Pinned down by the Punisher's crossfire

It had been a few years, so it seemed time to go back and read all the Garth Ennis Punisher comics again. Your mileage may vary, but Ennis Punisher is the Punisher I like, because the writer recognises the yawning horror at the heart of the character, that he is a cold, dead creature of vengeance, one that will never stop.

The writer is still putting out new Punisher stories every now and then, and I've read them all - from the black absurdity of the Welcome Back Frank era to the dark horror of the Max series - several times before, but I'm not sure I've ever felt my great liberal hypocrisy rising as much as it did when I realised how Frank's massacres were so much of a relief this time.

The Punisher should never be a role model - and it goes without saying that police and armed forces who adopt his icons don't understand the character at all - but when there is so much fuckery going on in the world right now, there is something almost comforting about an unstoppable force of justice. One that will keep on coming, and never stop, until all the shits in the world who profit from intentional pain and misery pay the ultimate price.

But I do feel bad about this enjoyment, because I'm a goddamn pacifist and of course the Punisher is a horrifying character and his worldview is deeply flawed. I fucking hate guns - I fired one once and did not care for it - and think the world will be a much better place when dickheads with penile anxiety find some other way to crack off their frustrations. They just do so much fucking harm in the real world.

Fiction is different. and I do like the visceral thrills of stories with big explosions and loud gunfire, and the absurd overkill of the Punisher is the ultimate result of all that. And while it's undeniable that he is a truly awful caricature of a real person, there is some satisfaction when things get sorted out with an M-60 and a shitload of C4. 

You can't get that kind of satisfaction outside fiction, because the real world is infinitely more complex, and there are always terrible repercussions to the Punisher's blunt force methods. Sometimes you just gotta get your kicks when you can.

Marvel fucks around with Frank Castle a lot, constantly trying to drag his blood-soaked mitts back into the world of gods and spider-men, which now include ludicrous attempts to give him a new logo. They try to keep him away from current politics - although someone is bound to do a story where he goes after a Pladimir Vutin in Eastasistan long after the current horror in Ukraine ends - and he can't really deal with the kind of fuckery that is causing so much pain and suffering in the world.

But when the world feels like a dark place, we can sometimes pretend he can.