The Punisher

Originally published August 20, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1344

There are two characters in comics whom I have written and never want to take another try at. This isn’t to say that the characters are necessarily bad, or that other writers with a far greater affinity for them couldn’t producer cracking good stories for them. Indeed, writers whose work I have nothing but respect for have done exactly that. Nevertheless, I personally have no affinity for the characters whatsoever.

The first is Lobo.

I realized this with some degree of alarm when I had already made plans to have him guest-star in Aquaman. I found that although I was able to plot a story in which he was involved, once I got to the scripting stage, I couldn’t get into his head at all. It made, for me, composition of his dialogue tedious, bordering on impossible. Fans seemed pretty accepting of my take on the character, so I imagine I didn’t leave too many people bitterly disappointed. Nevertheless, I felt out of touch with him; I felt as if I were scripting him from a great distance. I just couldn’t relate to him in any way, shape or form. As a result, I felt that my work on him had a rote, by-the-numbers feel, and vowed to steer clear of him from that point on.

The other is the Punisher.

I’ve wound up handling the character four times, and only once did I really have any fun.

The first two occasions are somewhat hazy to me. Believe it or not, there are many comics that I barely remember, even though I wrote them. This will come, I know, as a major shock to fans, who apparently believe that I (and other writers) possess an encyclopedic knowledge of every comic ever produced with our name on it. I remember once when a friend and I walked into a comic store and—frankly, to my mortification, because I just went in to buy comics, not get an ego boost—my friend informed the store owners who I was. The proprietors didn’t believe my friend’s claims and started asking me trivia questions about my career. They stumped me in two seconds flat. How the hëll was I supposed to know which was my first issue of Dreadstar? (And I just know that there are people reading this who know that bit of information off the top of their head.) So I’d appreciate your patience with my hazy memory on the subject.

My first involvement with the Punisher was when an editor asked me to contribute a ten pager or something like that to a Punisher annual. I tried to figure out how I could do a story that would somehow be unusual, and finally hit upon something a little different: It would be a story where the Punisher winds up not killing anybody. In order to turn the formula around, the Punisher winds up owing his life to a criminal and, consequently, has trouble with his intended mission.

My second go-around with the Punisher, I have even less recollection of. It was a full-length story, it was another annual, it had something to do with a big crossover and, I think, a computer virus, and I was assigned to take it on because at that time different Marvel books had been grouped into “families.” There was the Spider-Man family, the X-Men family, the Avengers family, and so on. The Punisher, along with the Hulk and other titles, had been grouped into what could best be termed the Outcast family. The books that had no strong association with other titles, and so they lumped these disparate titles together and tried to say that the fact that they had nothing whatsoever to do with each other was, in fact, the tie that bound. Which was nonsense, of course, but go try to argue with editorial dictate (God knows I have).

So that particular year, they had all the writers of the Outcast titles (for want of a better phrase) round robin on the annuals, and I—lucky duck—got Punisher. I think I’ve blanked the story out of my mind. Certainly no one’s had me autograph the stupid thing in about ten years, so it’s not uppermost in my memory banks.

And one other time he showed up later in my run on the Hulk during a crossover storyline wherein the Punisher was running amok in New York.

But that was the second time I used him in Hulk. The first time was also the only time I got any amusement value out of the Punisher, because I played him for laughs.

For years during my run, fans begged me to do a Hulk vs. Punisher story. I tried to explain to them that the notion of Hulk vs. Punisher was inherently absurd because the power levels of the characters was so disparate. Basically, I would say, Punisher fighting the Hulk would go something like this:

The Punisher keeps shooting until he’s out of ammunition, at which point the Hulk hits him. End of fight. I didn’t really see a lot of room for give-and-take there. Not exactly one of the more see-saw battles one could come up with.

In any event, it was during my run with the marvelous Dale Keown. Before Dale had come on board, I’d done a series of stories in which the Hulk was spending his time as a leg breaker in Las Vegas, going under the name “Mr. Fixit.” My artist at the time, Jeff Purves, was a very talented penciler, but somehow he never quite got Mr. Fixit right, and as a consequence the stories were never as good as they could have been. Jeff’s real strength was fantasy realms: Case in point, we did a two-parter set in Jarella’s world, and his pencils looked stupendous. He begged me to do a whole year’s worth of stories there, having finally gotten plots that were smack in his element. The Fixit stories, I think, never really moved him.

Dale, on the other hand, was a more versatile artist, and while we were on a Hulk promotional tour (back when Marvel did promotional tours) that took us through Las Vegas, I suggested to Dale that we do a two-parter set back in America’s premiere gambling nirvana. He readily agreed and did sketches for reference while we were out there. We then embarked upon the planned two-parter and Dale just nailed “Mr. Fixit” the moment the Hulk appeared on panel in his pin-striped suit. I looked at the pencil pages and shouted, “Yes! Yes! That’s what he looks like!”

I also decided that, since we were doing a story involving criminals in Las Vegas, that it was the appropriate environment to bring in the Punisher, finally, as per the unceasing fan requests. And I staged the battle exactly as I said I would. The Punisher—initially unaware that he’s firing on the Hulk—lets rip with heavy duty weaponry in an effort to cut down the formidable Mr. Fixit right where he stands. (Although the Punisher’s entrance line was edited out. Believe it or not, I had the Punisher kick open the back door of the van he was hiding in, announce, “You’ve just çráppëd out,” and open fire. I was told I couldn’t have him say, “çráppëd out.” Even though they were in Las Vegas, even though it was a gambling term, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with excrement, they still wouldn’t let me use the phrase.)

So the Hulk slowly advances on him, his nice suit being shredded, but otherwise not being slowed in the least. He draws to within a foot of the Punisher, reaches out, crushes his machine gun, looms over him as only the Hulk (and possibly Jim Shooter) can loom and rumbles, “No. Don’t say anything. I want to remember you like this.” And then he hits him, although we didn’t actually see it.

That, and the conclusion of the two-parter, was my involvement with the Punisher.

I know the Punisher had a ton of fans there for a while, particularly during the heady boom-and-bust days a few years ago. I will never forget the Marvel editor who stomped around the office all unhappy because the first issue of Punisher War Journal had sold only half a million copies. Only half a million copies. God, those were the days.

Why did I never really warm to the character? Perhaps it was the ruthlessly imitative nature of the origin. “Let’s do the Executioner, let’s do Death Wish in a comic.” Perhaps it was the inherent lack of imagination in the character’s fundamental make-up: he goes around with a big skull on his chest and shoots and kills criminals. Wow. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had remained what I always thought was his best role in the Marvel universe: supporting character and/or occasional villain for Spider-Man. But for the most part, he was sort of Batman without the wit or originality. I thought Punisher 2099 was actually a more interesting take on the concept (although admittedly Jake Gallows was a far more abysmal name than Frank Castle).

As noted, there were some great Punisher stories. I personally thought the limited series kicked serious butt, and when I first saw Die Hard, Bruce Willis looked so much like he’d been drawn by Mike Zeck that I felt that Willis would be far more suited to play the character than Dolph Lundgren ever would. (Then again, a plate of zucchini would be more suited to play any role than Dolph Lundgren.) And Jo Duffy, the hardest working man in comics, certainly showed an affinity for the Punisher and turned out some nifty tales. By and large, though, the character still leaves me cold.

Perhaps, ultimately, it’s the name. I mean, it’s really a misnomer, isn’t it? He doesn’t punish anyone, does he. Not really. I mean, Batman looks like a bat. Superman really is super, Spider-Man has that whole spider thing going. Punishment implies, at least to me, a penalty with a lesson attached, an implicit, “Learn from this punishment and never, ever do it again.” But if the Punisher is really punishing people, then the people he’s punishing should be getting something out of it somehow. He should be applying some sort of penalty that would serve as a warning for people who have erred in their behavior not to do such things again. That’s kind of difficult, though, when all he leaves behind him is a string of corpses. A dead criminal can’t exactly say, “Whoops, my bad. I’ve certainly learned my lesson and will never engage in such dastardly behavior again.”

He doesn’t punish. He just executes. He destroys. Except you can’t call him the Executioner or the Destroyer because, whoops, you’ll have a bit of a legal problem on your hands.

Ultimately, the only one he was really punishing was himself. Instead of coming to terms with the death of his family and moving on, he punished himself for not being able to save them by turning himself into a soulless killing machine with no life other than death. Might be an interesting way to go with him if he were being played for high tragedy, but mostly he was just played for carnage (except for the brief, ill-advised period where he was capping jay walkers.)

Actually, I was always kind of fond of what Jo Duffy (I think it was Jo) saw as the final, logical Punisher story. A future wherein he has actually managed to blow away every single criminal, and there was no more crime anywhere. At which point the Punisher announces, “There’s only one criminal left” and blows his own brains out. I guess, at heart, that’s my most fundamental problem with him. The Punisher, in trying to do away with that which he despised, became what he despised.

He was as much a criminal, if not more so, than those he was chasing down. Batman chased down criminals using tools of ingenuity and, ultimately, mercy. He elevated himself above the muck and mire in order to reach down, like a cloaked right hand of God, and take out the bad guys. He didn’t say, “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot… and so I must become superstitious and cowardly.” But the Punisher unrelentingly threw himself right into the muck with those he was trying to destroy.

And as the old saying goes, when you lie down with pigs, you wind up smelling like a pig. He wasn’t a dark reflection of that which he was fighting; he was that which he was fighting. In fact, he was less interesting. Because the criminals were capable of having lives outside of crime. They could have a wife, children, hobbies, other endeavors, fully rounded existences. The Punisher existed to kill, and that was pretty much it. Not only was he as bad as that which he fought, he was also less interesting almost by definition.

If nothing else, he served as sort of the ultimate reminder of just how obsession with anything is not a good thing. Ironic, then, that the Punisher would be a hero not because of what he inspires us to do—but instead what he inspires us not to do.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)