"You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America"
June 5, 2020 9:20 PM   Subscribe

 
And by "reckons," we mean "issues cease-and-desist notices, and donates $5 million to support nonprofit organizations that advance social justice, beginning with a $2 million donation to the NAACP."

It's not nothing, but it's not much. Look at how much Marvel pulls in for movies in the MCU. When a single movie pulls in almost $3 BILLION worldwide, $5 million seems kind of small.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:48 PM on June 5, 2020 [23 favorites]


The cops put that shit on themselves do so completely unaware that they would be first in line to feel Frank Castle’s wrath.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:54 PM on June 5, 2020 [26 favorites]


every time i see that punisher skull, i am reminded of a graphic someone made where they re-imagined what the owner of that skull looked like when he was alive.
posted by mulligan at 9:57 PM on June 5, 2020 [22 favorites]


I wish Marvel would reissue Punisher but with the protagonist as a mixed race anti-fascist trans person. Only they use the exact same punisher logo that all these douche bags have on their trucks.
posted by nestor_makhno at 10:37 PM on June 5, 2020 [81 favorites]


Something of an “about face“ for Marvel, you say?
posted by apathy at 10:59 PM on June 5, 2020 [7 favorites]


I have seen "Pride rainbow Punisher skull" which I'm not sure how the appropriation math plays out.
posted by away for regrooving at 11:15 PM on June 5, 2020 [2 favorites]


This Punisher logo tells the world that I'm kind and approachable, and I'm deadly serious when it comes time to dispense some hard-core justice empathy.
posted by zaixfeep at 12:10 AM on June 6, 2020 [8 favorites]


It's like all the right-wing politicians who completely miss the point of songs like "Born in the USA" and "Okie from Muskogee."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:10 AM on June 6, 2020 [24 favorites]


The article is more about Marvel not reckoning with squat. They are dodging the issue totally.

As far as imagery goes, the only skull-wearing comics character I support is Danae from Non Sequitur.
posted by mark k at 12:23 AM on June 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


This one, mulligan?
posted by Cogito at 12:28 AM on June 6, 2020 [10 favorites]


As a reminder, the Punisher skull logo itself was inspired by similar imagery of the totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones used by military forces in the German Empire and, most infamously, the Nazi SS, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Jesus Christ.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:38 AM on June 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


The totenkopf, ie punisher skull analogue, is what triggered the "Are we the baddies?" moment in the famous skit. Apparently for too many cops the answer is "hell yes, and it's sweet!".
posted by Justinian at 12:58 AM on June 6, 2020 [30 favorites]


Frank Castle is, was and will continue to be out of his gourd with grief, especially when he realizes it’s his closest friends and colleagues trying to kill him while he grieves. He has no recourse, no ally, just honor and his family dead because of it. He’s literally past the thin blue line, and a monster he became. Corrupt cops wearing the Punisher’s totenkoph are singling themselves out for Frank’s special sort of therapy. Fools.
posted by Slap*Happy at 1:02 AM on June 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


Nah, at this stage he's just a guy who likes killing people.
posted by biffa at 1:18 AM on June 6, 2020 [8 favorites]


I don't get the "re-emerges" framing. That damned skull has long been a favorite motif for damned near every alt-right, open-carrying, coal-roller in my neck of the woods. It's all about the unflinching, violent vigilantism, of which they see themselves as the rightful distributors.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:41 AM on June 6, 2020 [23 favorites]


"Okie from Muskogee."

To be honest, Haggard seems to have walked back, rather than clarified, his intention in respect of that song. Which is bullshit. He knows how it is taken bigots who pay to hear him play it, because it's how he meant it. The fact that he doesn't mean it anymore isn't a reason to sing it with a different attitude, it's a reason to stop singing it entirely. If you can't make money without offering comfort to bigots, "inadvertently" or not, then you get a different job.

And Justinian is bang on: these people like being the baddies. Just like a lot of SS members liked being the baddies. A lot of people, probably most people, have the capability to enjoy and celebrate cruelty and authoritarian power. Our moral instincts are not simply inherent or learned, they're also substantially chosen, largely on the basis of whether we believe they will earn us respect among our peers. Most of us experience unpopularity and social disgrace as an existential threat, because in sophisticated and highly socially interdependent societies (both human and animal), that's precisely what such loss of status it is. Which is why, with all its drawbacks and dangers, public shaming is (and always has been) such a powerful tool for maintaining or changing social attitudes and hierarchies. That's not a reason to use it indiscriminately, but it is definitely a reason to use it. Making people scared that being the "baddies" will lead to a loss of status is indispensable to making it unappealing to choose that moral outlook.
posted by howfar at 2:54 AM on June 6, 2020 [21 favorites]


Capitalist corporation does the absolute minimum it possibly could. News at 11.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 5:17 AM on June 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter is a close personal friend of Donald Trump and used that association to get himself, with zero credentials or qualifications, put in charge of veterans' affairs. He's completely fine with the Punisher Skull being the icon of the subjugators.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:38 AM on June 6, 2020 [39 favorites]


Couple of things about the Punisher:

- He first came on the scene back in the 70s as a more-or-less direct ripoff of Charles Bronson's character from Death Wish, a former cop who said fuck you to due process and Miranda rights and whatnot. He wasn't as popular then, popping up occasionally in Spider-Man and Daredevil's books; his real popularity came in the go-go-macho grimdark 80s, when a limited series led to his own title, and again in the aughts, when Garth Ennis, fresh off Preacher, did a revival of the character that hasn't really stopped. Both times, Marvel wholeheartedly embraced the character's vigilante ethics because it sold comics, T-shirts, etc., regardless of what Captain America or any other character might think. (In Ennis' run, the character, like Ennis, expressed open contempt for superheroes, and even popular characters such as Spider-Man and Wolverine got jobbed repeatedly to show off Frank's "superiority".) It wasn't until Captain America became a very popular movie character and the Punisher was relegated to a Netflix series that got cancelled like the others that they published this rebuke.

- The popularity of the Punisher symbol among military, the police, and the alt-right is almost exclusively due to its adoption by the late Chris Kyle, author of American Sniper and hero of the subsequent movie adaptation starring Bradley "Rocket Raccoon" Cooper. Kyle was strongly self-mythologizing, which is another way of saying that he lied shamelessly and repeatedly about himself and his actions, both in war and at home, and the posthumous revelations that he lied about his "verified" kills (the American military does not and never has "verified" any service member's kills, as if it were some kind of video game), his medals and awards (mysteriously inflated on his official records before someone went back and checked), and his alleged vigilante activities (including a flabbergasting claim that he sniped "looters" from the top of the Superdome in New Orleans, as if this wouldn't have been seen by the numerous media reps in the area) has not tarnished his reputation among his fans in the slightest; the movie did over half a billion dollars in box office. As with the popularity of the comic book, money talks.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:32 AM on June 6, 2020 [27 favorites]


The fact that he doesn't mean it anymore isn't a reason to sing it with a different attitude, it's a reason to stop singing it entirely.

to be fair he stopped singing it four years ago
posted by entropicamericana at 7:33 AM on June 6, 2020 [13 favorites]


I am glad! I congratulate him for having the decency to do so.
posted by howfar at 7:44 AM on June 6, 2020


Wait, he's dead isn't he? I'm not glad he's dead. That would be unnecessarily harsh.
posted by howfar at 7:48 AM on June 6, 2020 [6 favorites]


He's dead.
posted by stevil at 7:53 AM on June 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


I saw a reddit post last week supposedly from a cop who had quit after a night of beating up protesters. The photo showed his riot gear, and there on a hanging shirt or jacket was a Punisher logo and I knew that guy hadn't learned a goddamned thing.
posted by Catblack at 7:54 AM on June 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


Give the Punisher titles to ta nehisi coates. I know they just started on his captain America series, but I do want to see how the symbol of militarized police would be written by coates
posted by eustatic at 7:56 AM on June 6, 2020 [23 favorites]


This is the badge for BOPE the Rio de Janeiro State Military Police Special Ops. They are hardass.
posted by adamvasco at 8:46 AM on June 6, 2020


Pretty sure we already got the real life version and the cops absolutely lost their shit.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:10 AM on June 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


I've never read any punisher, but was it ever supposed to be read with the same sense of irony as Dredd? I guess I assumed punisher's original intent was more of a critique on vigilantism than a celebration of it. Then again I can be quite naive.
posted by Think_Long at 9:18 AM on June 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


I've never read any punisher, but was it ever supposed to be read with the same sense of irony as Dredd? I guess I assumed punisher's original intent was more of a critique on vigilantism than a celebration of it. Then again I can be quite naive.

He begins life as a tragic antihero in '70s Amazing Spider-Man -- definitely a bad guy, but we feel sorry for him. I think it's relevant that he begins as a Spider-Man antagonist, because when Spider-Man's uncle is murdered, that's when he becomes a selfless hero. When the Punisher's family is killed, that's when he becomes...well...a mass murderer. That Spider-Man is Spider-Man is, right from the start, proof that what the Punisher is doing is not the only possible reaction to personal tragedy.

Gradually, the Punisher becomes more centralized, and he graduates from morally ambiguous antihero to basically just a hero. You could write a book on why this happens, but -- wider societal changes aside -- this is what usually happens when a "badass" is introduced to any heroic fiction universe, from the X-Men's Wolverine to Spike of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Michonne in The Walking Dead. Inevitably, this becomes everyone's favorite character, and naturally from there a featured character, because rule number one is, give people what they want.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:29 AM on June 6, 2020 [11 favorites]


The Punisher was directly inspired by The Executioner, a long-running series of pulp action novels where the violent vigilante is treated unambiguously as a hero.
posted by skymt at 9:35 AM on June 6, 2020 [5 favorites]


The anti-government extremist group called the Three Percenters (aka 3%ers or III Percenters) have also co-opted the Punisher skull for their own needs. Did both this group and the police come to the Punisher skull on their own, or is there an overlap in membership?

[sarcastic shrug emoji]
posted by hopeless romantique at 11:17 AM on June 6, 2020 [2 favorites]




The Punisher logo isn't the only disturbing thing cops wear: What Cop T-Shirts Tell Us About Police Culture (Radley Balko, HuffPo).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:07 PM on June 6, 2020 [12 favorites]


The notion that there are various versions of "Baby Daddy Removal Team" t-shirts out there makes me physically ill. The descriptions in the article of just a handful of the abuses/murders/terrorism that has been meted out by cops is intensely horrifying.
posted by amanda at 12:53 PM on June 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


Those t-shirts...

Fuck the Police
posted by Windopaene at 1:05 PM on June 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


Another forensic reconstruction based on the skull.
posted by porpoise at 3:10 PM on June 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


Another forensic reconstruction based on the skull.
posted by porpoise


So... Milton Berle, then?
posted by zaixfeep at 6:52 PM on June 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


People, these are professionals with high stress jobs just letting off steam! They have spent almost as long as a manicurist training for a job that may require lethal force.
posted by benzenedream at 7:06 PM on June 6, 2020 [5 favorites]


Thoughtful blogger and frequent MeFi link target Fred Clark (aka Slacktivist) had some thoughts on this topic recently.
When police think they're 'punishers' they cease to be police.
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:28 PM on June 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


Dear cops, here are some role models for you.
posted by DreamerFi at 1:30 AM on June 7, 2020 [3 favorites]



Pretty sure we already got the real life version and the cops absolutely lost their shit.

JFK, during a manhunt for a black man driving a blue Tacoma, they rammed and then opened fire on a white guy driving a black Ridgeline. Say what you want about Honda's truck they don't look like any other pick up.
posted by Mitheral at 6:36 AM on June 7, 2020


Garth Ennis certainly is one of the people we can blame for the Punisher's popularity. Despite whatever leftist politics he may espouse, he ruins potentially good ideas (Preacher, The Boys) bc he has the sense of humor of a 12 yr old sociopath. (See also Mark Millar, whose work also has a barely concealed racist streak).

Ennis strikes me as one someone who think superheroes are lame because "they are a bunch of f*** wearing tights." As problematic as Alan Moore's work can be, his anti-superhero attitude is at least more grounded in anti-fascist politics.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:19 PM on June 7, 2020 [1 favorite]


The best thing they could do, imho, is kill off Frank Castle and replace him with a black Punisher. Shit, or a woman Punisher, who only kills abusive husbands and rapists. See how that strikes their fancy.
posted by Saxon Kane at 9:55 PM on June 7, 2020 [3 favorites]


Have "Frank Castle" wake up from a dream; he's actually Frank Little a pizza and mountain dew snorfing cheeto-stained finger basement dweller who beats it daily to dubbed anime and watches porn or goes to incel and alt-right websites 24/7. The "Punisher" is his dream alter ego and the punisher skull is the icon he uses in first person shooters.

End with him yelling up to his mom that he needs more hot pockets.
posted by Justinian at 11:21 PM on June 7, 2020 [6 favorites]


a woman Punisher, who only kills abusive husbands and rapists.

Greg Rucka--who writes about military, police, and other associated hardcases in a way that Garth Ennis only wishes that he could--did a Punisher run in which he briefly floated the idea of a woman Punisher, but Frank actively discouraged her from going down the path that he chose.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:32 AM on June 8, 2020


They have spent almost as long as a manicurist training for a job that may require lethal force

FTP and all that, but as the husband of someone who got her manicurist license last year, that article is incredibly misleading.

The hours of training mentioned almost all refer to the time spent doing services for customers, for free. So, you might have on hour of school (or “school”, really), and then 7 hours of doing exactly what you would do in a low end salon, except for free.

So, for this analogy to work, cops would do like 90% of their training on the job, for free. And the cities cop schools would lobby the state board to increase the hour requirements in order to get move slave labor (sorry, “training”)

In other words, the reason FL requires 700 hours for a license is because the schools/salons have more power to demand free labor, rather than a state with better labor protections like CA, which only requires 400 hours.
posted by sideshow at 8:55 AM on June 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


A woman Punisher would actually be called a Punishim
posted by Saxon Kane at 9:51 AM on June 8, 2020 [9 favorites]


The real problem there is the indentured labour. To become an electrician in my province requires 1600 hours of classroom instruction (twice as much as the 820 hours for an RCMP officer BTW) and 6000 hours of on the job training but we get paid for the work training at 55-90% (goes up 5% every 750 hours) of the journeyman rate.

Also my understanding is cops also receive this on the job training (and that might be part of the problem because they end up being trained in the violent thin blue line mindset). It's deceptive to compare straight class room hours to total training time.

Shit, or a woman Punisher, who only kills abusive husbands and rapists.

I figured this wouldn't work because the violent fanbois would just ignore the new canon and then I remembered the freak outs over GoT and Ghostbusters and ya this just might work. Especially if the character never switched back.

Of course the the kind of person who glorifies the Punisher in objectionable ways would just move on to other symbols. But personally I'd find that to be a win because I find the symbol itself unaesthetic; not seeing it plastered on pickups would be a net win.
posted by Mitheral at 10:11 AM on June 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


nestor_makhno: I wish Marvel would reissue Punisher but with the protagonist as a mixed race anti-fascist trans person.

In addition to this glorious image, I wish Marvel would make public statements to inform the public about the Punisher, and as Nerd of the North noted that Fred Clark (aka Slacktivist) wrote, "When police think they're 'punishers' they cease to be police." Hell, toss out some free Captain America and Black Panther decals to the cops to replace those Punisher stickers when they publicly peel them off of cop cars and rip them from uniforms. (Because that should also happen.)

It would be a low-cost boost to Marvel's public image as a humane company, pitch their product (because few companies do anything for public good when it won't benefit them 5 fold), and remind the public (and the police) why the police shouldn't see vigilantes as rolemodels.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:47 AM on June 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


A woman Punisher would actually be called a Punishim

You could make it supernatural and make her an avenging angel from cod-Hebraic demonology or something.
posted by acb at 3:49 PM on June 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


As a reminder, the Punisher skull logo itself was inspired by similar imagery of the totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones used by military forces in the German Empire and, most infamously, the Nazi SS, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Totenkopf symbols have also been worn historically by many non-German military units, including present day Queen Elizabeth's Own Royal Lancers ("Wearing the skull and bones with pride") and United States Marine Corps Reconnaissance Battalions.
posted by cenoxo at 8:19 PM on June 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty ok with those people also wondering if they might be the baddies.
posted by Justinian at 4:21 AM on June 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


I wish Marvel would reissue Punisher but with the protagonist as a mixed race anti-fascist trans person. Only they use the exact same punisher logo that all these douche bags have on their trucks.
Oh hell yes. Here's how the arc should go:

1. New punisher is a mixed race anti-fascist trans person. Does amazing things, doesn't really pay attention to Frank's legacy because who cares. Toxic masculine white supremacist fascists get piiiissed.
2. Announce the return of Frank Castle in the next arc. Toxic masculine white supremacist fascists get excited.
3. Super long buildup to the showdown.
4. New Punisher completely schools Frank in a single page. No back and forth, no image of a white man standing nearly-victorious over his victim before a sudden unexpected turn, just an unmistakable statement that Frank is not in charge anymore.

I'd buy the whole series for everyone I know.
posted by Tehhund at 7:31 PM on June 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


Creator of the Punisher is organizing a Black Lives Matter benefit to reclaim the skull symbol from police
--
"It's disturbing whenever I see authority figures embracing Punisher iconography because the Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system. He's supposed to indict the collapse of social moral authority and the reality some people can't depend on institutions like the police or the military to act in a just and capable way. […] Whether you think the Punisher is justified or not, whether you admire his code of ethics, he is an outlaw. He is a criminal. Police should not be embracing a criminal as their symbol." - Gerry Conway, creator of creator of the Punisher
posted by amanda at 10:10 AM on June 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


So I don't read comics and don't know Conway's take on the Punisher. But unless he started the guy as radically different, and did a major deconstruction in his latest run, I think that's a cheap cop out from Conway honestly.

The whole aesthetic and narrative drive of the tough-guy vigilantes that really got going in the '70s was that the hierarchy interferes with what police should be doing in the name of justice and protecting the innocent. If you agree with this, it doesn't make sense to say "you should ignore the ideals you are trying to serve."

You could flip this logic around and say to a cop who admires a priest helping illegal immigrants in his community. "Sure, that's nice, but you're a cop! You should be enforcing these laws and procedures as they exist." And lots of right wing people argue exactly that, because they think it's an easier argument than about whether to feed kids into the deportation network. It is easier, I guess, but it's also morally bankrupt.

The problem, to be blunt, is precisely with cops who admire the Punisher's code of ethics and think he's justified. Not that the fictional character doesn't have a badge.
posted by mark k at 8:14 PM on June 11, 2020


So I don't read comics and don't know Conway's take on the Punisher. But unless he started the guy as radically different, and did a major deconstruction in his latest run, I think that's a cheap cop out from Conway honestly.

He did start the guy as radically different — as an enemy of Spider-Man, specifically designed to highlight Peter Parker’s qualms about whether he should operate outside the formal structures of the law. Conway never intended for him to get his own comic, much less as a good guy. His depiction was so different from the later version of the character that Conway’s Punisher was retconned to have been drugged by supervillains to be more violent than later versions.

And Conway (like most creators of comic-book characters) hasn’t been the primary writer of the character for most of its life. He’s only written two issues of any Punisher title in the 46 years since he was introduced.
posted by Etrigan at 5:53 AM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


It's actually incredibly easy for anyone who wants to see how the character was introduced to do so. It doesn't appear that the Amazing Spider-Man issues are available on Hoopla Digital (which would be optimal, as Hoopla is a free library service), but the character's first appearance in ASM #129 is reprinted in (dead tree edition) Essential Amazing Spider-Man Volume 6 (probably pretty attainable) and Marvel Masterworks: Amazing Spider-Man Volume 13 (dead tree and digital). The single issues can be purchased digitally at relatively low cost from Kindle or Amazon, or read digitally with a subscription to Marvel Unlimited ($10 monthly). I'm not trying to sell you anything (I do not work for Marvel or Amazon), I'm just saying that how these stories were written and framed is not some dark and unknowable mystery we are forced to speculate about.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:41 AM on June 14, 2020


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