20 Comic Characters That Are Total Rip-Offs
8. The Punisher
Frank Castle was just a regular Vietnam vet and loving family man until, one day, his wife and child were caught in the crossfire of a Mafia misunderstanding. He had just gone out for a fun picnic.
He went home a changed man, and on that day began his one-man war on all criminals, with absolutely no intent to take them alive. Unless he was in the Spider-Man cartoon, in which case he just zapped people with lasers.
Totally a rip-off of: The Executioner
Don Pendleton came up with Mack Bolan - better known as The Executioner, and not the singer from glam rock band T-Rex - in 1969 with his thriller novel War Against The Mafia. The book introduced Bolan, a Vietnam vet who returns from the war to discover that the Mafia has torn apart his family by forcing his younger sister into prostitution to pay off some dodgy loans, resulting in her father killing her, her mother and himself out of shame.
From that day forward, Bolan wages a one-man war on all criminals, with absolutely no intent to take them alive. Besides the basic premise, The Punisher also borrows Bolan's "war journal" and his tooled-up "war van", plus he too had a habit of taking the hardline when it came to...well, punishment.
As in he shot criminals in the face. Which is exactly what Pendleton's most famous character had a habit of doing as well.