PicoBlog

Recently, there has been a brouhaha brewing online about the comic book “superhero” The Punisher possibly being changed even further to stop right-wingers en masse from buying his skull-logo T-shirts in size XL (which was causing a crucial shortage in black poly/cotton blend).

Marvel Entertainment (a subsidiary of Disney Inc.) first tried to distance the character by giving him this vague sorta Japanese/“Asian” storyline, possibly in tribute to the oeuvre of notable comics writer C.B. Cebulski. But Punisher co-creator Gerry Conway recently commented that he would be happy to see the character completely and profoundly changed for good; presumably meaning, bye-bye Frank Castle.

Now, I can’t think of anyone more authoritative than Mr. Conway to opine on the fate of The Punisher, other than perhaps Don Pendleton (from whom the entire concept was stolen from). But I’d like to think that I—yes I, your humble Occasional Superheroine—has the tiniest-of-tiny-slices-of-authority in saying a few words on the subject. Because you see, True Believers, more than a decade ago I wrote a Punisher story for Marvel Comics.

But my journey with the famed comic book vigilante (not to be confused with The Vigilante) began not in 2009, but in grade-school. My friend Keith lent me the entire mid-1980’s Punisher mini-series to read. While my dad did buy me comics, his range of knowledge on the subject was pretty much Batman, Superman, Spider-Man & The Hulk. Anything outside of that hallowed pantheon was considered “weird” by him, and it was enough of a struggle to convince him to buy me “The Uncanny X-Men.” There was no way he was buying me a comic that looked like a Mack Bolan adaptation. So: Keith did me a solid by lending me those books!

Decades later, my biggest regret about writing the one-shot “PunisherMAX: Butterfly” (outside of writing the one-shot “PunisherMAX: Butterfly”) was not re-reading the original Steven Grant/Mike Zeck mini that electrified me so many years ago. I’ve only recently revisited those issues, and now it is crystal-clear to me why I was so captivated with the comic as a youth.

And you know what was one of the biggest reasons I was so hooked on The Punisher as a kid? He was an Italian-American character. I knew this, because I read his Marvel Handbook entry. There it was: “Frank Castle (Frank Castiglione).” He changed his last name so as to not seem so damn Italian, which was incidentally the M.O. of at least half the Italian-American celebrities out there since the dawn of the freakin’ motion-picture.

I didn’t have a lot of Italian-American role-models as a kid, outside of the entire Godfather franchise & Super Mario. So Frank Castle was important to me.

But perhaps, due to outside pressure, Frank Castiglione will finally be cancelled for good, relegated to the same memory hole they put Mike Baron in for being a conservative. Certainly, I don’t want the Klan using Punisher bumper-stickers. And as we’ve seen with other icons adopted by the right-wing, such as Pepe the Frog, once you make a big case on social media about censoring them it all goes away.

Perhaps the thing to do with the entire Punisher dilemma is just burn all his comic books, stop reprinting them, make them unavailable on digital, block every Punisher fan on Twitter, and create a national database of Frank Castle supporters whom to shun & deny currency to. The possibilities are endless.

Incidentally, here is the cover to the Italian edition of the PunisherMAX collected volume in which my one-shot appears. I’d like to believe they named it after my issue & put my credit first because I’m a paisan.

Thanks for reading & have a good day.

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