My Problem with the Punisher

I’ve actually often been a big Punisher fan.  In seventh grade when I was into fictional violence and gruff fighters that didn’t take any slack, he was my hero.  They haven’t done much with him, since they don’t need to (except for monkeying with his origin, which is never necessary), so he’s been able to stay consistent for a long time.  What some folks forget is that he started as a villain, a homicidal maniac who was killing anyone on his agenda and anyone who would get in his way.  Many of these were villains, so he could be called a hardened vigilante, similar to a lot of heroes, but the fact remained that he was certainly in the game of killing.  He might have been killing bad guys, but he was still killing, and when heroes are defined by the fact that they're trying to protect all lives, it didn’t matter who he was killing but that he was killing, if not murdering.  And when I allow players in this campaign to play heroes, I do not include the Punisher as a hero.

The character that might exemplify anti-heroes beyond all is probably the Punisher.  Great character, great story, and some stories that have been favorites over the years.  But he's not a hero.  And an anti-hero isn't actually a hero at all.  Forget the intentions: every character, every person, thinks they're the hero.  And anyone who murders anyone is a murderer, the exact opposite of a hero.  Some of the most prominent bad guys that the good guys stop are the ones who kill people.  And while I've loved a lot of Punisher stories, he's often worked best as a villain, as he did back in the early days before they figured out he could support his own series (and series of series) as the lead character, and eventually as (something like) a hero.  But an anti-hero isn’t a hero, and intentions for this campaign would work best when the players are heroes.  If there's a grand story for the Marvel universe, you want to follow the heroes, not the crappy bad guys, or at least there's more story in the good guys than the cheap, fleeting thrill of being evil (and there's not much more evil than murder).  And my thing is more about super-powers and heroics, rather than guns, gritty realness, and violence for its own sake.  There have been some fun stories with the Punisher rubbing up against the denizens of the Marvel universe, but I’m not so interested in trying to figure out how he fits on an Avengers team.

Yet, there is space for him.  I actually have plans to bring him in on an adventure very soon.  From that point he could even be a fixture in the campaign, since he’s been introduced.  But not as a player-character.  And not as a hero.