Why do some people want the Punisher to accidentally kill civilians?

[GAP]

It appears that there are some people who want the Punisher to kill civilians if only by accident. I understand that the Punisher is a vigilante who wants to fight crime and avenge his family but I also know that he does not target civilians. I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this but why do some people want the Punisher to accidentally target civilians if only to see the consequences?

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

It appears that there are some people who want the Punisher to kill civilians if only by accident. I understand that the Punisher is a vigilante who wants to fight crime and avenge his family but I also know that he does not target civilians. I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this but why do some people want the Punisher to accidentally target civilians if only to see the consequences?

Curiosity and it dispells the one good guy with a gun myth.

[Iron Maiden]

Curiosity and it dispells the one good guy with a gun myth.

This....the Punisher is a very flawed person and he should not act as judge, jury and executioner. It's an unhealthy fantasy IMO.

[MichaelC]

Some people prefer to see Castle as Rambo, and others prefer to see him as Dexter. Those two characters have very different moods.

Rambo, at least the movie version, is a fantasy that heavily depends on us being able to empathize with Rambo. He's a troubled hero, or a light anti-hero bordering on being a hero.

Dexter is a dark deconstruction of the mindset of a vigilante. The show never pretends he's not a twisted psychopath forever brutally avenging his mother. Periodically this results in the deaths of innocents.

The people who think of him as Dexter want his constantly shooting machine-guns deconstructed. No one innocent is ever on the other side of the wall when he shoots a drug-dealer in his tiny apartment? That level of fantasy is acceptable in Rambo, but not in Dexter.

[Alan2099]

It appears that there are some people who want the Punisher to kill civilians if only by accident. I understand that the Punisher is a vigilante who wants to fight crime and avenge his family but I also know that he does not target civilians. I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this but why do some people want the Punisher to accidentally target civilians if only to see the consequences?

Because somebody don't like the Punisher and his stories or they don't understand how they work.

Chuck Dixon had an amusing tale about it.

Don Daley, my old editor on the Punisher back in the DeFalco days at Marvel, had a drawer full of scripts labeled “The Ultimate Punisher Story.” He let me read a few of them one time. There were scripts by wannabe and amateurs and a surprising number of top talents. They were of varying degrees of competence and professionalism. The one thing they had in common was that they were all the same story. In each story the Punisher accidentally kills an innocent. A child. A nun. A cop. Frank Castle then quits being the Punisher and becomes a priest. In every story. Every damned one. In some he quits being the Punisher forever and in others he’s dragged back into the vigilante game for some compelling reason. The other element that these scripts shared other than inciting incident, plot and resolution was that they got the core character of Frank Castle so entirely wrong that it was breath-taking. Unable to come up with a story for the Punisher, they decided to break the franchise and glue it back together in a new form they could understand.

[phonogram12]

I'm not sure how seriously I would take Chuck Dixon's pov on gun toting vigilantes, tbh.

[Alan2099]

I'm not sure how seriously I would take Chuck Dixon's pov on gun toting vigilantes, tbh.

He's regarded as one of the top Punisher writers and in this case he was talking about something he personally witnessed, so if you're not going to listen to him, who's opinion on Punisher would matter to you?

[ed2962]

I'd say it's because some people are uncomfortable with the idea of someone like the Punisher who shoots first and doesn't ask questions being praised as a hero. Having him make such a mistake takes him down a peg. And if he learns a lesson from it, all the better. I'm not sure if even such a story was done well, how long it would stick though.

Back in the day, Bill Mantlo ( I think ) did a story that presented Frank as completely insane to the point of shooting litterbugs and even the Kingpin pitied him. The next story was Steven Grant's Punisher mini that immediately undid that.

[phonogram12]

He's regarded as one of the top Punisher writers and in this case he was talking about something he personally witnessed, so if you're not going to listen to him, who's opinion on Punisher would matter to you?

Any guy not associated with white supremacist and GamerGate figure Vox Day.

[Drops Of Venus]

It's not that people want that for shits and giggles. It's more of a ''what if...'' type of scenario that puts his ideology into question. Superhero stories have dealt with casualties for a very long time, so it's not unrealistic to think that someone like Frank, who is actively on a warpath everywhere he goes, could deal with that at some point as well. If even Spider-Man, Marvel's most wholesome and friendly hero, had Gwen Stacy, then why shouldn't the Punisher have to deal with an unintended loss that shakes the core of his character? If anything, it creates conflict.

Plus, we live in very political times when it comes to gun violence. Like it or not, the Punisher and his symbol have been romanticized to some degree, so I think the idea behind showing his behavior being flawed and problematic stems from that too.

[gurkle]

The Hulk also depends on suspension of disbelief about how many innocent people he would kill. (I have big gaps in my Hulk reading so I don't know how many stories have actually tried to deal with this, but the typical Hulk rampage has mostly smashing of inanimate objects.) I guess it's easier to accept because the Hulk is a fantasy character and Frank moves in a mostly realistic world where it sticks out that he seemingly never has an accident.

[Alan2099]

It's not that people want that for shits and giggles. It's more of a ''what if...'' type of scenario that puts his ideology into question. Superhero stories have dealt with casualties for a very long time, so it's not unrealistic to think that someone like Frank, who is actively on a warpath everywhere he goes, could deal with that at some point as well. If even Spider-Man, Marvel's most wholesome and friendly hero, had Gwen Stacy, then why shouldn't the Punisher have to deal with an unintended loss that shakes the core of his character? If anything, it creates conflict.

That leads to an interesting question. What exactly do you think the emotional core of Frank's character is? Personally, I don't think Frank's emotional response to issues have ever actually been a selling point of his books.

[jwatson]

It appears that there are some people who want the Punisher to kill civilians if only by accident. I understand that the Punisher is a vigilante who wants to fight crime and avenge his family but I also know that he does not target civilians. I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this but why do some people want the Punisher to accidentally target civilians if only to see the consequences?

I don't get this either. I like the idea of him being so good he never hits a civilian. Like i don't read a lot of punisher but the appearances i did i like to think what makes his vigilantism right if it ever could be is the lengths someone like that should go to make sure there is no collateral damage even if it means a cost to him or cost him himself so i like the idea of him being so good at what he does or so principled in why he does that if he DID lose a civilian and not just you know someone unexpected walked into the room but a planned body he thought he wouldn't lose, it would take him someplace completely different.

[Bunch of Coconuts]

The Hulk also depends on suspension of disbelief about how many innocent people he would kill. (I have big gaps in my Hulk reading so I don't know how many stories have actually tried to deal with this, but the typical Hulk rampage has mostly smashing of inanimate objects.) I guess it's easier to accept because the Hulk is a fantasy character and Frank moves in a mostly realistic world where it sticks out that he seemingly never has an accident.

This. It's easier to connect Frank's gun-violence with real life gun-violence because, well...guns and gun violence exist.

Big green guys that can smash a planet in half don't exist, so it's "easier to believe" that the Hulk is capable of not injuring innocents, yet levels an entire city.

[K7P5V]

I don't get this either. I like the idea of him being so good he never hits a civilian. Like i don't read a lot of punisher but the appearances i did i like to think what makes his vigilantism right if it ever could be is the lengths someone like that should go to make sure there is no collateral damage even if it means a cost to him or cost him himself so i like the idea of him being so good at what he does or so principled in why he does that if he DID lose a civilian and not just you know someone unexpected walked into the room but a planned body he thought he wouldn't lose, it would take him someplace completely different.

Thanks. This reminds me of that scene from...

Welcome Back, Frank