Punisher co-creator Gerry Conway thinks the militaristic anti-hero needs to evolve to stay relevant in the 21st century -- and, ideally, should be a Black veteran in his next iteration.
"You know, there'll come a time, just like in the '80s, when that character can be rebooted, you know, and turned into something new," Conway said on an episode of the design podcast 99% Invisible devoted to the Punisher's famous skull logo. "I mean, my personal preference would be that the next iteration of the Punisher would be a Black vet, you know, who comes back and faces the issues that minorities in the world face today."
Conway, who created Frank Castle in the '70s alongside John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru, stressed that he always thought of the Punisher as a vigilante who felt compelled to take the law into his own hands as a means of criticizing its failed systems. After all, he had been spun out of the frustrations that Conway and his fellow creators felt towards U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
"For many people of my generation that was a fundamental social crime that we felt that the government was perpetuating, which, by itself, sort of undermined your sense of the government as a force for good," Conway said. ". . . The Punisher represents kind of a Rorschach test for the era that readers discovered him in. For me, in the early '70s, he was a response to a dysfunctional era in American history. In the '80s, he's a triumphant character representing a black and white view of the world. And in the 2000s, he's the dysfunctional Punisher -- the despairing tragic hero who is really an outcast and no longer represents anything except his own ID."
With the character's personality and logo now increasingly associated with law enforcement and white supremacy groups in the 2010s and 2o20s, Conway said reinventing the Punisher as a Black man would be a stronger reflection of today's cultural zeitgeist, possibly allowing him to feel proud of the character once again.
Ironically, 1991's The Punisher #59 featured a very literal interpretation of Conway's statement at the conclusion of the story arc "Final Days," written by Mike Baron and illustrated by Hugh Haynes. Over the course of the poorly aged tale, Frank Castle received multiple wounds to his face, undergoing a skin graft procedure and melanin injections that literally transformed him into a Black man. For the next three issues, Frank would face racist police officers, gangsters and ally himself with Luke Cage until his skin faded back to white. Amusingly, Frank withheld his true identity from Cage until the end of The Punisher #62 -- only referring to himself as "Frank Rook."
Source: 99% Invisible