WANTED: Frank Castle A.K.A. The Punisher

"They hated that old man so much they shot him through my family. The world went crazy on a summer's day in Central Park, In the time before Uzis and Berettas, before nine millimeter popguns ruled the streets. It was a Thompson, like the ones our fathers carried, and I recognized its rattle even as its big, man-stopping forty-fives punched blood and breath from my lungs. I hit the ground besides my daughter. She's been gut shot, badly, and when she saw the things that boiled and wriggled from her belly the expression on her face was not a little girl's. My wife bled out later on the operating table, her heart a gaping hole her life drained through. Whenever i get careless, that yearning in her eyes creeps up and brings me to my knees. Right then the old man's soldiers started shooting back. My son dropped wordlessly, without a mark on him. I took a breath that cut like glass, spat blood, rose to my knees, picked up the boy and searched in vain for entry wounds. The bullet had entered through his open mouth. That was our picnic in the park. And now every night I go out and make the world sane."

"Every muzzle-flash means one more monster gone."

 

So I am a comic book nerd and have been since I was in fourth grade. It all started with the 2nd series of Marvel Comic Book Cards and my lunch. The cards at the time where really popular with the kids in my school and they spent time trying to trade and collect them. I was curious one day during lunch and asked to see a friends cards; and that's when I seen this card below:

The second I saw the card I was hooked on the character so using my lunch over the course of the next couple of weeks as trade so I collectthe rest of the cards in the series that had the Punisher on them. The third one I collected is below and has his bio, once I read that, I knew this would be my hero from then on out.

 Now you're probably curious as to why I would pick a complete psychotic anti-hero instead of someone like Spiderman or Superman. The reason why is because for my age at that point, I had seen things and experienced things that no child should ever have to. among other things; someone in my family had an addiction to cocaine and I felt like I had lost them to that at that point in my life. It caused me so much heartache and pain that it eventually turned into anger and hatred for those in society that do things like sell drugs and other things that hurt people and ruin families. For me Frank Castle was my hero because he did to them what I wish I could have done at the time. To this day I still read and re-read all my Punisher comics for the same reason. I would day dream all the time as a child that he would come and kill those that took my family away from me or that I was him rescuing others from the same fate. I even dressed up as him as a child for Halloween (which everyone confused me with Rambo...really Rambo?!). He was a fictional character of course, a horrible one at that in terms of what a "hero" is supposed to be. But unlike others at the time, he was always there for me as a child making me feel safe when I didn't at times and helping me cope with what was going on in my life. To this day I own most of the comic books, all of the movies (as horrible as they are), and a few action figures including the first one I got as a kid which sits at my work desk.

I guess heroes aren't always perfect and I've seen that early on in life. So many people become disillusioned by their heroes when they find out that they aren't real or that they make mistakes but why do either of those matter really? If they mean anything to you, then they are real to you; if they make a mistake, well so do you, you have something in common. Think about this, you might end up as someone's hero one day if you're not already, even if you're not perfect.