99% Invisible - 474- The Punisher Skull

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

The Punisher has always been a complicated Marvel antihero: a man whose creator imagined him as a reaction to the failures of government at home and in the Vietnam War. So why is the Punisher’s trademark dripping skull insignia — a menacing image used throughout history to denote imminent death — being painted on police vehicles, adopted by members of the military, and donned by white supremacists?This episode of Endless Thread explores the story of The Punisher’s symbol as a meme, and looks at how well we understand its origins, its use today, and whether its creator — or Marvel — can take it back.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The podcast endless thread is a great show at a WBUR in Boston, but examines the blurred line between the online world and the real world. And their recent series is all about memes, those little bits of culture that are easily passed around the internet and are meant to convey a lot of information in a single glance. Memes are changing everything from our politics to our senses of humor to how we communicate online and in real life.

I was recently taken with an episode of this series that was totally in my wheelhouse as both a young comic book collector and a lover of effective logos. It's all about the Punisher Skull. Not to brag, but I had the very first Punisher Limited Series comics as a kid, and I love them. The Punisher is a character that really appeals to a 12 year old who has a chip on his shoulder and wishes he was a badass. But since his first appearance as a villain in Spider-Man, the Punisher Skull emblem has escaped the pages of the comics and is now being painted on police vehicles, adopted by

members of the military and dawned by white supremacists. Something the original creator of the character finds troubling, to say the least. Here is the story of the Punisher's symbol as a meme. Its origins, its use today, and whether it's creator, or marvel, or Disney for that matter, can take it back. This is Endless Thread, hosted by Amory Severson and Ben Brock Johnson. Some origin stories kick off with radioactive spider bites or alien planets. And some begin with good old fashioned bloodshed. If society won't punish, But guilty. He will.

He was a Vietnam vet, you know, an honorable soldier. And he had a family. I can't believe he. I'm old. His family was killed in crossfire in Amatya shootout in Central park. Get down, buddy, get down! Get down!

Get down! And when the police weren't able to bring the criminals to justice, he went and took the law into his own hands. This is not vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive. It's an emotional response. No, not vengeance. Punishment. You don't have to kill me, Ovinous. It was him or us! Call me... the Punisher.

Call me the Punisher. He was an intended to be a good guy, but he was intended to be a vigilante anti-hero who at least had his own code of justice and wouldn't cross a certain line, but was definitely considered an outlaw. This guy knows a lot about the Punisher because he invented him. I'm Jerry Conway, I'm a comic writer and TV writer.

I'm the co-creator of the Punisher and various other characters that have appeared on TV and in movies. Including three Punisher films, which we heard some snippets from. Jerry was a professional comic book writer by the age of 16. He's in his late 60s now, with tough-d white hair. He has a nerdy laugh that he follows statements with, which is endearing. On the internet, he describes himself

as a minor pop culture icon, and a modest and unassuming fellow well liked by those who don't know him. And Jerry is pretty modest, considering he's scripted classics like Marvel's The Amazing Spider-Man. It was actually in that series, back in 1974, that Jerry introduced the Punisher as a villain, an exceptionally violent and murderous one. He was a bad guy. Yeah, in the Marvel Universe, there is no such thing as a complete bad guy.

You know, I mean, there are no mustache twirlers in the Marvel universe. The man who becomes the Punisher has a real name, Frank Castle, and like so many bad guys in comic books, Frank has a tragic backstory. The horrors of fighting in the Vietnam War, followed by the murder of his entire family, left Frank traumatized, a misguided tortured soul. Still, Jerry says over the years the character has made it very clear. What he does is wrong.

The way his enemies identify him, a huge terrifying white skull with four extra long fangs plastered across his extremely muscular chest. And it's this symbol we want to tell you more about, because even if you've never heard of the Punisher, I bet you've seen that skull emblem before. The one with the squinty eyes and the piano key like teeth. Maybe you've noticed it on t-shirts, hats, bumper stickers, matched up with pro-police thin blue line flags. You may have even spotted it on officers' uniforms, patrol cars, or permanently etched

on skin. It was a photo somebody at tattooed the Blue Lives Punisher logo, you know, the blue stripe variation on it on their arm and then above it they had tattooed I don't read and then below it Punisher comics I thought yep So we've been wondering how in the world did the mark of a fictional vigilante assassin who's not on society side and has a hit list a mile long, become a totem of mainstream law and order. And lately, almost a visual dog whistle for political factions in the US that seem increasingly

associated with violence. We're the baby, man! Where the hell the f*** you go? Just throw it up for all of you! I know what you're doing! Call me, Amary Severson. Call me, Ben Brock Johnson. From the WBUR Podcast Universe, we bring you Endless Thread. Before we go any further, you might be muttering to yourself, wait, is the Punisher skull symbol a meme? It has no impact font, it doesn't tell a story in multiple panels. But it does have the other essential meme ingredients. Defined by our chorus of meme experts. It is this idea that is shared by people and it is modified and it evolves like a gene.

There are really ways in which we structure and then create a shorthand for a whole set of ideas. I think at the heart of any meme, it all ladders back up to a larger kind of macro thing going on in culture. Like other memes, the Punisher skull is getting remixed all the time. With a lot of the memes we've explored in the series so far, that happens serendipitously. But the Punisher skull feels different. It hasn't just been tweaked or repurposed. According to its creator, its meaning has been turned upside down, and as a symbol, it might be in a major period of transition into something much more sinister. Today, we're looking at how the Punisher's symbol has become estranged from the Punisher's origin story,

which, for most memes, is normal, but in this case, it's controversial, and at the heart of a battle, Punisher Style, to reclaim what the symbol means. Emory, there were basically three places I spent all of my time during middle school because I was extremely cool. Mmm. The record store, which is cool. That is cool. The candy store, which is cool. That is cool. The candy store, which my dentist would say is not cool,

and the comic book shop. With you on the first two. So I'm not a full comic book nerd, but I do remember the Punisher from the 90s. The 90s era of the Punisher. Okay. What do you remember? He was super rough looking. He was like unshaven, super hairy.

If his body was architecture, it would be from the brutalist school, you know, sort of like chunked out of rough-hune slabs. Plus, he always was surrounded by this like spiral of shells flying out of his guns, out of his oozees or whatever, you know, and mostly what I remember was that huge white skull logo because it was badass as most skulls are. And Jerry Conway would agree, when he was first dreaming up the Punisher, he was inspired by an early comic book called The Phantom, featuring a warrior against evil

who wore a skull-shaped ring. And his base of operations was the skull cave. So I always thought this was enormously cool. And that, along with the idea of pirates, with the skull and crossbones of the pirates, was something I thought it would make for, kind of an interesting design for a guy who was an assassin working against the mob. That was the impulse for the skull, going back to the phantom and to the Jolly Roger.

The Jolly Roger was, of course, that black flag with the white human skull and diagonally crossed bones, identifying a pirate ship that was about to attack. In the end, the Punisher kept this scary skull, lost the crossbones. But there's more to the genesis of this crazy popular skull motif than just swash-buckling rogue pirates inciting terror on the high seas, according to Nate Powell. I'm a cartoonist and graphic novelist, and I live in Bloomington, Indiana. Nate is the first cartoonist ever to win a national book award,

for his trilogy about the life of civil rights leader John Lewis. And while Nate might live in Bloomington, he'll always be from Little Rock, Arkansas. And a punk. Yes, definitely punk going on 30 years. That is one of the many punk and metal bands Nate has played in. So he not only comes from subcultures teaming with skull iconography and a military family, he was also a Marvel kid back in the 80s and 90s. But Nate says he didn't get interested

in the Punisher specifically until a few decades later. Fast forward to 2016, he's living in Southern Indiana. Going about my business, taking my kids to and from school. When he starts noticing this pronounced shift towards a hyper-masculine look, we're talking big beards, blacked out trucks, gun decals, and over and over, that menacing long in the tooth skull image. It was obvious to me that the Punisher skull was central along with black and white

American flags, etc. was central to the normalization of this paramilitary aesthetic. For Nate, seeing the Punisher symbol in this paramilitary aesthetic. For Nate, seeing the Punisher symbol in this context was jarring. So he starts researching the saga of the Punisher skull icon and turning it into a comics essay, beginning with the roots of the skull and crossbones or death's head imagery. Naturally. I was expecting to land on pirates. I was not expecting to land on a proto-paramilitary unit.

As in privateers, and this is a really important distinction. We think of pirates as Jolly, Parrot-Levin, Treasure Horton, Rum-Guzzle, and Scallywags with no real power behind them, right? But privateers are different. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, privateers are given the nod and the financial backing of colonial governments. To seize and plunder enemy ships, says Nate, without following the usual rules of war. Not being outside of the law simply being above the law.

Bottom line, he discovered that the skull has always been a symbol of power beyond good and evil. But first and foremost, a declaration of power itself. Gun 3 Filming Ainsome E50 K-9! In the 20th century, the Nazis adopted the death set head or Totenkopf. The Nazi death's head is a specific design, and it's one that you can identify on pickup trucks here in America today. The skull was also used by US troops throughout World War II, but especially in Vietnam. I love the smell of the hay pump in the morning. In the early 70s, we had a number of national traumas.

To a young Jerry Conway, whose career was just getting off the ground at the time, the biggest of all was the US military's involvement in the Vietnam War. And for many people of my generation, that was a fundamental social crime that we felt that the government was perpetuating, which by itself sort of undermined your sense of the government as a force for good. So, in the pages of the Amazing Spider-Man, Jerry responded with Frank Castle, an ex-Sniper

turned skull sporting vigilante killing machine. It sounds like it came from frustrations with the government's use of violence. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it felt like the government is taking on the wrong people and ignoring the people who are really dangerous. The Punisher was controversial from the get go.

But like any good comic book character and meme, once he shot out of Jerry's pen from the get go, but like any good comic book character and meme, once he shot out of Jerry's pen into the Marvel Universe, he kept evolving and gaining fans, lots of fans. For a period in the 80s, the Punisher was became Marvel's most popular character next Spider-Man. Maybe Jerry says because during the Reagan years, the Punisher embodied this ultimate truth, this notion that one man could wage war against crime itself. Government is not the solution to our problem.

Government is the problem. It's like a black and white character in a black and white era? Exactly. And I think that I've often said that the Punisher represents kind of a Rorschach test for the era that he's that readers discover him in. For me, in the early 70s, he was, you know, a response to a dysfunctional era in American history. In the 80s he's a triumphant character representing, you know, a black and white view of the world. And in the 2000s he's the dysfunctional

Punisher, the despairing tragic hero who is really an outcast and no longer represents anything except his own it. Over the last few decades, there have been Punisher Spinoffs, books, films, and TV series, all adapted and written by other people that have increased its visibility. And it must be said, some of these mutations were great, and some were decidedly not great. One of the offsuits, the Punisher Armory, reads kind of like a gun catalog, and some of the movies are just so, so bad. Jerry refuses to see these movies, but all in all, while it was hard watching his blood-thirsty baby grow up, he was proud

of them. Didn't feel too attached. And it's actually part of the value of the comics, is that you can reinterpret these characters, as long as you maintain some truth to the original arch type that they represent, you can reinterpret them for the time in which you're creating. About 15 years ago though, something very different started to happen. Not to the Punisher as a character, but to his symbol. It leapt off the page and took a hard right turn, not in storylines, but seriously, IRL. In large part because of US Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle.

Kyle served four tours in Iraq and was arguably the deadliest sniper in US history. He credits himself with over 160 kills. Chris Kyle also worshipped the Punisher. His unit actually called themselves the Punisher's and put the skull insignia everywhere. In his best-selling memoir, Kyle writes, quote, We spray painted it on every building or wall we could. We wanted people to know, we're here and we want to f*** with you. You know, I didn't think it was the best thing in the world, but I could kind of see it because the Punisher was a vet, you know, and was a sharpshooter in Vietnam. And in his updated version was a rock war vet. So you know it made

sense to me that somebody working in that world you know being a soldier might embrace that. While creator Jerry had imagined Frank Castle's story as a complicated cautionary tale. To soldiers like Chris Kyle, Frank wasn't an anti-hero. He was a hero. The Punisher School became sort of an icon for some members of the US military, Iraqi security forces, even Shiite militias in the fight against ISIS. Then, punk Punisher historian Nate Powell says it made another leap, moving from the US military

into American law enforcement. As a very clear direct response to the movement for Black Lives throughout the United States. Around 2014, right as tensions between police and communities of color were reaching a boiling point. That notorious long-thanged skull started showing up up on blue lives matter, paraphernalia. Police challenge coins, officers uniforms, patrol cars, sending a message according to one Kentucky police chief that they would take any means necessary to keep their community safe. Which feels like coded language.

In this time, creator Jerry Conway could not empathize. By definition, he's the opposite of what they're supposed to be. You know, he is someone who is outside the law, taking the law into his own hands. So if they're claiming the Punisher as their symbol, they are saying they are outlaws, and that they are saying they are outlaws, and they are criminals, and that they are enemies of society. It's that really what they want to be saying.

Enemies of the state within the state. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's such a fundamental misreading of the character that that appalls me. But the appropriation or misappropriation, if you ask Jerry, of the Punisher School symbol, didn't stop there. In recent years, it's also become the darling of some on the right, like Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. His predecessor, President Trump, in less than two years now, is given power back to you.

In factions of the far right, who, for whatever reasons, feel that government, modern society, etc., have failed them, or left them behind, or broken some kind of promise, which is not unlike the actions of the Punisher himself, an attempt to achieve justice through direct action, taking on the, quote, forces of evil by any means necessary. A variation of the Punisher logo turned up on some white supremacists marching in the 2017

unite the right rally in Charlottesville. And it's invoked with the anti-government militia movement, the three percenters. Here's a guy we talked to at a, quote, freedom rally in Boston this fall, who is waving a massive Punisher flag. It's a 3% skull, okay? And 3% of the people originally fought the British. Only 3% of the people.

I am part of that 3% that is not afraid of the government. And most recently, it appeared among some of the armed insurrectionists that violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6th. They're going to use this against us as far as they can. The land playing nice, no f**king more. Obviously, there is a huge difference between state-backed police and military forces and paramilitary extremist groups. Except, in a world where off-duty police officers

are among the January 6th writers where military personnel eventually find work at Blackwater and other private security firms, whereas the rage against the machine song says, so for those that work forces, draw the same number that broad crosses. Those lines seem to be getting even more blurry. So Nate argues that no matter who is flaunting the Punisher emblem, the skull is functioning

once again as a symbol of power beyond the law. We've basically gone full circle. This logo has broken free from the gravitational field of the Marvel Universe, and any inciting influences on the character or its context. The comic book symbol itself reached escape velocity, but now we are back to its original intent. The seizure of this specific skull logo, especially by American police or some on the extreme and far right, really pissed off the guy who brought him to life in Marvel Comics almost 50 years ago. Last summer, after photos of police officers wearing Punisher skull patches, while cracking

down on Black Lives Matter protesters went viral, Jerry took matters into his own hands. Not quite Punisher style. What did he do and did it work? We'll find out after the break. You're listening to endless thread on 99% invisible. Five, four, five, nine, four, five, nine, four, five, nine.

In June of 2020, racial justice protests were spreading across the country. And I wanted to be part of that. And also, I was in the middle of the pandemic, like everybody else, and going stork-razy. So the Punisher's daddy, Jerry Comway, launched the first ever BLM skulls for justice campaign. His intentions were twofold. One, support the Black Lives Matter movement by raising money for the Los Angeles chapter, and two, reclaim the skull.

Potentially, as a symbol for justice, rather than for oppression, that while the Punisher was a very problematic hero, he was trying to fight on the side of right. Jerry invited young artists of color to come up with a new iteration of the Punisher Skull emblem, one that would challenge its affiliation with, quote, lawless police oppression, fight fire with fire, logo versus logo. And lots of artists answered this call.

The top-selling logo designed by an LA-based Vietnamese indie comics artist transformed this goal into a black power fist. The teeth, the fingers gripping the letters, BLM. A blood-red tear drips from one eye. And by one metric, the campaign was a smash success, raising over $75,000 for the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles chapter. far more than Jerry ever imagined. As for Jerry's more abstract goal of reclaiming the skull for justice? I mean, I've heard one or two people on Twitter saying that there's literally no way that the Punisher logo

can ever be anything except a symbol of oppression. And I think that's just, you know, no, come on. But even if that were the case, sticking your finger in the eye of the bad guys is always a good deal. You know, and putting out sweatshirts that had the BLM logo with the Punisher logo is a, you know, it's a pretty hefty FU to people who deserve to have an FU.

Jerry says he launched the logo campaign independently, because the symbol was already controversial. Also, this was when Black Lives Matter protesters were grappling with how white participants could be allies without appropriating the megaphone or the spotlight. So would Jerry's effort feel off? We had to get at least one perspective from the BLM ranks and we did. But let's get one thing straight first. I am not a fan of superhero comics.

I love anti-heroes. Dr. Kimberly McNair is very familiar with the Punisher Canon and... I am a member of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. And I am also a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University in African and African American studies. She actually studies t-shirt culture and black activist traditions.

And Kim says she understands Jerry Conway's intention to protect his creative legacy. Set the record straight, as far as BLMLA is concerned. Why supremacists are using this image to intimidate black people. And no matter who a person is, and where they are, trying to up in that effort is something that I believe is commendable, and something that BLMLA believes is absolutely necessary. But overall, we always try to coordinate efforts with parties. That makes an even larger impact.

And it also helps us try and steer the conversation towards not only has this happened to Mr. Conway, and this was not the original intent or purpose or meaning of the punisher and the punisher's goal, but also how can we make this conversation more about not only the military's use of the Punisher School, but the militarization of the police? Or Kim says to draw a line from that to the over-policing of black communities, to how

images of black people themselves have been co-opted or demonized in the service of white supremacy. Her point is there are so many possibilities to take the conversation about one symbol to the next level. And to me this is really a beautiful thing because it is Mr. Conway's entry way in to a movement that is about broader things. Jerry did tell us that he didn't expect that the Black Lives Matter movement would adopt the Justice-themed Punisher logo as their own. But we still wanted to ask him a bigger question that we've been puzzling over, the one that hovered above the campaign. Do you think it's even possible to sort of give a movement a logo?

There's this saying and I love the saying is by Leo Watson, she's a Mori elder and it says, if you have come here to help me you're wasting your time, but you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. And so the idea of gifting a movement, imagery, or a symbol, you have to work with those people who are at the center of the movement. You have to work with those people. Don't give anything. You create it with the people. These days, the tug of war over the Punisher's skull symbol rages on.

Over the last few months, our team has gone searching for the Punisher, IRL. And even though we've spied the toothy skull in plenty of places, it wasn't easy finding people who wanted to talk about it. We did, however, strike gold at the, quote, stand up for Freedom Rally in Boston, an event organized to oppose vaccine mandates. There, we chatted with a few dozen folks about what that skull means to them, and all we can say is, there is still not a clear consensus. Does it mean anything to you in particular?

Yeah, Frank Cas is a badass. Yeah, that's true, really.. I mean skulls have always been a power symbol throughout the world you know. It's just a power symbol more than anything. I ride a black Harley Davidson fat boy with 18s on it. It's right there and it has two American flags on the bars and it looks awesome and I feel like the partnership when I'm coming through. You know an American Patriot supporting that country. Yeah that's a cool skull. Yeah I've seen it around. I don't like when the thin blue lines put over it though because that's the boot liquor flag and when you put the Punisher skull over the boot liquor flag and the comics he killed police. Marines, I know quite a few Marines that do have it. Yeah, and they do enjoy it.

And I think they stand for what, you know, we all stand for the USA right here with their else Chann. Why do you think that skull is a symbol of that? Pain and punishment for justice, you know, doing what's right for the people. Skull, I didn't know what it meant before. Any time I saw it, I would assume the punish shirt. But now, because I've been to so many rallies and I've seen that on hats and shirts of people that are not very nice, I'm going to go out and then a limb and assume it represents a hate group or an hate ideology or something along that line.

And the fact that in 2021, there's still more symbols that are coming up that we don't know of. It's just like wild to me. We also talked to a comic book store owner up in Maine and he just wasn't sure. I'll be honest when I see it, I kind of, you know, my hairs go up a little bit, it's like because I don't know what the intention is behind it. It's those last comments about the confusion, the not knowing that really stuck with us. Because with some symbols, it's really clear what they mean,

no matter the context. Take the swastika, originally an ancient good luck symbol. It has been forever corrupted by Nazi propaganda. The Confederate flag, pretty hard to defend as just a symbol of southern heritage and pride. Or Pepe the Frog, the sad cartoon amphibian, he's been used as the alt-rights internet bigot. These are just a few of the 200-plus entries

in the anti-definition leagues hate to symbol database. The Punisher School is not currently one of them. Sometimes it really is just a representation of the Marvel character. But more and more, it's an image that seems to denote a distrust of authority and trust in the ultimate authority of violence. It still has a foot in both worlds for now. What makes all of this extra confusing is that it's everywhere.

Go inside your local Walmart or Army surplus store and you can find anything from Punisher pajama pants to tactical vests. Online you can order skull shirts and hats galore, flags, decals, stickers for your gun mag, pop sockets. There's just so much... Cool stuff for people to buy. In Punisher expert Nate Powell's mind, that's the real danger. The symbol is so deeply embedded in pop culture, it can be hard to pin down its meaning. Is a person wearing it only because they're a diehard Marvel fan, or as a dog whistle of white supremacy?

Maybe as a signal of anti-government sentiment, something in between? Does it become a gateway or a cover for those ideologies and political views the more ubiquitous it gets? It's a really good case study in seeing how the symbol evolves, in seeing how it gains power by appearing to lose political specificity. And by normalizing fascist and paramilitary activity, it allows space for all that stuff to expand and continue. What then should be done, and who should be doing it? Should the burden to wrangle a symbol gun while be shouldered by its creator alone? Is there any other entity that might have a dog in this fight?

If you ask BLMLA member Dr. Kimberly McNair. I think Marvel should sue. I want to imagine a world beyond punitive justice, but I'm thinking about accountability. I'm thinking about ways to redress harm that has been done by those who have profited they've made money. Oh right, unlike, say Pepe the Frog, who belongs to one independent artist named Matt Fury, the Punisher is the intellectual property of Marvel Comics, which is a subsidiary of... The Walt Disney Company, one of the world's largest and most litigious media and entertainment conglomerates, one that takes copyright and trademark infringement quite seriously.

Disney has been known to go after just about anyone using unauthorized mouse years, daycares, DJ dead mouse, etc. And when it comes to unauthorized use of the Punisher skull, there have been repeated calls by fans on social media for Marvel slash Disney to do something. When we contacted reps from Marvel and Disney to find out where they are in this whole wrestling match, we got. But there's been a lot of dog and reporting on this issue in comic book trade publications. And from what we can tell, because of some murky trade mark territory, Marvel probably has limited legal recourse to stop the spread of the Punisher

School, especially when it comes to non-commercial use. Police officers wearing Punisher patches at BLM protests, for example. But commercial use is not a trademark gray area, and it's really easy to get your hands on some bootleg Punisher merch. Jerry's best guess as to why Marvel hasn't cracked down on these unlicensed distributors? The promoters of these are all fly by night, you know, Etsy kind of companies. And it would be like whack a mole. So far, the company has come out and publicly denounced racism. And when pressed on the appropriation of the skull, a Marvel spokesperson told Gismoto their stance is laid out in a 2019 Punisher comic. In that issue, Frank Castle encounters two NYPD officers displaying the skull decal, tears it off,

and lectures them, saying, quote, you boys need a role model. His name is Captain America, and he'd be happy to have you. Which is super helpful if you actually read Punisher comics. A stronger offense from Marvel and Disney you actually read Punisher Comics. A stronger offense from Marvel and Disney might actually put an end to the power struggle over this memafide logo, right? Hmm, hard-telling not knowing.

But if, as our Punisher authority Nate Powell likes to say, the skull symbol has in fact reached escape velocity, chances are, this meme will continue to have a life of its own. And in his view, trying to redefine the Punisher symbol or the character is a massive waste of time right now. Why can't we just continue spending that time and spending more time trying to prevent police officers from, you know, killing black citizens without accountability? officers from killing black citizens without accountability.

Sometimes you just have to recognize that there will be no reclamation. For Jerry Conway, the debate isn't over. Whether the Punisher's symbol can ever be reclaimed as a symbol for justice remains an open question. Since the Punisher was spotted on Capitol rioters, demands on Marvel to retire the Punisher character and his logo have only gotten louder

from both fans and industry leaders. Instead of canceling him or killing him off, Jerry Comway says, let the Punisher go dormant for a few years. And then let's reinvent Frank Castle, give him a new mission, maybe even a new identity. You know, they'll come at time just like in the 80s when that character can be rebooted you know, and turned into something new. I mean, my personal preference would be that the next

iteration of the Punisher would be a black vet, you know, who comes back and faces the issues that minorities in the world face today. Maybe then the Punisher will have something to say to the next generation. And again, as I say, like a Roshark test, and when he does, you know, I'll be proud of him again. And Liz Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston, hosted by Ben Brock Johnson in Amory Seavortson. This episode was produced by Nora Sacks as part of the series on the cultural history and importance of memes. Enlis Thred is made by producers Dean Russell, Nora Sacks, Kristen Torres, and Quincy Walters, editing by Marine McMurray, mixed sound design and original music by Matt Reed.

The meme experts you heard were Jean Lucas Tringini, Joan Donovan, and Amanda Brennan. Enlis Thred is one of the great ones. Go subscribe now. 99% invisible is the Laney Hall, Kurt Colestead, Swansea Out, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Le, Joe Rosenberg, Chris Baroube, Christopher Johnson, Lashemadon, Sophia Klatsker, Jason De Leon, and me Roman Mars. We are part of the Stitcher and Serious XM Podcast family. Now we head to our sixth block North in the Pandora Building. In beautiful.

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