I’ve been re-reading a bunch of old issues of The Punisher. Forget about the 2004 film. Definitely forget the 1989 movie.
The Marvel comics character was created in 1974 and is clearly a rip-off of The Executioner (a.k.a. Mack Bolan), Don Pendleton’s pulp hero. (And let’s not forget the 1972 novel Death Wish; gee, the early Seventies were rife with urban violence.) Any kind of vigilante hero can get kind of boring. It’s natural, and yet a little childish, to wish for the deus ex machina of a figure who will come along and wipe out those evil people that the law will not touch.
But when Garth Ennis brought The Punisher back in 2000, he did a couple of things. He brought in a lot of black comedy and a sense of the absurd. He also acknowledged that revenge doesn’t explain massacre. Frank Castle (a.k.a the Punisher) had his family killed by the Mob, just like Mack Bolan. At some point, after you’ve killed the men who killed your family and the men who ordered that murder and the men above them, why don’t you stop? Maybe you’re not bringing justice or righting wrong or even punishing. Maybe there’s something darker going on.
I ran across this passage in one issue:
Do not fall.
Forget the things you’ve heard about the place. About the new New York.
It means Times Square’s like Disney World. It means Hell’s Kitchen’s called Clinton. It means the Park is full of tourists.
It doesn’t mean they’ll catch you when you fall.
The old New York is waiting just below the surface. It’s in the eyes of the clerk who declines your card. The bank manager who forecloses on your house. The surgeon who tells you your wife didn’t make it.
It’s the discomfort and disgust that your misery awakens in them, as they look away, at anything but you — As they lock you out of the club. You’re left standing, thinking — Hey, I thought I’d made it?
But no one cares about you when you’re damned.
This is from The Punisher #6, published in January 2002.
Writer Garth Ennis explained how he wrote that comic:
Got the idea for this one about a year and a half ago, walking west on 57th Street in the early evening, watching the [homeless] guy from page one [of this issue of the comic] as he crawled at the wall behind him and begged and bawled his lungs out. A kind of wretchedness beyond the norm, even for Manhattan’s homeless, an obvious irony of poverty and despair among the rich man’s tower’s of steel and glass. Typical writer: I bet I can use that.
It might seem odd that I choose THE PUNISHER to tell this story, when my usual approach to the book is to write a kind of souped-up Road Runner cartoon with added armalites. But the character’s strong enough to endure any number of different approaches. And I couldn’t imagine any darker vision of New York City than one seen through Frank Castle’s eyes.
Ironic, then, that this should see print barely two months after New York got hit harder than it ever has in its existence, and stared into the abyss, and shuddered — then gathered up its shattered children, and emerged once more to face the sun.
I myself have previously written about New York City a few times:
- Skyscrapers and everything. (1/17/06)
- The streets of New York (9/11/06)
- Men in Manhattan (1/4/07)
Ennis, born in Northern Ireland, is best known for his Preacher series, about a Texas preacher who accidentally receives unearthly powers and decides to take on God, accompanied by his girlfriend, an Irish vampire and (occasionally) the spirit of John Wayne. The above Punisher story is collected in the Army of One volume. I’m enjoying Ennis’ new series The Boys, about “a team of five super-powered operatives who work for a secret department within the U.S. government;” their mission is to keep superheroes in line and sometimes put them down permanently.
Tags: Garth Ennis, New York City, Punisher