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Punisher Angst Over Mass Shootings Is The Most Read Marvel Comic Right Now – But Nothing To Do With Marvel

On October 23rd. Alex De Campi tweeted a comic by her, Dave Acosta and Dee Cunniffe, the second of her Hell's Kitchen Movie Club comics featuring Bucky Barnes, The Winter Soldier and Frank Castle, The Punisher, watching movies together.

A fan comic, albeit one created by comic book professionals, it was in no way sanctioned by Marvel Comics. After all, it has Frank Castle, The Punisher, in angst over the real-life mass shootings he seems to have inspired, to the Winter Soldier. Along with this essay about creative responsibility in the light of the Las Vegas shootings.

In the last three days, however, that tweet has been read by over 150,000 people. More than any actual Marvel comic in that time.

It has the benefit of course that it's free. And short. But with conversation at Marvel Comics about going back to meat'n'potatoes comics, maybe this demonstrates that there is room for something else…

In an accompanying essay, De Campi says.

Then the Last Vegas shootings happened. Dave and his wife did a lot of the graphic design for that concert; they had many friends in the audience. And suddenly a lot of the casual conversations in bars we'd been having about these characters and their larger presence in the American cultural landscape got very real.

Look, I'll go to my grave swearing that artists have a duty to be irresponsible. You try for responsibility in art – giving the audience what they expect – and you end up with Soviet Realism, or WPA murals. They're pleasant enough in their way, but they don't really make you feel anything, do they?

The act of creation is, at heart, wildly irresponsible. So, sure. Be daring. Tweak noses. Astonish and anger your audience. But remember there is first a far more fundamental rule, the numero uno, the bedrock law of existence in civilised society:

Don't be evil.

And don't enable the use of your creations for evil by others.

As well as an accomplished music video director, De Campi is a true innovator of the comics medium, creating the modern layered digital comic with Valentine (and getting ComiXology to provide the infrastructure to support it) and continues to innovate with her work. She may also have the widest breadth of comic writing talent, writing My Little Pony and Grindhouse at the same time, which nicely led to writing Archie Vs Predator. Feel free to read her Uncanny Valley Girl columns any time.

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