The Creator of The Punisher Doesn’t Like Police Using The Skull Logo

In an interview with Syfy, The Punisher creator Gerry Conway said he wasn’t a fan of police using the vigilante’s skull logo, likening it to people who use the Confederate flag. Here are highlights:

On killing Gwen Stacy and her return as Spider-Gwen: “I’m really proud of my work on that issue — and the work of Gil Kane and John Romita. We had no idea that story would end up having the legacy it’s had, but even at the time I was conscious of wanting to drive home what I believed was the core theme of Marvel’s approach to superhero storytelling: that being a superhero doesn’t make you immune to tragedy, that superpowers don’t make you infallible, and that real life doesn’t always produce happy endings. Unfortunately, Gwen’s death also inspired some terrible stories, including the “girl-in-a-refrigerator” trope women in comics rightfully decry. I’d like to think that our approach to Gwen’s death wasn’t a cheap shot to create sympathy for our male hero, especially because I tried to use that tragedy more as a motivation for the emotional growth of the woman who would become the most significant female in Peter Parker’s life, Mary Jane Watson. But creators don’t control the response to their work. We can only stand back and observe. It’s astonishing to me that forty-five years later readers are still responding powerfully to that story. Astonishing and gratifying. As for Spider-Gwen… I love her, she’s a terrific addition to the Spider-Verse.”

On the Netflix Punisher series: “I wasn’t involved with the show at all. I did speak with the showrunner of the show and I do love what they did with the show. The Punisher was originally conceived as a villain and was not intended to be an anti-hero. But in the course of writing the first story, I realized that’s what he was — an anti-hero. He had a moral code I could use to resolve story points. And, it was a simpler time in the ’70s. You had a very black and white canvas on which to draw and to write –the storylines didn’t go into psychological depth of these characters. Mostly, we worked in broad strokes. Today though, given what we know about PTSD, what we understand about how soldiers are affected our ongoing, multi-generational war in Afghanistan, a character like the Punisher can speak to something that’s important for us to come to grips with as writers and artists. The way the writers approached the Punisher as a character in the show, was just perfect. They embraced the insanity and violence of the character but also revealed the depths of pain and anguish he was experiencing. They made him a heroic, damaged figure, someone you wouldn’t want your kids to emulate but who you could understand. That was a high tightrope to walk and they did it.”

On police using the skull logo: “I’ve talked about this in other interviews. To me, it’s disturbing whenever I see authority figures embracing Punisher iconography because the Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system. He’s supposed to indict the collapse of social moral authority and the reality some people can’t depend on institutions like the police or the military to act in a just and capable way. The vigilante anti-hero is fundamentally a critique of the justice sysytem, an eample of social failure, so when cops put Punisher skulls on their cars or members of the military wear Punisher skull patches, they’re basically sides with an enemy of the system. They are embracing an outlaw mentality. Whether you think the Punisher is justified or not, whether you admire his code of ethics, he is an outlaw. He is a criminal. Police should not be embracing a criminal as their symbol. It goes without saying. In a way, it’s as offensive as putting a Confederate flag on a government building. My point of view is, the Punisher is an anti-hero, someone we might root for while remembering he’s also an outlaw and criminal. If an officer of the law, representing the justice system puts a criminal’s symbol on his police car, or shares challenge coins honoring a criminal he or she is making a very ill-advised statement about their understanding of the law.”