Marvel hates ‘Punisher’ because he’s beloved by cops, military says ex-writer

Comic book writer Chuck Dixon lashed out at Marvel this week over what it’s done to one of its most iconic characters, the Punisher.

“The Punisher was a gun-wielding anti-hero created by Marvel Comics in 1974,” according to Fox News.

“Family man turned crime-fighting vigilante, Frank Castle embodies the persona of the Punisher to avenge personal tragedy and ensure all criminals receive the justice they deserve,” a description of him from Marvel’s website reads.

He’s basically a working-class superhero, and THAT, according to Dixon, is why Marvel has undermined and minimized him.

(Relevant portion begins at the 22:27 mark)

“They don’t like him for the same reason that DC doesn’t like Guy Gardner, and fans like the Punisher for the same reason they like Guy Gardner. Most comic book characters are either brainiacs, mutants, scientists, you know, whatever. There’s very few superheroes that have blue-collar origins,” he said on his podcast last month.

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“Frank Castle and Guy Gardner are blue-collar superheroes. They are average guys driven to extremes. And a lot of readers respond to that because a lot of readers aren’t brainiacs, mutants, or scientists. They’re driving a truck, or stocking shelves, or, you know, working for a paycheck,” he continued.

“People respond to these characters because of those origins and because they have blue-collar origins — when they’re written correctly — they say stuff and do stuff that other comic book characters won’t. They don’t have the same mores, the same code,” he concluded.

As a result, Americans fell in love with Punisher just like they’d fallen in love with the character Archie Bunker from “All in the Family.”

And although Marvel’s elitist writers were “horrified at the results,” they continued serving up the Punisher because it was making them money.

But then something changed when “new people took over at Marvel and they were just really, really just embarrassed about everything about the Punisher, particularly his audience,” according to Dixon.

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“They didn’t like the Punisher, and they didn’t like the people who liked the Punisher,” he added.

Does this sound familiar? It should because it kind of describes former President Donald Trump: The elites hate him, but the working class loves him — and for that, the elites hate the working class as well.

Dovetailing back to the Punisher, the last straw was when the military and police got in on it as well.

“I think really this all came to a head when our military and police began using the Punisher skull symbol on uniforms. I mean literally painting it on the sides of armored personnel carriers and Bradly fighting machines in Iraq. And suddenly the public was seeing the Punisher skull symbol, many of them for the first time. Non-comic book readers didn’t know what the symbol was, but here it was popping up everywhere on car windows and things like that. And as I said, actually, on military vehicles in Iraq,” Dixon explained.

“And, you know, cops are wearing the symbol, ‘Eww!’ Our soldiers are wearing the symbol, ‘Oh Boo! Boo! Boo! We don’t like them and so we don’t like them, we don’t like the Punisher readers. We’re going to take the Punisher and we’re going to mangle him and we’re going to destroy him. We’re going to do what no other entertainment company ever has done. We are going to purposely take one of our intellectual properties and tear it to the ground. And that’s what they did. And it is for that reason,” he added.

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“Any other lofty reason they give is BS. The main reason they wanted to get rid of the Punisher is because they hated the Punisher and they hate you for liking it. It’s that simple,” he concluded.

Responding to Dixon’s remarks, Twitter users expressed near-unanimous agreement:

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Vivek Saxena

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