10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About The Punisher

9. That Time He Wore Blackface

The Punisher Blackface
Marvel

Yep, what you're seeing is real. When was it released? 1991. Nineteen. Ninety. One.

In the storyline, Frank Castle - everyone's favourite perennial fugitive - is on the run and in need of a change of identity. Seeking out a disgraced surgeon, Castle goes under the knife and emerges as a black man, with writer Mike Baron using the opportunity to team Frank up with Luke Cage in some bizarre blaxploitation story-arc.

The storyline was as cringe-inducing and insensitive as it sounds, and Baron was taken off the book shortly after. As for Castle? The procedure soon wore off and he hit the road again, probably in search of a better creative-team.

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.