The Punisher

I get a lot of Badass of the Week e-mail requests for comic book characters and various sundry superheroes ranging from insane Japanese Manga monkey-robot warlords with lasers for arms to obscure X-Mutants with the power to read the minds of small children, produce an electromagnetic field by farting, or do something else that's equally as useless in day-to-day life.  While this is all well and good, I feel like I need to put forth my vision of what constitutes a real badass superhero.  Now I know I'm an old geezer who's been out of the comic book scene for a while, but when I was growing up I remember thinking that the fucking Punisher was the baddest motherfucker on the planet.

First off, the guy holds his own against all sorts of organized crime and powerful mutant villains and isn't even a real superhero - he's just some dude with enough guns to single-handedly outfit a revolution in a third-world country who has spent the better part of his lifetime cultivating a sense of revenge the likes of which makes the Count of Monte Cristo look like an inflatable inner-tube shaped like a purple bunny sailing down the River of Eternal Happiness.  He's got a chip on his shoulder the size of a small ocean liner, and he's one of the only heroes out there with the ballsack to shoot first, snap necks, punch peoples' faces into their brains, and leave the question-asking to the fucking reporters.

You see, the Punisher was just your regular run-of-the-mill average-joe Vietnam-vet ex-special forces hardcore Marine Recon Force motherfucker named Frank Castle (which is a badass name by the way), when all of a sudden one day the goddamn mob did what they do best - they had Castle, his wife, and his kids gunned down at point-blank range to keep them from testifying about a murder they'd witnessed.  Bastards.  Well Castle isn't the sort of dude who just sits there and dies from multiple gunshot wounds when he should be out living for revenge, so as soon as he recovers (through sheer force of will alone of course) he goes to the cops to report what happened.  Well you know the fucking cops are in the mob's back pocket, so they just smile and nod and take notes on their invisible typewriters.  Realizing he's getting blown off like a one-night-stand, Castle decides to take shit into his own hands (since he obviously doesn't really have a whole lot else going on).  He gets a leather trenchcoat, a bullet-proof black suit with a badass fucking skull embroidered on it, puts together an arsenal that makes Fatah al-Islam look like the Parent-Teacher Association and declares a one-man war on crime.  And I'm not talking just the Italian Mafia here either folks - he fucking goes after everyone from the Triads and the Yakuza to the fucking group of pre-teen bullies on the playground behind the Elementary School who beat kids up for their lunch money.  Nobody is safe from the Punisher's unique brand of balls-out "throw you face-first through a plate glass window and then shoot you in the neck with a sawed-off shotgun" style of justice.