Current Events > C/D: if a police officer idolises/misinterprets The Punisher, they're a bad cop

(+) Yeah! (+)

The Punisher is an over the top character who exacts morally dubious justice upon criminals in hails of gunfire. He's a power fantasy to some, but he was created as a character to contrast Daredevil and Spider-Man's methods for catching crooks - rather than bring them in, he'd rather kill them. Dude has his reasons, corruption in the police force being one of them, but alongside other superheroes his methods are extreme and can be shortsighted in favor of his own negative bias. He's morally grey, and he's one of the darker shades of grey on that scale.

Some police officers idolize the Punisher, to the point of wearing memorabilia depicting his unique skull motif, and some pro-police organisations use the same symbol in their support of the police force. Despite the Punisher raising questions of excessive force, the breakdown of law and order in favor of disproportionate violence/vigilantism and authoritarianism, there are police officers who look at the Punisher and go "damn the Punisher is a badass, I wish I could go around blasting scumbags like that!".

Do you think that a police officer who puts the Publisher's violent acts on a pedestal, and/or who grossly misinterpret the character as a violent power fantasy rather than as a morally questionable mass-murdering vigilante, is more at risk of being a bad cop than a police officer who approaches the character with a broader perspective on his actions?

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A lot of people misinterpret idolizing as its just cool to the douche bros because the skull is cool and The Punisher is a cool comic book character. Same reason why the military uses videogame characters stickers and stuff.

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the defense changes depending on who we're talking about on the subject of influences and idols, lol.
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Heyo

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I bet those cops dont even read the comics. If they did they would know punisher is almost always at odds with the police. He's usually being hunted by them. Partially cause he sometimes kills corrupt cops

>vigilantism is fine as long as you don't kill the Joker

Framing the Punisher as badwrong over someone like Batman just from the latter not killing misses what's wrong with vigilantism. The Punisher is frankly among the most believable depictions of vigilantism/supervigilantism since if one's already at the point where the law is so incapable that it depends on vigilantes then the state is a failure and it's really up to said vigilantes to be judge, jury, and executioner. At least, if you believe so.

Of course, superheroes are absurd by design since they're corporate and so must maintain a status quo (aka "how come superheroes don't solve serious problems like ISIS using super science" and "how is the Joker still alive") so that both the world remains like our own unless noted otherwise and so that the same characters can continue to be relevant. Works like Invicible and Irredeemable (which had a much better written "Evil Superman" than Injustice) aren't bound by these so they're allowed to have Superman make a Soviet Empire or the Iron Man/Brainiac/Lex Luthor stand-in conquer the world and be a legit good ruler.

40% of cops beat their wives

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