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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | My name is Frank Castle. They used to call me the Punisher. I had a wife and son and daughter, but they died a long time ago, on a sunny day in Central Park. I blamed evil men for their deaths. I went to war with murderers and thieves, with racketeers and dealers, the parasites who preyed on human weakness. That weakness was a feeding ground that stretched beyond the infinite. The evil that it fed would never end. So I decided: neither would my war. | „ |
| ~ The Punisher, recapping his basic life story. |
| “ | When you're on your own -- behind enemy lines -- no artillery, no airstrikes, no hope of an evac -- you don't fight dirty. You do things that make dirty look good. | „ |
| ~ The Punisher's stance on fighting dirty. |
Francis "Frank" Castle, best known as the Punisher, is the titular protagonist of The Punisher MAX, written by Garth Ennis. Unlike most mediums where he fights firmly on the side of good through ruthless means, this version of the Punisher serves to showcase the self-destructiveness of vigilantism.
What Makes Him Magnificent?[]
- He's a tragic nihilist who blames himself for his family's deaths to the point where he literally wants to die, but instead of committing suicide, he's committing emotional self-harm just by staying alive without rest or joy until he finally hits the grave, taking as many irredeemable scumbags as he can down with him in the meantime.
- Being a retired war veteran, he obviously has a ton of combat experience. In Born, he was even the sole survivor of an attack on Firebase Valley Forge that killed nearly 200 American and 800 Vietcong soldiers.
- He's been a Play-Along Prisoner at least twice:
- In The Cell, he turns himself in to the police and gets sent to Rikers Island, meticulously orchestrating a prison riot to distract the guards and thus safely take his time killing the five gangsters responsible for his family's deaths. He even managed to escape Rikers offscreen afterwards.
- In Man of Stone, he surrenders to General Zakharov when he threatens to bomb a village populated with hundreds of people, fakes a claymore injury on his arm to hide a razorblade inside the wound, uses said razorblade to cut the zipties binding his hands, and then sabotages the helicopter's dropping mechanism so it crashes in the middle of an unpopulated desert instead.
- He has a fake ID that allows him to investigate crime scenes.
- In Mother Russia, he fights off the entire Russian Army (even beating a ninja to death with his bare hands) and then escapes an underground missile silo by threatening nuclear war just to get the Russians to back off, hiding inside of a dud missile before launching it, and then HALO-jumping out into a snowstorm to cover his tracks.
- In The Slavers, he spikes Cristu Bulat and his gang's dinner with liquid tranquilizers to incapacitate them without killing any of the innocent sex slaves still inside, finishes off most of the gangsters with his shotgun, has the slaves driven away to safety, and then tortures Cristu to death for Tiberiu and Vera's whereabouts.
- In Widowmaker, he kills Carl and Ann Larsen, a couple who used their own children for the production and commercialization of child pornography, essentially freeing the children from a fate worse than death.
- During the Barracuda story arc, he manipulates the titular mercenary into helping him blow up a cruise ship full of scumbag executives in shark-infested waters, disposing of 'Cuda immediately afterwards.
- In Long Cold Dark, he escapes a hospital surrounded by cops while still fairly injured after his fight with 'Cuda, fake-assaulting a doctor to incapacitate two guards while their guards is down.
- During the Girls in White Dresses story arc, he nearly commits suicide out of misplaced guilt after believing he accidentally killed a young girl during one of his violent encounters thanks to Jigsaw's meticulous manipulation of the events, demonstrating that, despite his faults, he is a more complex character than simply a bloodthirsty vigilante.
- In Naked Kill, he forces Dirtbox to help him infiltrate the heavily-guarded Daedalus Tower, making him think he's been dosed with a slow-acting poison to make sure he cooperates, and fights his way through seven floors of security using weapons he improvised from cleaning supplies before slaughtering the bad guys on the eighth floor and rescuing the trafficking victims held there.
- In the same story, he dresses up as a janitor and cons his way into an equally well-protected building to get to Mickey Fane, passing without suspicion even after having pulled the same trick at Daedalus.
- After 36 years fighting a one-man war on crime, he dies like a badass by taking down the Kingpin's whole criminal empire before killing Wilson Fisk himself, telling him "your city, my world" before finally succumbing to his injuries on the lawn of his old family home. And not only that, people throughout New York also decide to exact their own form of vigilantism to hunt down criminals, even wearing Punisher-esque clothes to honor the late Frank; even Nick Fury is impressed.
- Overall, while the Punisher is a glorified serial killer with an unquenchable bloodlust, he comes off as a lesser evil due to the bulk of his victims being unrepentant sex offenders, drug lords, child abusers, murderers, cannibals, etc. who target innocents on the daily. Furthermore, Frank himself has redeeming qualities that make him quite endearing, like his Papa Wolf moments with Galina, Viorica, and Sarah O'Brien (his own infant daughter). And, if he can help it, he'll keep others from going down the same path as himself, which is best shown when he asks Detective Paul Budiansky at gunpoint: "You want to be me?" Some people in-universe, at the very least, even tolerate him enough to assist and heal him, let him eat at a nearby diner, etc.
What Makes Him a Baddie?[]
- Unlike most other mediums where he's a genuine anti-hero, this version of the Punisher is, by his own admission, a monster; a war-loving sadist whose goal to protect and avenge the innocent is only secondary to satiating his own bloodlust. During the Vietnam War, Frank made (or at least hallucinated making) a deal with the devil for endless war...but at a price, which later turned out to be his family dying. People in-universe voice their public disapproval of Frank's methods all the time as well.
- Despite the aforementioned deal in his backstory, Frank at one point viciously beat up one of neighbors for satisfying his lust in a different way by cheating on his wife.
- He kills Microchip, his former sidekick, for aiding in the CIA's illegal heroin smuggling.
- During the Bullseye arc, he lightly sodomizes a surprised Sergeant Dulohery with a shotgun barrel—which is legally considered rape—before torturing him to death; even Frank is appalled at the though of killing a cop (dirty or otherwise).
- To be fair, though, Dulohery was also a rapist by blackmailing a prostitute for sex, plus Frank at least didn't go out of his way to make it worse by pulling the trigger.
- He robs an 8-year-old Richard Fisk's grave simply to lure out his evil father, the Kingpin.
Trivia[]
- So far, he and the 2004 film one are the only versions of the Punisher to be Magnificent Baddies.
External Links[]
- The Punisher at the Marvel wiki
- The Punisher at the Villains wiki