10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About The Punisher
5. He Used Polar Bears To Kill The Mob
Marvel Comics/Steve Dillon
Of all the various Punisher runs to have emerged over the years, none are held in more high a regard than Garth Ennis' MAX series.
Together with the infallible Steve Dillon, Ennis wove a violent, psychologically complex storyline that forced readers to reassess their opinion of Frank Castle. It wasn't prone to taking itself too seriously either, as was the case when Ennis had Castle lure his pursuers into a zoo to systematically tear them apart.
One henchman - gearing up for an audition for the latest Piranha film, we imagine - gets caught in a tank full of the critters and is devoured in less than a minute. Turning his attention to a pack of Polar Bears, Castle proceeds to provoke them in the hope that they'll attack the mobsters on his tail. Ma Gnucci, the main villain of the series, loses several of her limbs as a result.
Frank Castle: Polar Bear tamer. At least you can't say he's not resourceful.
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.
