Punisher a hero or villian?

Is he a good guy or bad guy?

Good guy.

Punisher's a good guy, but he's one of those dark-harsh type heroes :)

he is insane

I think most people would say he is a good guy who does "bad things". He is an ends justfiy the means. You kill, rape, etc etc you die. no going to jail and getting out to do it again or some how beating the system on technicalities etc...

some people say he's a serial killer that should be locked up. That's true, but he does two things other comic book heros dont:

1) He's worked within the system and knows it's failures. He didn't fail the system, it failed him. It's not revenge but a system he found that actually works and stops bad guys permanently

2) He knows he's hated, a bad guy. He knows he is doing evil stuff. He will never be cheered. He will never have signal in the clouds or a parade. And if people do have souls he's going to hell. He knows this and is still sacrificing himself in every way for the betterment of mankind.

anti hero.....next..

The system didn't fail him, because it wasn't built for him. It was built for the people. Frank Castle is a man who can't reconcile the orientation of the system that he fought for towards the general welfare with the loss and suffering that his individual family experienced. He knows that as long as there is freedom, there will be bad people who take advantage of it. Sometimes, the good people will be able to keep them at bay, sometimes not. The Punisher is a positive result in this dismal ongoing game of chance.

I don't see him as offering a substitute for the system. The system does keep evil at bay in the land, for the most part. The Punisher targets specific individuals on the hidden underbelly of society, because he can.

Meh, like HercuThor said, the ends justify the means. The issue is when one of your "ends" becomes "not doing Thing A, regardless of the context", which curtails your competence to make ethical decisions based on what the situation requires (I'm looking at you, Batman).

- The artist formerly known as DarthMummy

He`s an anti-hero and is in the grey area a little but he is not a villain in the slightest.

Well it depends on who is writing him. Some writers show him as ultimately a good guy at heart who genuinely wants to do the right thing but who just happens to believe in no mercy and lethal force. Other writers like Garth Ennis or Jason Aaron, especially when writing the Punisher Max series, show him as little more than a messed up violent psychotic killing machine who preys on criminals to satiate his own thirst for vengeance and war and who had all his humanity die with his family.

The fact that he goes through great pains to ensure that no innocents are harmed in his crusade or the fact that he is hunting people who are the absolute scum of society, is the only thing stopping him from being a full blown villain.

Punisher kills bad guys, Punisher doesn't kill heroes or civilians so the obvious answer is a hero, a dark hero but still a hero.

Anti-Hero.

Anti-hero

Anti-hero

Anti-hero.

@voloergomalus: I think the idea that the system failed the punisher comes from the fact that the people who killed his family got away, not that the system was unable to protect his family in the first place. In that way I believe he's right.

I agree, and that is probably the main reason why he calls himself the Punisher, because he sees himself as meting out punishment where authority fails to do so.

But it still stems from the individual experience of injustice under a relatively successful, but imperfect system that is concerned with aggregate welfare in the interest of order. Punisher doesn't offer a substitute for the system, he offers alternative solutions from outside the system when offenders "slip through the cracks". He's like a pre-legal "fallback" of individual judgment for when the law can't resolve a grievance in a particular case.

I don't think the system failed him, because it never really cared about him specifically in the first place. Gangsters killing his family and getting away because of a lapse in the criminal justice system is acceptable as far as the system is concerned, as long as it doesn't pose a threat to long-term stability. As a military veteran, Frank was probably familiar with this negation of the value of an individual in overall strategy, but he still started a family in America because an individual who plays his cards right can share in the aggregate gains made by society. It's just that he couldn't accept a wrong done to him, but the system could. This is how he can flout the law while retaining a seemingly paradoxical sense of patriotism.

In general, there are two ways he "corrects" these wrongs. The first is by prevention, through either deterrence or killing of potential re-offenders. The second I find a little strange, but many people seem to identify with: retribution for its own sake, the sense of closure offered by seeing a bad person get his "just desserts".

- The artist formerly known as DarthMummy

Depends how you look at it. I'd say he's a anti hero.

Neither.

- He's an unhinged, enraged, PTSD suffering serial killer; however, his victims are primarily hardcore criminals and corrupt authoritarian figures.

- He deals out death and torture for his own selfish, warped reasons, yet the results are typically beneficial to the surrounding communities.

- His actions are utterly reprehensible, but his motivations are entirely sympathetic.

Neither a hero nor a villain -- anti-hero is the archetype he resembles most, but even that is questionable.

He's w/e the writer needs him to be.

Punisher is what his name means. If you have to choose one over the other, he's further away from a villain than he is a hero. It depends on the perspective of the person being asked.

What does Cap think?

he's both.