Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
#51
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
The best and easiest way to get cops to stop appropriating the Punsiher skull is for Marvel to start telling stories where the Punisher starts taking out cops who kill innocent people and get away with it. It's keeping within the character's mandate.
Marvel/Disney would never do it, but once the story hit Fox News, all of these guys would lose their shit because their icon went all BLM on them.
Marvel/Disney would never do it, but once the story hit Fox News, all of these guys would lose their shit because their icon went all BLM on them.
#52
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Thread Starter
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
The Punisher was never marketed to small kids. By the time The Punisher came around the average age of the readers of The Amazing Spider-Man was probably 18. Marvel Comics grew up with their readers.
You didn't see The Punisher in Spidey Super Stories, which was the title aimed at small, impressionable kids.
You didn't see The Punisher in Spidey Super Stories, which was the title aimed at small, impressionable kids.
#53
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
It clearly says his arsenal is just to immobilize, with those... uh... stun grenades, and that stun rifle and the... stun knife.
This is also the era where they marketed toys (and sometimes cartoons) based on the Toxic Avenger movies, Robocop, Aliens, Predator, and all kinds of inappropriate stuff, though.
This is also the era where they marketed toys (and sometimes cartoons) based on the Toxic Avenger movies, Robocop, Aliens, Predator, and all kinds of inappropriate stuff, though.
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#54
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Thread Starter
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
I saw Robocop on HBO when I was 6 and it was the coolest thing. The next year there were already action figures with the cap gun back.
I saw Aliens on VHS when I was around 9. All of a sudden Toys R Us had a whole line of Aliens toys for a movie that came out five years earlier.
As far as average reader age goes, as a kid all I saw were other kids at the comic book store. And even as a 7 year old I thought Spidey Super Stories was for babies. That comic was just meant to take advantage of the character appearing on The Electric Company television show, just like Marvel later releasing the redundant X-Men The Animates Series Comic.
#55
DVD Talk Hero
#56
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
I agree. I'm a big fan of James O'Barr's The Crow. That character, from the start I believe, marketed as a "Mature Audiences" comic book, and the later film was R-rated. There was no attempt at the time, to make a Saturday morning cartoon of him, no action figures, no intermingling with kid's characters. So the the public had an opportunity to read and watch the material, but the way it was marketed was somewhat responsible. That may have changed when the character was licensed to Image Comics, but prior to that, it was a decent balance of commercial art with social responsibility.
No, he isn't the same as crooked law enforcement officers. He doesn't hurt innocent people. He only hurts the guilty - those who prey on innocent people.
I kind of wish there were really people like the Punisher out there who only hurt the guilty. Too many guilty people get away with victimizing and even killing innocent people.
Hell, I enjoyed watching Vic Mackey. He went WAY too far, but I understood how he got there. He was tired of seeing thugs and monsters repeatedly get away with horrible crimes, so he was willing to cut corners and bend the law to get the right outcome. Along the way he lost the plot and adopted their mindset, which is why his world came crashing down (taking down several others with him).
But a lot of people are tired of a legal system that protects the guilty more than it protects the innocent.
And that's why The Punisher resonates.
I kind of wish there were really people like the Punisher out there who only hurt the guilty. Too many guilty people get away with victimizing and even killing innocent people.
Hell, I enjoyed watching Vic Mackey. He went WAY too far, but I understood how he got there. He was tired of seeing thugs and monsters repeatedly get away with horrible crimes, so he was willing to cut corners and bend the law to get the right outcome. Along the way he lost the plot and adopted their mindset, which is why his world came crashing down (taking down several others with him).
But a lot of people are tired of a legal system that protects the guilty more than it protects the innocent.
And that's why The Punisher resonates.
But that's fiction. In the real world, cops frequently don't get the right person. But if they act like The Punisher and are judge, jury, and executioner, they kill a lot of innocent people. Police who identify with The Punisher want to use lethal force every time, and they believe themselves to be infallible.
"Police work is supposed to be hard. It's only easy in a police state!" - Orson Welles, A Touch of Evil.
#57
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Thread Starter
#58
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
^ That is, somehow, even worse...
Looks of the aftermath of Frank trying to fight The Hulk with a jackhammer.
Looks of the aftermath of Frank trying to fight The Hulk with a jackhammer.
#59
Senior Member
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
Chuck Dixon is a douche, mind you wrote good comics (at least in the past), but divorce and God knows how much cognitive dissonance has led him to making Qanon propaganda:
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/...-super-heroes/
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/...-super-heroes/
#60
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
Garth Ennis (also the writer of Preacher, The Boys, and Hellblazer), and who has written several runs of The Punisher, had this to say this week, after the skull made appearances in incident at the Capitol this week:
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/punish...-capitol-riots
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/punish...-capitol-riots
I reached out to legendary comics writer Garth Ennis, whose multi-year run writing the character starting in 2000 made him perhaps the definitive Punisher scribe, for his thoughts on why so many people have a fixation with the skull logo. Ennis, as anyone who has read his comics could expect, did not mince words. He says many of the people who wear the skull simply have no understanding of who Frank Castle is.
"I’ve said this before a couple of times, but no one actually wants to be the Punisher," Ennis exclusively told SYFY WIRE. "Nobody wants to pull three tours of duty in a combat zone with the last one going catastrophically wrong, come home with a head full of broken glass, see their families machine-gunned into bloody offal in front of their eyes and then dedicate the rest of their lives to cold, bleak, heartless slaughter."
"The people wearing the logo in this context are kidding themselves, just like the police officers who wore it over the summer," he added. "What they actually want is to wear an apparently scary symbol on a T-shirt, throw their weight around a bit, then go home to the wife and kids and resume everyday life. They've thought no harder about the Punisher symbol than the halfwits I saw [on Wednesday], the ones waving the Stars & Stripes while invading the Capitol building."
With regards to the skull symbol, he dismissed suggestions that it had any impact on inspiring the actions of those who adopt it. "No one’s going to suggest that the American flag is now a fascist symbol and should be treated as such, just because a bunch of would-be fascists employed it yesterday," Ennis said. "I doubt there’s anyone who would suggest that any of the clowns who wore the Punisher skull [Wednesday] would have acted any differently in DC had it or the character never existed. They did what they did because their demented turd of a leader convinced them the election had been stolen; if you're ready to take violent action on that basis then no bloody, silly T-shirt you wear will have any bearing on the line you've crossed. In fact, it's completely irrelevant."
"I’ve said this before a couple of times, but no one actually wants to be the Punisher," Ennis exclusively told SYFY WIRE. "Nobody wants to pull three tours of duty in a combat zone with the last one going catastrophically wrong, come home with a head full of broken glass, see their families machine-gunned into bloody offal in front of their eyes and then dedicate the rest of their lives to cold, bleak, heartless slaughter."
"The people wearing the logo in this context are kidding themselves, just like the police officers who wore it over the summer," he added. "What they actually want is to wear an apparently scary symbol on a T-shirt, throw their weight around a bit, then go home to the wife and kids and resume everyday life. They've thought no harder about the Punisher symbol than the halfwits I saw [on Wednesday], the ones waving the Stars & Stripes while invading the Capitol building."
With regards to the skull symbol, he dismissed suggestions that it had any impact on inspiring the actions of those who adopt it. "No one’s going to suggest that the American flag is now a fascist symbol and should be treated as such, just because a bunch of would-be fascists employed it yesterday," Ennis said. "I doubt there’s anyone who would suggest that any of the clowns who wore the Punisher skull [Wednesday] would have acted any differently in DC had it or the character never existed. They did what they did because their demented turd of a leader convinced them the election had been stolen; if you're ready to take violent action on that basis then no bloody, silly T-shirt you wear will have any bearing on the line you've crossed. In fact, it's completely irrelevant."
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#61
Banned
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
Marvel has decided to change Punisher's logo for storyline purposes. Don't know if it's permanent (doubtful) or temporary (most likely). Of course white supremacists and other assholes are up in arms about this, which makes me wonder why hasn't Marvel/Disney gone after all these companies and assholes stealing the logo, starting with the estate of Chris Kyle. They get pissed and send cease and desist when playgrounds and schools use logos or the characters to decorate their walls but keep silent for the misuse of the Punisher logo.
#62
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
I'm just glad there's another Punisher comic coming out.
#63
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
If Marvel really wanted to piss off the assholes who have appropriated the Punisher logo, they would have Frank start going after Proud Boys, White Supremacists, Oath Keepers, and cops who kill black people for no reason.
The Punisher got woke, and he's backing BLM and Antifa. He's going after the real criminals and dregs of society now.
The Punisher got woke, and he's backing BLM and Antifa. He's going after the real criminals and dregs of society now.
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#64
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
That new logo is crap, though...
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#65
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
which makes me wonder why hasn't Marvel/Disney gone after all these companies and assholes stealing the logo, starting with the estate of Chris Kyle. They get pissed and send cease and desist when playgrounds and schools use logos or the characters to decorate their walls but keep silent for the misuse of the Punisher logo.
Either he quietly was given permission from Marvel/Disney to do it, or they thought it would be bad optics to sue a "hero."
But if trademarks aren't vigorously defended, they can be lost through generification. So when all of these cops start putting Punisher skulls on their cars, people are selling blue-line flags with Punisher skulls, and other bootleg shit like that, it essentially takes the Punisher's skull away from that character and hands it to a bunch of fascist thugs in the eyes of the public.
At this point, more people probably associate the stylized skull with the police and military than they do with the Marvel character. At some point, Disney could even lose their ability to exclusively use it.
Maybe that's why they're changing it, they've allowed its misuse for so long that they need a new one?
Last edited by Josh-da-man; 12-22-21 at 02:26 PM.
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#66
Banned
Re: Disney's The Punisher and the Thin Blue Line Skull
By the way, Punisher’s logo has changed throughout the years
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