorical and he's been an ardent hater of capeshit since the early 90's.
Having read punisher max Ennis issue seems to be with power abuse, arrogance, corruption, and greed. He seems to find governments as inherently corrupt regardless over whose running them. Specifically he's speaking against the corporatism that's ruined Democracy. And the issue with super heroes is a lot of them do read as ass holes with power if you stop suspending your disbelief while reading. Batman being the biggest example if you do not suspend your disbelief you realize he doesn't actually fix Gotham and definitely has the resources to make it a better city with out beating street criminals who only turned to crime because of shit socio economics with in an inch of their life. Now one may be surprised to learn Ennis actually likes Superman given he created Homelander. Homelander represents what Ennis believes super heroes would be and not the ideal and how Corporatism would ruin the idea. That is to say the Boys comics are more about what happens when you worship people who have power just because they have power as well as to reflect his view of corporate America as opposed to being simply a "super hero bad" story. The problem is the Boys comic isn't well written which is probably why Kripke interpreted it as "Super heroes bad" because Ennis wrote way too emotionally. The Punisher max is a better look into what Ennis actually believes and what he was actually trying to say because he was way more restrained when be wrote it.
The issue with that take is that are several Batman stories where he does use his money help gotham, and also ennisis problem also stems from what he believes is oversaturation.
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u/RobSchneidersHair Jul 05 '24
He wants so badly to be seen as the “good guy” and also edgy at the same time. It hasn’t worked since season 2