Endless Thread - MEMES, Pt. 6: Call me... The Punisher

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

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? We tell the story of The Punisher’s symbol as a meme, look at how well we understand its origins, its use today, and whether its creator — or Marvel — can take it back.

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If society won't punish the guilty. He was a Vietnam vet, you know, an honorable soldier. And he had a family. I can't believe. I'm home. His family was killed and crossed fire. in a mafia shootout in Central Park. Get down, buddy, 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. You don't have to kill me over this. It was him arrest. Call me.

He wasn't 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, you know, 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 book 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 tufty 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, mashed 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 had tattooed the Blue Lives Punisher logo, you know, the blue stripe variation on it, on their arm. And then above it, they had had tattooed, I don't read, and then below it, Punisher Comics. And 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's 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 U.S. that seem increasingly associated with violence. Call me Amory Sievertson. Call me, Ben Brought 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. Ah. Is this, you know, 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 like 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. Emery, there were basically three places I spent all of my time during middle school because I was extremely cool. The record store, which is cool. That is cool. The candy store, which my dentist would say is not cool, and the comic book shop. I'm with you on the first two.

So I'm not a full comic book nerd, but I do remember the Punisher from like 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-hewn slabs. Plus, he always was surrounded by this like spiral of shells flying out of his guns, out of his oozes 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 Punitive.

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. And so I always thought this was enormously cool. And that, along with the idea of pirates, you know, with the skull and crossbones, you know, of the pirates, was something I thought it would make for, you know, kind of an interesting design for, for a guy who was an assassin, you know, 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 the scary skull, lost the crossbones. But there's more to the genesis of this crazy, popular skull-moving. 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 teeming 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 ship,

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, et cetera, was central to the normalization of this paramilitary aesthetic. For Nate, seeing the Punisher symbol in this context was jarring. So he starts researching the same.

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-loven, treasure hoard and rum-guzzling 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. In the 20th century, the Nazis adopted the Death's Head, or Totenkov. 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 U.S. troops throughout World War II, but especially in Vietnam. I love the smell of night pump in the morning. In the early 70s, we had, you know, 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 U.S. 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, sort of... have 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 were 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 into the Marvel universe, he kept evolving and gaining fans, lots of fans. For a period in the 80s, the Punisher 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. So like a black and white character and a black and white era? Exactly. And I think that I've often said that the Punisher represents kind of a Roarshark test for the era 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 a 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 spin-offs, 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 offshoots, the Punisher Armory, reads kind of like a gun catalog, and some of the movies are just so, so bad. Holy shit, the punisher. It's him.

Moving for a close-up. Get a close-up. I got it. Jerry refuses to see these movies. But all in all, while it was hard watching his bloodthirsty baby grow up, he was proud of him. 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 U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.

Kyle served four tours in Iraq and was arguably the deadliest sniper in U.S. history. He credits himself with over 160 kills. Chris Kyle also worshipped the Punisher. His unit actually called themselves the Punishers and put the skull insignia everywhere. In his best-selling memoir, Kyle writes, quote, We spray painted it on our hummers and body armor and on our helmets and all our guns. We spray painted it on every building or wall we could. We wanted people to know, we're here and we want to fuck 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 Iraq 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 Skull became sort of an icon for some members of the U.S. 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 U.S. 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. Hands up! Don't shoot! Hands up! Don't shoot! That notorious long-fangged skull started showing 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. And 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're saying, they are outlaws and that they are criminals and that they are enemies of society. Is 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, you know, of the character that that appalls me. But the appropriation or misappropriation, if you ask Jerry, of the Punisher's Skull 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, unless the two years now is given power back to you. And 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 in vogue 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 three percent skull, okay? 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 U.S. Capitol on January 6th. They're going to use this against this as hard as they can. They can't. We ain't play nice no 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 rioters, where military personnel eventually find work at Blackwater and other private security firms, whereas the rage against the machine song says, those that workforces, 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. Original intent or not, 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. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey.

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And I wanted to be part of that. And also, I was in the middle of the pandemic like everybody else and going stir crazy. 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 is 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 was a very problematic hero. 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 L.A.-based Vietnamese indie comics artist transformed the skull 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 70s. $25,000 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. And putting out sweatshirts that had the BLM logo with the Punisher logo is a, you know, it's a pretty hefty 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-docton

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, white supremacists are using this image to intimidate black people. And no matter who a person is and where they are, trying to upend that effort is, 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 skull, but also how can we make this conversation more about, not only the military's use of the Punisher's skull, 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 theme because it is Mr. Conway's entryway 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 Kim 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 this saying, it's 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. Right. 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 Castle is a badass. Yeah, that's true. Not 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 Punisher when I'm coming through, you know, an American patriot, supporting our country. Yeah, that's a cool skull. Yeah, I've seen it around.

I don't like when the thin blue line is put over it, though, because that's the boot liquor flag. And when you put the Punisher Skull over the Boot Licker Flag, in the comics, he killed police. 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 all chanting. Why do you think that skull is a symbol of that?

Pain and punishing for justice, you know, doing what's right for the people. I didn't know what it meant before. Anytime I saw it, I would assume the punisher. 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 a limb and assume it represents a hate group or 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 bookstore 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 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-Defamation League's hate 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, popsockets. 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 die-hard 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. continue. What then should be done? And who should be doing it? Should the burden to wrangle a symbol gone 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 dogged reporting on this issue in comic book trade

publications. And from what we can tell, because of some murky trademark territory, Marvel probably has limited legal recourse to stop the spread of the punisher skull, 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 Gizmodo, 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 might actually put an end to the power struggle over this memeified logo, right? Hmm, hard tell and 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? 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, there'll come a 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. Again, as I say, like a Rochrock test. and when he does, you know, I'll be proud of him again. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. By the way, we did find a few cases where Marvel took legal action to protect its Punisher Skulled trademark.

One where Marvel opposed a company's attempt to trademark the skull on its gun-related products. Another involving insulated beverage sleeves. It's called a cozy. It's called a cozy. I think it's a cozy. Well, it depends on where you're from. Mason Dixon line. All right.

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