Unusual Punishment

No character in comic books should be taken more seriously than Frank Castle, The Punisher. This psychopathic vigilante proudly partakes in torture, kidnapping, extortion, and even murder if it means wiping out crime. But oddly enough, there have been a lot of weird moments in The Punisher's history. Let's take a closer gaze through the looking glass. Or looking scope, in this case.

The Punisher's origin is simple enough: a war veteran who's entire family is gunned down by the mob, sparking his insane dedication to eradicate organized crime so that nobody has to suffer the same loss. But now we're going to get into some stuff, some not-vengence related stuff. In the 1992 Punisher comic book, Frank had suffered major damage after a battle with the criminal Jigsaw. In order to recover from his damages, Frank asks a drug addicted prostitute to perform plastic surgery on him. Don't worry though, this drugged-up hooker happens to have a medical degree. The surgery works, but Doc Stripper takes Frank's "nobody can recognize me" request too far and Frank Castle wakes up as a black man. This change was only temporary of course, but the writers had been teaming Frank up with black hero Luke Cage for that time, so you can imagine how awkward that must have been for everyone. Also-and this in bad taste-while black, Frank gets beaten by a group of cops.

It's not only racial debaucheries this character has endured, why The Punisher has had some off-putting team-ups as well, like the time he teamed up with Archie. That's right readers, The Punisher visits Riverdale and it's all-American icon, Archie Andrews. See, the U.S. government discovered the notorious drug dealer named Red was hiding out in Riverdale and hired The Punisher to apprehend him. Problem is though, Red looks very similar to Archie, meaning The Punisher mistakes one for the other. Worse yet, many of Red's associates want him dead simply to keep the government from taking any of them, putting Archie further in harm's way. A few shootouts later, and The Punisher and Archie end up working together to save Archie's girlfriend Veronica from Red and capture the drug dealer. Sadly, Archie was never given one of The Punisher's pistols to use against criminals, in fact Archie actually ended up the wrong side of the pistol once, but that's a story for another day.

This is just the tip of the oddity iceberg for the Punisher. I haven't even mentioned how there exists a possible future of Punisher admirers, or how Frank Castle was turned into Frankenstein's Monster, or how The Punisher teamed up with rapper Eminem! For me, seeing characters often written in only one way comes off as stale. That's why experimenting unexpected ideas like these don't come off as uncomfortable or unnecessary, they're simply different ways to interpret a character and test how they'd deal with certain situations. One of the reasons I love a character like Batman is because he can fit into different themes and genres, as can a character like The Punisher who proves the war on crime spans both race and region. Don't believe me? Check out the Marvel Manga version of The Punisher. Spoilers: He's a japanese woman in a dress. Thanks for reading!

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