So, everyone has their stance on whether capes should take human life, but this is directed mostly towards those who support large scale killings; not just villains, but nameless masses. How do you feel about undercover cops?
Take, for instance, Frank's bit in Daredevil when he shot up the Irish. If there had been an undercover cop there, he'd have been killed just like the rest. While this obviously wouldn't apply to individual hits (IE, Batman finally having his balls drop enough to off the joker), people like the Punisher and Red Hood would almost inevitably build up some casualties because of this.
Years ago, on /co/, I remember seeing a panel that clearly took place at the end of some story, with Daredevil and Frank standing next to some undercover cop. Daredevil was telling Frank something to the extent of "Yes, I stopped you from killing an innocent, Castle - THIS TIME." I don't know the full context, though, and I haven't seen it since.
Sometimes Frank will occasionally mow through entire "bad guy" strip joints or bars indiscriminately, and it's just sort of assumed that there's never anyone who doesn't know it's a bad guy bar and came in for a quick finger of scotch after a hard day at work. Even in the more "grounded" Punisher MAX you've got moments where Frank is all "You know, I never was sure this woman was guilty of anything - OH SHIT, she's pissed off that I just shot her son in the face, SHE MUST BE EVIL".
I remember there was a story a few years back where some bad guy was running a tropical island full of terrorists and mercenaries and such. Frank eventually hijacks a nuclear bomb and drops it on them, and there's this French military officer who tries to stop him saying "There's two thousand breathing PEOPLE down there!" and you're just supposed to think "Pfft, fucking faggot Frenchie", but who's scrubbing the toilets and cutting the grass on this island? I don't think they hired exclusively murderers and rapists for that. I guess you can argue they knew they were working for Bad People, but this wasn't two miles off the coast of Manhattan or anything. These were probably fucking Cambodians or something whose kids have malariAIDS and would otherwise have to be treated on their parents' $1.30/year income.
I know it's one of the tenets of the genre that I'm just supposed to ignore this sort of thing, but it still bugs me.
>>80917677
> I guess you can argue they knew they were working for Bad People
Punisher's doesn't give a fuck if you know you're working for killers or drug dealers. Even if you don't get your hands dirty, you're guilty by association.
Josh Wheadon is a cuck and a hypocrite.
>>80917769
That's not always true, though. He often clears the wait staff, prostitutes, strippers, etc. etc. out of the property before moving on to their bosses.
Punisher stories work on the assumption that everyone Frank kills definitely deserves it, not that they happened to be in the vicinity of someone who deserved it.
>>80917769
So mowing a mobster lawn makes the gardener guilty by association? Why? How did trimming a distasteful shrubbery hurt or help anyone?
>>80915359
I don't understand you people.
Why do you have an opinion on what a characters' morals are, should be, and how they're demonstrably and objectively infaillible.
Because I'm pretty sure that's not the point
Batman was traumatized by muh dead parents, so guns are a no-no and he doesn't kill because he thinks that'll make him "just like them". Alright that's a fine explanation, it doesn't need to actually be correct to work in the story, just coherent from the character's POV.
Punisher is a gun-nut who was traumatized by his family getting offed by blind injustice, so he's blind "justice" and it gets messy. It's no problem though, since his plot armor is about as thick as Batman's, the writers make sure to show that anybody who could have seemed innocent in fact isn't (crooked double-agent undercover cop). Either way, I don't think you're supposed to look at the Punisher's morals and go "hey, this guy got it all figured out".
All in all, prep time aint gotta explain shit.
>>80917943
I don't think this is supposed to be a moral discussion. I think OP was just musing "hey, how many undercover cops do you think the Punisher's shot over his career?"
>>80917677
>Frank eventually hijacks a nuclear bomb and drops it on them, and there's this French military officer who tries to stop him saying "There's two thousand breathing PEOPLE down there!" and you're just supposed to think "Pfft, fucking faggot Frenchie", but who's scrubbing the toilets and cutting the grass on this island? I don't think they hired exclusively murderers and rapists for that
According to that storyarc, the island was haven for people trying to avoid the law, so scrubbing the toilets and cutting the grass (if they even did that at all) would probably be a partial payment to stay on that island and avoid getting caught.
A better example is the first Barracuda arc with everybody on that Dynaco ship, but then again they were all probably like that one guy who begged Castle for help and then came crawling back.
>>80917966
None because of plot armor. The OP's premise is inherently wrong.
The Punisher isn't meant to explore that idea, Vigilante's 80's run from DC adds the nuances the Punisher won't work with.
Frank's got bigger plot armor than Batman. He'd never kill an innocent because the writers wouldn't ever address it. You go "YEAH KILLING SCUMBAGS IS GREAT", but forget about ol' Lucita who took the maid to put help put her son through school.
>>80917975
Also it doesn't look like the place has regular grass cutting.
>>80917975
>A better example is the first Barracuda arc with everybody on that Dynaco ship, but then again they were all probably like that one guy who begged Castle for help and then came crawling back.
Yeah, that bugged me too! That one executive is like "We're going to fuck the economy and get electricity shut off in the hospitals, and none of us care, nyah nyah nyah!" And Frank, I guess, trusts him on his word that every shareholder on the ship is even fully aware of the company's shady dealings, let alone thought through their implications.
And even if we assume everyone in the company is evil, I don't think they OWN that ship. Again, what about the people cooking the food and scrubbing the toilets there? I guess the fact that the ship crew knew how to find Frank's bombs suggests they're into some vaguely shady paramilitary shit, but all that really proves is that they're experienced in security detail, which may be expected of a ship that gets hired to cruise around with six-figure-a-year earners.
>>80918013
The Punisher was originally a Spidey villain, there wasn't much exploration to his morals because they were assumed to be unjust.
>>80918027
People building the shacks, then, or unloading boats full of booze and food, or doing laundry, or making sure the sewers work. Anywhere that permanently houses people has to have workers doing things that we take for granted, even if there are stains on the wall.
>>80918022
Writers do acknowledge his magical ability to hit the right person, the Punisher will never be the type of story to explore the socioeconomic aspects of crime, if he did he would be in Chicago shooting young black boys ages 12-18, and he wouldn't last a week.
>>80918096
And that worked back then, because it was just assumed that sometimes innocent people got caught in the crossfire. It was fine when he was a villain that the reader had a touch of sympathy for.
But now he's an anti-hero, and part and parcel of that (rightly or wrongly) is the unspoken but absolutely clear implication that he doesn't take out anyone that, say, just happens to look a lot like a murderer, or is the victim of an elaborate frame-up (which are a dime a dozen in comic books).
>>80918129
I guess so. Never bothered me much considering he is't treated heroically in universe (and also I don't read him), so I guess I just subconsciously assumed that he does fuck up a lot of time but is too autistic to realize it.
>>80917874
>that part of season 2 with all the potential members of the jury
>all of the people against Frank are white betacucks
>black women think he's a blessing
Based Marvel.
>>80917943
>I don't think you're supposed to look at the Punisher's morals and go "hey, this guy got it all figured out".
And why not? It's a perfectly valid stance on the issue of treatment of villains.
>>80918073
>>80917677
On the other hand, one thing Ennis liked about Dredd is that he had to make very hard decisions:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2009/08/24/garth-ennis-when-2000ad-was-the-future/
>Finally, there’s the best bit of all, to me the greatest moment in comics history: part 22 of The Apocalypse War. Having fought a losing battle against the invaders, seen half of Mega-City One destroyed, massacred collaborators and euthanised the critically wounded, Dredd has led an elite team of Judges into an East-Meg missile silo. Following one of the best action sequences I’ve ever read in a comic, the Judges find themselves unable to gain access to the operations room, until Dredd simply bangs on the door with his pistol and shoots the curious halfwit who opens it point-blank. Our boys storm the ops room and seal the door. Anderson, the telepath (and only volunteer in the Apocalypse Squad- no peacenik cosmic wandering in those days) pulls the launch codes out of the silo commander’s mind. The nukes are targeted on East-Meg One. “Please, Dredd”, begs the commander, “There are half a billion people in my city–half a billion human beings! You can’t just wipe them out with the push of a button!” And Dredd doesn’t hesitate, not even for a second.
>“Can’t I?”
>He can and he does. I still think about that today; what it meant about the character, and about the comic I was reading (aged 12). Even now I don’t know if Dredd was right or if he was wrong. It was the only way to win, to avoid the further slaughter and enslavement of his own people–but it was genocide. It was moral courage on an almost unimaginable level–but it was appalling. In the end, it was a dilemma not unlike those faced by a number of good and bad men in our own history, and if I had to sum it up in one line, I’d say this: what are you prepared to do when there isn’t any easy way out?
He probably purposely let the reader decide if Castle killed innocents or not.
>>80918249
Because he's presented as seen to be too extreme by other characters. It's not about whether you agree with him, it's about whether the world he lives in does.
Also no it isn't.
>>80918329
The argument for sparing villain lives is merely a mask for maintining status quo in comic books, because comics must persist on telling the same stories with recognizable faces and names. That's all it boils down to.
The worldview of a character or society within a work if fiction is merely a mouthpiece for the worldview of the author and ultimately the publisher.
>>80918186
>he is't treated heroically in universe
Eh...that varies from writer to writer, of course, but sometimes they unsubtly try to state that he's way nobler than the more conventional heroes.
I mean, they don't even go after him anymore, most of the time. Among the Marvel New York supers he's become that Dane Cook bit - the guy in a circle of friends that no one really likes.
>>80917874
> I would kill the Punisher.
Wolverine.
Cyclops killed Xavier.
Jean Grey ate a planet.
Gambit was part of a morlock massacre.
He's just pandering to the SJW crowd who think AoU is sexist.
>>80918405
>The argument for sparing villain lives is merely a mask for maintining status quo in comic books
Yes, I'm sure that's why murder is illegal and seen as imoral irl, aswell as the reason the death penalty has been abolished in most of the civilized world, because people really wanted a Charlie Manson comes back storyline.
The point is that your opinion (or mine) doesn't matter in whether you're supposed to see it as morally justified. It's all about...
>The worldview of a character or society within a work if fiction is merely a mouthpiece for the worldview of the author and ultimately the publisher.
Wait you didn't miss the point entirely. In his world, the Punisher's morals are treated as unjust, then that's how you're supposed to take them, whether you personally agree with that or not is besides the point, his stance is not valid in-universe because it isn't treated as such.
>>80918258
Dredd is the fascist everyone secretly wants to be.
>>80918483
>I mean, they don't even go after him anymore, most of the time
Yeah that's a bit incoherent, he should be treated as a villain with noble motivations by some other heroes, not as a hero with questionnable methods, and thus he should be antagonized by them more than he is,
> the guy in a circle of friends that no one really likes.
I always thought that was Spidey.
>>80918574
>I always thought that was Spidey.
This is also true in a different way.
>>80918531
>>The argument for sparing villain lives is merely a mask for maintining status quo in comic books
>Yes, I'm sure that's why murder is illegal and seen as imoral irl, aswell as the reason the death penalty has been abolished in most of the civilized world, because people really wanted a Charlie Manson comes back storyline.
You either missed his point or willfully ignored it. He's saying that the reason why comic vigilantes don't kill even when it's logical to do so is an industry one. It's a pain in the ass to come up with new villians all the time, especially after giving them some depth.
>>80918668
The meta reason certainly exists, but it's not unreasonable to think a vigilante, fictionnal or not, could have a no-kill rule outisde of meta reasons.
It's not *the* explanation considering plenty of other characters refuse to kill in fiction even if they don't rely on villain comebacks to sell a sequel.
>even when it's logical to do so
It's not about logic, it's about morals. Logically a super-prison should be able to hold ther Joker or Bullseye, it just doesn't.
