Hate America "Superhero"?

FrontPageMagazine ^ | May 12, 2004 | Michael Lackner

[fight_truth_decay]

The Punisher, Marvel Comics’ avenging vigilante, has become a radical. As well as taking out organized crime kingpins and thugs, he’s now taking on U.S. Intelligence and undermining support for the War on Terrorism. The publication of these comic book polemics coincides with the April release of the feature film “The Punisher” starring Thomas Jane and John Travolta.

Leftist propagandizing is not new to Marvel, nor to the author of the Punisher series, Irishman Garth Ennis. Two months after September 11th, the Punisher was featured threatening the life of President George W. Bush. The story portrays the President as a slobbering belching incoherent drunk, gleefully itching to launch nuclear missiles. The Punisher breaks into the Oval Office, tosses a nine-millimeter bullet before the President and warns ominously, “I can get in anywhere …Nine millimeters. I’m never further away than that.” Yes, you’ve got it right – Marvel published a threat to George W. Bush the President of the United States, only weeks after September 11th. Even viewed as sick humor, the tenor and timing of this piece was inexcusable.

Garth Ennis and I addressed the issue of anti-American comic book propaganda in an April 2003 white paper for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Marvel is now using its most recently spotlighted icon, the Punisher, to spread the same message of self-doubt and self-hate, this time published under its new MAX (explicit content) label.

In the new series, U.S. intelligence agents are vilified as the bad guys, selling heroin from Afghanistan to covertly finance assassination squads. Ennis shamelessly writes that “the smack comes packed in body bags along with dead GI’s.” A CIA operative tries to convince the Punisher to “hunt Bin Laden.” In response, the Punisher crudely spits back: “F-ck you.” [fully spelled] None of us realized that the Punisher was actually a closet leftist until, for Garth Ennis, we hear him inarticulately condemn the War on Terrorism: “Fighting for the people who run the world gets you stabbed in the back. You fight the wars they start and feed. You kill the monsters they create. You die from handling depleted uranium, while they get rich on oil. I’m not going back to war so Colt can sell another million M-16s. I had enough of that in Vietnam.” He then desecrates the memory of the 60,000 brave Americans whose names are carved in the black wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, by stating that they bear silent witness to this twisted viewpoint.

Marvel and Ennis don’t stop there. In a just released special one-shot story, this comic book franchise is used to denounce America’s pursuit of the War on Terrorism. In “The Punisher – The End” we find our hero in an America totally devastated by nuclear war caused by – of course – American militarism and corporate greed. We are treated to a pedantic “Progressive” discourse by the enlightened Punisher: “Once upon a time there was a bunch of evil f-cks. [fully spelled] Hardly anyone knew, because they were so good at keeping it quiet. But these particular evil f-cks owned the world. And they made the world a cruel and terrible place. They ran the great industries that poisoned the air. Their businesses turned whole countries into slaves. … They made puppets out of presidents and started wars for profit. Eventually, they came to believe that there was nothing that they couldn’t do. And so one day – inevitably – they pushed the planet’s luck too far.”

The Punisher explains how the end will come, “Ten bad years. Iraq was one thing. North Korea. Even Pakistan. You shout War on Terror at the Chinese and they laugh so hard the world blows up in your face. That’s the trouble with a war you never want to end.”

… a war you never want to end? Do our friends at Marvel really believe this drivel?

How very cold. Were we not attacked on September 11th? Hasn’t our Jihadi enemy unambiguously declared the intention to destroy us? Have we not heard their proclamations of bigotry and religious hatred? Hasn’t the world seen bloody terrorist attack upon terrorist attack? Can any sane person question what they will do if they get their hands on weapons of mass destruction?

It appears that Ennis and Marvel prefer to live in a vulgar world of leftist fantasy, where an evil American government allied with greedy multinational corporations is the enemy of humanity. If such self-hating beliefs are allowed to permeate the popular culture unchallenged, if our strength of will is sapped before we defeat our real enemies, our very survival may be jeopardized.

As if that were not enough – all this is really bad storytelling. Garth Ennis uses the Punisher as a two-dimensional stick figure to spout his ““Progressive”” political platitudes. Very uncreative.

____________________

Michael Lackner is an attorney and former comic book collector, co-author of “The Betrayal of Captain America” for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

[fight_truth_decay]

As you know The Cannes Film Festival got underway this week with Alexandra Err, daughter of Sen. Kerry, entering a short film about a family dealing with the aftermath of the Vietnam War. What is that family's ongoing fixation with the Vietnam war?

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a documentary (?) criticizing (so what else is new) Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks turned down by Disney. Moore will be sure to play to the international Bush haters, as he hopes for another standing ovation like he received 2 years ago for Bowling for Columbine. Fiction writer, Moore, must inanely believe, "Four legs good, two legs bad," as he appears to share in the ideology of terrorist pigs throughout the world.

[TheBigB]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1133915/posts

[Poohbah]

What is that family's ongoing fixation with the Vietnam war?

It's easier than making an intelligent statement on the issues facing America today.

[fight_truth_decay]

Hate doing a search and coming up empty..wastes my time as well. Thanks.

[KC Burke]

fyi

[hchutch]

Yeah... to the Left, every war is Vietnam.

[Bommer]

Want to hurt Marvel, boycott Spiderman 2. Tank the stock!

[SunStar]

Yeah... to the Left, every war is Vietnam.

A war that was started by the Democrats... Go figure.

[upchuck]

Duplicate ^. Betcha didn't do a search ^, didja?

[fight_truth_decay]

Always do a search, perhaps I spelled a word incorrectly. No intention, I assure you. Article is still running as well,upchuck.

Regards,
fight_truth_decay

[Charlespg]

I'm sticking to DC and Superman

[TheBigB]

As I stated on the other thread, Marvel's Iron Man is the polar opposite...Tony Stark is now W.'s Secretary of Defense and Bush's portrayal has been respectable. The current storyline has Tony in Iraq, and aside from some swipes at the troops not having the proper supplies, it's bene largely politic-free.

[Flux Capacitor]

Marvel (and the Punisher especially) has always sucked ass, and always will. No wonder I've been a DC partisan since kid-dom.... when Batman breaks criminal heads, he does it without pausing to reflect upon how the Gotham City Republican Party forced them to turn evil.

-Dan

[longtermmemmory]

Remember when Superman fought for "Truth, Justices, and the American Way"? Now comics are infested with PC scripts that praise the left and degrade good.

Comic book authors better get a dose of reality and remove their heads from their lower orafices or they will find their comic readers are at the same MIA place as male television viewers 18-45.

The fixation with CAUSING the defeat vietnam is that it was a victory for the left/communists. Kerry goes back to that vietnam place because it was a place where he won and his adversary (the USA) lost. Same for the hippie dopers, and commies. Now through comic books they are looking to cultivate hatred of home in a new generation.

[longtermmemmory]

Vietnam was the last war the US communists actually won against the USA.

[aft_lizard]

I have been pretty disgusted at how comics have mutated over the years. From taking Batman from being a uber-conservative vigilante to being a anti-gun nut and Superman becoming everything short of communist. They wonder why there average monthly subscription is below 150,000 a month. But now they have the big medium, the box office to force there tripe.

[aft_lizard]

Man they turned Batman into a anti-gun nut and Superman is a commie now, besides DC has always been way over melodramatic. I will take Marvel anyday, but they are pretty left also with there gay mutants and evil republican senators trying to wipe out the mutants.

[Flux Capacitor]

Don't know about Superman (whom I don't read), but I don't buy the idea that Batman is an "anti-gun nut" -- I've never seen any evidence of that. He prides himself on never using a gun, sure, but that's understandable considering the childhood trauma (that caused him to become Batman) of seeing his parents murdered with one. Aside from that, I've never seen him suggest that average citizens shouldn't be allowed to own them.

Besides, if Batman carried, he just wouldn't be Batman. He wouldn't have to rely as much on his physical prowess and sheer ingenuity; he'd be closer to being just another dull, unimaginatively-realized comic-book vigilante type. In other words, he'd be the Punisher. :)

(None of this is anything new, either.... Batman hasn't used a gun since the late '30s. Hell, I've got a reprint copy of BATMAN #1, Spring 1940, in which he challenges half-a-dozen thugs to take on Robin alone, with the caveat that the thugs can't use their weapons. He growls (I paraphrase), "I want to show the kids of America just how yellow crooks are WITHOUT THEIR GUNS!!!"

-Dan

[aft_lizard]

In the 1990's they ran a special Batman series called the seduction of the gun where a little girl gets killed by a handgun, it has been credited with helping pass the assault weapons ban.

From http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/reviews/94870032459041.htm

Batman's gun-use was apparently not the objection. Other writers have attempted to put a gun in Batman's hands and for absolutely no reason. Most fans reject these stories and rightly so as if they were infected skin grafts.

Batman hates guns. They repulse him. His definitive opinion on guns can be found in the highly recommended Seduction of the Gun by Jon Ostrander and Vince Giarrano where Batman recounts in chilling detail the murder of his parents. He ends his soliloquy with these final words.

"'Guns don't kill people.' Some will tell you. 'People kill people.' But I knew my father and I later met the man who killed him and I'll tell you something. He never would have been able to kill my father without a gun."