Vaya Con Dios, Castle

Maybe it always had to end this way.

When I was a kid up until my late twenties, I actually really liked the Punisher. At his core, he's more or less a serial murderer, so that probably seems an odd statement. Of criminals, sure, and usually of the worst variety, not often some schmo who holds up the local 7-11, but still a wonton murderer whose general solution to problems is "shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more and then when everyone is dead, double tap the bodies to be sure". But as a fictional character he offered a catharsis of sorts, a fantasy even to those who didn't much care for the idea of guns or violence in real life. Frank Castle was the guy who took out the untouchable, the corrupt. He spoke to a part of most of us that occasionally comes out deep in the recesses of our mind and soul, the part that wonders, just for a minute, what it would be like if the most rotten people in the world got what was coming to them.

Even today, well, take a look around and you might see how that could be appealing. Billionaires who flaunt their wealth and make life harder for all of us. Arrogant assholes who buy up the things we like and erode what made them special before our eyes because they don't have to listen to us. Businessmen who grind the working class to dust, leave everyone struggling to live, paying rent that's tripled over a long stretch of time while wages stayed flat. Shadowy figures who subvert truth, buy up forms of media for the sole purpose of controlling the narrative, controlling us. Politicians who actively subvert the will of the people and do everything in their power to stop us from sending them packing.

Suddenly, the idea of a guy who goes and takes out the people actively making life worse doesn't sound so bad, for fiction. It scratches an itch, one you know can never really be. Fantasy.

Unfortunately, it turns out he's also appealing to some of the worst people you can imagine, the kind who prefer it not be a fantasy, whose targets are quite different. You know the sort of people I'm talking about. Corrupt cops, neo nazis, far right wingers who think the best option to being outnumbered and fading in relevance is to shoot everyone they don't like and be done with it. Never mind the fact that the Punisher has, on numerous occasions, killed corrupt cops by the precinct full. Never mind he'd probably love to kill some Nazis. Co-option of figures and symbols doesn't rely on the truth. It relies on warping that until what you insist upon becomes the truth.

It's not super surprising the Punisher could have ended up a target for co-option by the right. He's a creation of the eighties, born out of a mold of vigilante hero with their own roots in political fallout of the time. Frank Castle has a lot in common with numerous protagonists played by Clint Eastwood, including but not limited to Dirty Harry. He comes from the same primordial ooze that spawned Paul Kersey, Charles Bronsons character from 1970's schlock film Death Wish. They come from a time period of right wing anxiety of the "softening" of police, that the cops just couldn't get the job done anymore so it was up to real men to take the law into their own hands and get some real killing done. All because cops got caught doing things they shouldn't and had to abide by some rules.

Middle America's easily scared and pretty easy to fool, history seems to show.

With all that in mind, suddenly it makes a lot more sense that the more violent of us might decide to take the symbol of the Punisher, the skull, and crowd around it. None of them have ever read a comic, I'm sure. The few that have probably aren't great at reading comprehension, or maybe they're willfully twisting it. But the character serves their purposes. Especially the cops. 

Little more than jack booted thugs these days, if the police were ever anything else, they struggle with a populace who has become increasingly aware of their crimes, of the human rights violations and abuses they used to get away with regularly. The times changes, technology caught up and we all became a bit more aware. So the people trained to react to any threat with lethal force growled back. The skull is a warning. Don't fuck with me because I'm the one with the power here and I'll take you out if need be. They do it, too. Take a look at the news headlines today, you'll probably find something about another black kid murdered for existing while black. It is, after all, a day ending in the letter y.

As this all happened, it was easy to see the Punisher losing any real relevance to any well adjusted person. I threw away my Punisher shirts around when the Fox News talking head of the time started wearing a Punisher skull pin. I didn't feel comfortable wearing them outside. Rather than a cool symbol from a comic I liked, it became tied up in things I didn't agree with, with death and murder and people who would prefer minorities stop existing. I still have my old Punisher comics in a box somewhere, but I'm not sure I'll ever read them again. It's hard to square away stories I enjoyed with the effect the character has had.

Disney, of course, noticed. This hadn't been as much of an issue back in 2009, when they purchased Marvel Comics. But you could tell they got incredibly nervous around when the skull started being associated with proto-facists, moreso when those same people dropped the proto. Merch for the character started dwindling, comics starring the character, once plentiful, started slowing to a trickle. Creative direction for the character visibly seemed to shift, showing a company increasingly uncomfortable with the character they owned.

If you hadn't noticed all that, the unease was made plain within the pages of the thirteenth issue of the then current volume of his ongoing, back in 2019. The character, accosted by adoring cops, came face to face with a representation of his real life influence and didn't like what he saw. A meta blend of reality and fiction, making what had happened in the real world part of said fiction in order to force him to deal with it in some way. The confrontation saw him tear the skull decal off their car, rip it to shreds, and blatantly threaten them in a way you'd expect from Frank Castle. "If you want a role model, Captain America would be happy to have you. If I catch you doing what I do, I'll come for you next."

A game attempt. But it didn't do a whole lot. How could it, really? Comics are, these days, a niche hobby. Certainly not one most of the cops proudly displaying the skull have ever been into, so they were unlikely to encounter the message. Even if they did, they'd likely refuse to absorb it.

So what to do? It's an issue for Disney, for sure. Famously considered a family friendly company, they never much like anything that could tarnish their brand. It's why they often don't do much with any R-rated properties they acquire when they decide to buy up the competition. They don't care about social issues so much as how much it affects their bottom line. It's the root of their current-as-of-writing spat with Floridas sentient turd of a Governor, Ron DeSantis. They make a lot of money off LGBTQ in numerous fashions while Ron is a fascist who would love to wipe them off the face of the Earth. If LGBTQ acceptance hadn't reached where it has socially, I guarantee you Disney would not have given two shits about all of the anti-gay bills that passed through Florida legislature.

Really, there were only two options. They could make like Matt Furie, creator of Pepe the Frog, whose dismay at the far right co-opting his creation led him on a crusade against those types wherever possible. There's merit in the approach. After all, the Punisher made money and a corporation cares for little other than their bottom line. Disney's famously litigious as it is. But culturally, there's little chance of ever wrenching the character back from the mud the fascists had dragged him through.

So that leaves the second option. Tear it down and salt the Earth. Be done with it.

Marvel seemed to settle on the latter. It started with a trademark for a new symbol. The famous skull was going away. Then they hired Jason Aaron, a well known Punisher scribe, for a new direction. Suddenly, he was involved in the Hand and falling down a path he couldn't come back from. One where it seemed like death was probably the end game.

It wouldn't be the first time Jason Aaron had killed a version of the character. He'd once been the one chosen to follow Garth Ennis and close out the Punisher MAX version of the character. That series ended the only way the Punishers story ever really could, with him succumbing to his injuries, to the war, after a brutal confrontation with the Kingpin. If anyone was going to do it a second time, it would probably be him.

The run broke down the war, the modus operendi, in a very real way. The Punisher had, from the aughts on, occasionally played with the idea that the loss of Franks family was nothing but an excuse for his war. Maybe he did love them but he'd turned their memory into something terrible. This was the thesis statement of Ennis first arc of MAX, delivered by former comrade Microchip, and the series dabbled in it ever since. The most recent run just made it explicit, going so far as to resurrect Frank Castles wife just to have her come face to face with what her husband had done in her name.

In the 80's, the reaction would probably have been one of justification. Given the way Death Wish was written, the way it takes Paul Kerseys side, would it have been strange if his wife and daughter had approved of his actions? For a movie back then, written as it was, probably not. Probably the same for Frank Castle in the 80's. But times change, sensibilities change and the characters have to change with them. Marvel characters are, after all, forever un-aging. They use a sliding timescale to keep things current. When you slide the time, the context of a characters life will change with the new environment their past slid into. For example, Frank Castle, known for most of his history as a Vietnam veteran, is suddenly a veteran of the Gulf War.

In more modern times, when we look at things like the Punisher with a more critical eye, when those old low rent films are derided and picked apart, wouldn't it make sense for his wife to be horrified by the mass murder made in her name? Doesn't it make sense that the darkness was always in Franks heart, that she saw it and was about to ask for divorce before a freak happening saw her gunned down? What does it look like when someone finds that their family name is now associated with the most successful serial killer in human history?

So she shoots him.

He didn't die, in the end. Comic book shenanigans happen and Frank is saved from death. It wouldn't have guaranteed permanence if he had died anyway. Wouldn't have been the first time Frank Castle died in main continuity, after all, or even the second. Remember Angel Punisher? But it left him at the mercy of its coda, where his peers and his soon to be ex wife broke down his ethos, his way of life, his war. It feels like something of a breakdown of the very concept, intending to put a bow on it. He's shunted off to another dimension, far away from the main Marvel universe, where he's shown protecting a group of orphans in a weird land. Even if Frank Castle lives, the intent seems to be that maybe the concept of the Punisher cannot. Much like when the Samuel L Jackson version of Nick Fury became the mainline Nick Fury, with the old version shunted off into limbo. He doesn't have a place anymore.

Nothing stops them, of course, from reversing course later. This is fiction, after all, and if things died down enough that Disney and Marvel thought they could get some money out of bringing the character back to the old status quo without getting raked over the coals for it you can bet your last dime they'll do it. But for now, it feels like a sendoff, like a last look at a character, at a concept, that just doesn't work in the modern day, divorced from the era when it seemed less horrifying, when real life hadn't taken inspiration. The character outlived his usefulness and his relevance, becoming something pop culturally that he'd never been in the text of his stories. 

It makes sense that could happen. That's one of the tools of the fascist, one of their favorites even. Sometimes you can't stop them from co-opting things, you can only let go and move on.

Maybe it always had to end this way.