Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: marvel, punisher, steven grant

Steven Grant Has A Big Idea To Bring Back The Punisher For Marvel

While Steven Grant did not create The Punisher for Marvel Comics, he does have the reputation for making The Punisher what we know him for today. In 19885, he wrote the first Punisher solo series, turning the character from a Spider-Man villain into a protagonist in his own right. He would become one of Marvel's most popular characters of the nineties, eventually spawning three movies and a TV show.

Of late, The Punisher has become a problem for Marvel. The Punisher Skull image has been adopted by militia groups, as well as being used to celebrate legally questionable army and police tactics. Armed force and police forces have had to be instructed not to use the  skull image. Not all of them abide by it. The Punisher skull image was also used by QAnon for recruitment purposes and worn by armed rioters at the Capitol last month.

Marvel Comics stopped publishing Punisher comics in early 2020 with Punisher Soviet by Garth Ennis, and cancelled the Punisher Vs Barracuda series in mid-production, remaining unpublished even through the first four issues had been completed. This was in the light of the image being used by police during the Black Lives Matter protests. But what is a publisher to do, just abandon it?

On Facebook this weekend, Steven Grant posted;

Out of the blue this morning I got the BEST idea for The Punisher that would make SO much of what's gone on with him at Marvel Comics make sense. Too bad Marvel wouldn't want it & no one's ever going to hear what it is…

Wouldn't they? I understand that Marvel has been made aware and may be in touch. Grant added;

Maybe I should do a Byrne & just start bootlegging my own Punisher stories. (Nah, John's his own artist. I'd need one, unless fans were VERY VERY tolerant…)

John Byrne has been writing and drawing Elsewhen, continuing X-Men at a point when he left the book – and is currently posting the nineteenth full issue. Marvel Comics, via its EIC C.B. Cebulski offered to publish the series, officially, but Byrne declined. It looks like Steven Grant would be more willing if such a possibility existed.

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