Why Does Wolverine get a pass but the Punisher Doesn't?

[The Question]

That was really more of a dis to cops than a complement for the Punisher really.

I suppose so. We can at least agree that it was stupid.

 

[Anubis]

Eh.

 

[kguillou]

The one thing that irks me about Castle though is how indiscriminant he is with his killing. I mean, its one thing to murder rapists and cereal killers, but its another to murder some punk kid who's an errand boy for the mob. The mere fact that the boy is running errands for mobsters gives Frank enough reason to kill him. Having any small liaison with a bad guy warrants a kill in Frank's book. God forbid one day a mobster asks me for a dollar on the street and i give it to him, cause you know, that makes me a mobster too and i'm pretty much dead. lol

 

[Anubis]

When did he ever do that? I've seen him let plenty of young punks go. Of course if said young punk is coming at him with an uzi and looking to move up in the organization, well then that dude gets fed to piranha.

 

[SuperFerret]

Frank's just as likely to mow down arguably innocent people because of their connection to criminals as he is to let them go.

 

[Anubis]

Since when?

 

[kguillou]

I read a christmas special bout a year ago where a mobster's wife was about to give birth to a child. Punisher waited until after the baby was born and then right afterwards killed both the mobster and the wife. Now the baby's an orphan and prolly gonna grow up messed up. Thats some cruel s*** in my opinion.

 

[Anubis]

Yeah, but what did the wife do?

 

[kguillou]

She was the wife of a mobster. Thats about it from what i remember.

 

[Anubis]

I never read that, but if I we're a betting man, I'd say she did a hell of a lot more than simply be a Mob wife. Maybe she injected 13 year old runaways with heroin so she could put them to work as hookers. I don't know. I didn't read it. But usually, if he kills somebody? Theres a reason.

Perfect example. Punisher busts up a drug deal. Some dude had just happened to had been there trying to score some coke for a party, so when the Punisher busted in, he killed everybody, and let him off with a warning. Castle walks away, the dude pulls out his cell, calls his friend and tells him what happened, and that the Punisher left him there with enough coke for him to sell and live like a king. Pushisher walks up behind him, and enables the dude to see his own ass.

Now, i'm not saying he shoulda killed him, but, he gave the dude a choice. He chose unwisely.

 

[Shockdingo]

Oh yea, I remember that, it was early in Welcome Back Frank. Also at times he tends to go easy on some of the little fish and use them as informants, I guess how "black and white" he is depends on the writer.

 

[Ace of Knaves]

I agree. What originally drew me to Wolverine when I was young was that whole struggle, that he wanted to be a better man but his situations or his enemies wouldn't let him. He would try to fight the rage, try to a "samurai". But as he grew more popular and as violence went from taboo to selling point in comics, he abandoned that crusade, and IMO became more one note. But that's just my take.

The best summary of Wolverine I've ever read still comes from some random poster at WIZARDWORLD in 2000-2001 and I wish I could remember his handle and quote him properly. "I used to love Wolverine; he was such a great character. But then he became popular, and it ruined him." While he was already popular when I was coming of age, I tend to agree.

Punisher, you could say, is Wolverine only without the powers, less of the positive moments and influences, and without the perks. Or at least that is how both stand now. OLD MAN LOGAN could have been OLD MAN CASTLE with fewer rewrites than one would think.

To be fair that could be said about a lot of characters. It's natural that the more popular they become, the more "commercialized", they will lose some of their uniqueness and become more of a superficial character. Unfortunately.

 

[unstoppable]

I do miss the old Wolverine, I'm mainly familar with Claremont and that era of Wolverine was great.

 

[StreetWarrior]

She was the wife of a mobster. Thats about it from what i remember.

No. She co-ran the mob for her husband, secretly calling most of the shots behind his back. Also, she personally tortured and killed a teenage boy for dating her teenage daughter. She was a shining beacon of innocence.

A major theme of the Punisher is that he NEVER kills or harms civilians. That would be incredibly hypocritical of him, after what happened to his own family.

Check your facts.

 

[unstoppable]

Sure, he manages to kill all the X-Men at the same time.

It always seems that alternate timelines in the MU are there just so they can get away with killing some heroes(i.e. Days of Future Past)

 

[Anubis]

No. She co-ran the mob for her husband, secretly calling most of the shots behind his back. Also, she personally tortured and killed a teenage boy for dating her teenage daughter. She was a shining beacon of innocence.

A major theme of the Punisher is that he NEVER kills or harms civilians. That would be incredibly hypocritical of him, after what happened to his own family.

Check your facts.

I freakin' thought so.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

The Punisher's definitely not as indiscriminate as people are implying. If he were, the whole Over the Edge thing from the '90s wouldn't have been as big a deal as it was. Frank started really losing his mind in that and literally gunned down anyone who broke any law, including jaywalkers and such. It led to his eventual death, then the whole supernatural Marvel Knights take that I prefer to forget.

 

[kguillou]

Wait, Frank actually died?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Yeah. Late '90s, I think.

 

[Shockdingo]

Ugh, yea people "lovingly" called it the Zombisher. I was interested in it when I was younger, but that was because I thought "Hey the Punisher's back yea!" Well every time I look back at it, the thing becomes worse.

Basically Frank killed himself in an alley and somehow later found himself alive armed with mystical powers and Heaven's arsenal. Yes, literealy Heaven's arsenal of weapons. Basically Frank's family wasn't supposed to have died, the Guardian Angels became too focused upon Earthly things and thus shirked their duties. Anyways, there was this stuff with a Satan-like figure being part of the mob and other crap trying to gather an army of evil on earth. Frank eventually teamed up with Wolverine in a mini. The mini really had me scratching my head for a few reasons:

1.) This book wasn't targeted to an early audience in the least, but Frank was oddly neutered, he said "heck" instead of hell and such.

2.) He stopped killing, he blew up the van of a couple drug dealers and let them think about their life choices.

3.) Wolverine had another random girlfriend of the moment die, but it's not her death that got me. It was the whole scale of death that never seemed to be addressed or referenced. Basically this young morlock girl who had been sealed away for years by a morlock scientist , now she's awake and womanly (yowza!...not really) and her powers (some sort of death aura) are spreading out of control and starting to affect people in the streets of new york.

4.) A whole bunch of Morlock tech and ROBOTS showed up out of nowhere to hunt down the Mutant girl who was at the heart of the death aura thing, for some reason I think they are armed with a nuke or something. Wolverine and Punisher stop it all in time. The girl is wounded, dying and thinking of her family, the angels show up later in a somewhat smug fashion and take the girl. They think they know how to deal with this better or something. Wolverine is angered they leave, the end.

Pretty much after that, no one touched that version of the Punisher again. In "Welcome back Frank", the opening bits take shot at it and pretty much Frank was tired of the whole thing and wants to go back to earth and do things on his own terms. They warn him it'll be hell for him and he says (as the criminal dwarf he threw off a building finally hits he bottom of the street) "THEY WERE WRONG" *splat*

Since then no one has talked about it, even in Punisher Dark Reign's Punisher history recap (found in the back of the first issue) omits his suicide and ressurrection.

And now you know! And knowing apparently aids in combat of some sort....

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I didn't actually read much of the "Zombisher" stuff, but I did think the ability to pull random weapons out of coat was cool. The rest of it felt pretty awkward, though.

Oh, and Pat Lee neglected to pay other artists to draw drew both mini-series that featured that version, by the way. His nameless lackeys' Wolverine actually looked kind of cool.

 

[Shockdingo]

Two points:
1.) The concept of a "Holy Spawn" and the coat power I didn't have a problem with, in fact I would have liked to see that tied to someone else other than Frank. (I'd steal the idea, but my writing skills need work hehe)

2.) I really enjoyed the Revelation mini's art, I was really big into anime at the point (still am, but it was early in my exposure) so I quite enjoyed the covers as well as the interiors, but holy crap, he didn't pay them? What's the story on this?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I believe the concept is already tied to Devil-Slayer (without the religious connection). He has a cloak that can transport him anywhere and can produce any weapon.

I don't know if Pat Lee paid the people who worked on the Punisher minis or not. He's infamous for mishandling the funds that Dreamwave earned and neglecting to pay his employees, though. This article on a Transformers wiki (since Dreamwave did a lot of Transformers work) tells the story more accurately (and rather dryly) than I could: http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Pat_Lee

I actually liked Pat Lee at that point as well. His problems with anatomy weren't as glaring as they became later, and his Dark Minds series was actually kind of cool.

 

[kguillou]

Wow, that sounds crazy, they were really really desperate during the 90's weren't they? I think the Punisher is one of those characters that really doesnt mesh too well with the supernatural. Sounds like maybe they were trying to compete with Spawn?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Maybe. Ghost Rider was also still fairly big back then, I think, and Frank had had some successful crossovers with him. I think, more than anything else, they just didn't really know what to do with the Punisher since a guy running around killing mobsters felt stale by then. Until Garth Ennis came around and revived the Punisher with dark humor and a hardcore grittiness that had been lacking for years.