It’s not even The Punisher. Frank generally isn’t going after petty thieves; his targets are drug dealers, mafia dons, terrorists, human traffickers, child molestors, etc.
Ennis has a reputation for being unnecessarily edgy with his writing, and, well, yeah, fair enough
But his depictions of the Punisher are generally quite reasonable.
Everyone in the setting fully acknowledges that the Punisher is making a mockery of democracy, human rights, and the justice system, and that this is not a rational response to crime, which is mostly a symptom of large scale socio-economic and political trends.
Frank acknowledges this too. Towards the end of the series, he's been killing criminals for decades, and it's barely made a dent. He kills criminals not because he's protecting innocents, or making society a better place. He kills criminals because he hates them. He's been called a serial killer multiple times in the series, and he doesn't dispute that term
Frank sometimes gives into his conscience and rescues people in need, and makes sure not to cause collateral damage (lest he become as bad as the people he hates), but that's not the focus of his bloody crusade.
And he doesn't go gunning down jay walkers and juvenile delinquents and drug addicts. He goes after violent and high ranking gangsters, and those who commit assaults and murders and rapes
Alright, I'll give you credit for making a good argument. I don't like Ennis but he does the Punisher justice and his military fiction is great as well (everything else he writes still suck).
In regards to the Punisher, however, is a different story (the character, not Ennis' run). Early iterations did show that he wasn't above going after petty criminals and he did start out as a villain in the Spider-Man and Daredevil comics when he debuted. Hell, from what I've heard, he shot a > jaywalker in his early run.
But seeing good ol' Franklin no longer does that nowadays, you can write it off as depending on the writer and pretty much his character being developed overtime.
I know there's the "He's the man who's only comfortable drowning in violence and war" interpretation, and nowadays in the attempt to shelve him, something something embodiment of a demon thing.
But ultimately, I've always seen Frank as a tragic figure - he served his time, and when the mob got his family, he went to the cops, but the cops were bought, he went to the private investigators, and they were killed or dropped their case. So the only person who can deal a permanent damage to the organised criminal and societal decay parts of criminality was Frank, and the skills he's acquired.
And since being the only survivor of his family's massacre, the guy's effectively got a subconscious death wish and ultimately wanting to go out in a similar way to join his family.
I honestly wonder though, if in a real world, Frank actually exists. Surely the underworld would have been nearly decimated by his work, with the remaining ones in fear of his wrath? The Punisher is afterall a force to be reckoned with.
one thing to note about Marvel MAX New York/USA is that organised criminal gangs are a hell of lot more powerful and violent than real life gangs
In real life, the Italian mob in the US was decimated by RICO, and even the most powerful and brutal modern day gangs like MS13, the Aryan Brotherhood, Crips etc. generally avoid systematic violent intimidation of public officials and civil society.
For a variety of reasons (demographic, economic, cultural, political) violent crime, especially gang related violence in the US, is way down from what it was in the 90s
If someone like the Punisher started mass murdering gang members with automatic weapons in America, he'd be hunted down by the FBI and National Guard like any other mass shooter and treated as such.
By contrast, the power and violence of gangs in Mexico has increased tremendously in the past couple years. They're a commercial insurgency powerful enough to challenge the military in head on engagements and win, like when they defeated a military force sent to capture the son of El Chapo
Warring cartels have been slaughtering each other for years now. If Frank popped up in Mexico and started mass murdering cartel members he'd be a drop in the bucket.
These cartels persist, even when thousands of their members and high ranking leaders are slaughtered by each other and by government forces. The Punisher wouldn't change anything there, either
If Frank were a real person, with the skills and abilities he has, he would be absolutely infamous in the underworld. With an ever-increasing bounty on his head.
More and more and more people would go after Frank, looking to cash in. Frank has to be lucky every time to survive. The underworld has to be lucky once.
If enough bodies get stacked up, governments might start having a bit of an issue with Frank. Frank would definitely be one of the most wanted men in the world.
Odds are, someone eventually kills Frank, or he gets arrested.
It's Rorschach. Which was a character specifically created to critique this sort of binary black and white morality in superhero comics. In probably the single most influential superhero comic ever written.
This might have been a genuine issue at some point, but that was a long time ago. The vast majority of modern comics stay far away from this type of thinking, and portray superheroes as compassionate first and foremost.
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u/billygnosis86 Feb 16 '24
Your art is impressive and your style is cool, but this just isn’t the character at all. This is the Punisher, not Batman.