Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: marvel, punisher, Skull

The Punisher Gets A New Devil Skull Logo For 2022

Published Mon, 20 Dec 2021 09:57:13 -0600

Earlier today, Bleeding Cool ran the news about a new Punisher series from Jason Aaron, Paul Azaceta and Jesus Saiz – but we may have buried the lede a little. That the Punisher is getting a brand new look and losing his old skull, it seems.

As we mentioned, we have covered increasing criticism of the use of the Punisher skull by police, army, militia, white supremacist groups, QAnon events, and Sean Hannity on Fox News, even Trump Punisher pins have been popular. And then during the January 6th Insurrection at the Capitol building in Washington, many Punisher skull insignias were seen. This also followed Black Lives Matter protests and a focus on real and fictional police behaviour, including the use of Punisher imagery by the police. Amidst calls for Marvel and Disney to cancel The Punisher as a character, Bleeding Cool observed that this may have happened already and that there had been no published or solicited Punisher comic books since November 2020. There was a collection of Punisher Vs Barracuda – but that series was never completed. It was initially postponed by the pandemic but then abandoned altogether, despite completed issues having been completed.

In July this year, Bleeding Cool ran the news that Jason Aaron was to reinvent The Punisher for a new age, adding the headline story "Jesus Saiz and Paul Azaceta Join Jason Aaron on Punisher No More". And today we ran the official news that Jason Aaron, Jesus Saiz, and Paul Azaceta are indeedlaunching a new Punisher series in March 2022. And the Punisher as featured seemed to be sporting a different skull. One that Marvel has trademarked.

The Marvel trademark describes thus; "The mark consists of a stylized design of a human skull with a horn design crossing the skull and extending upward from each side of the skull, with curved, pointed tusks extending from and away from each side of the jaw area." while the sign in the areas "Bones, human ; Human skeletons, parts of skeletons, bones, skulls ; Skulls, human" and "Devils ; Horns, persons having" and trademarking it for everything under the sun, including for this festive time of year, "paper party favors; paper party hats; Christmas stockings; Christmas tree ornaments and decorations; snow globes"

As Jason Aaron says "So many different groups have tried to appropriate the Punisher's symbol and write their own story of what that symbol means, to match whatever their agenda. But they don't get to define the story of this character. And it's the character of Frank Castle that I'm interested in. His story has always been a dark and twisted tragedy, about a man consumed by war, for better or worse, no matter what sort of shirt he wears. And that's exactly the kind of story we're telling here."

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