The Punisher’s Jon Bernthal Comments on Logo Misuse

With The Punisher in the news as of late due in part to the insurrection of the United States Capitol last Wednesday, Jon Bernthal has offered his comment on the situation. Echoing the thoughts of Punisher co-creator Gerry Conway and comic writer Garth Ennis, Bernthal says those that don the logo of the gun-toting Marvel character “have nothing to do with what Frank stands for or is about.”

“I’m with you. Beautiful work,” Bernthal said in a retweet of Frank Castle fan art. “These people are misguided, lost, and afraid. They have nothing to do with what frank stands for or is about. Big Love.”

Though the use of the logo first came to the forefront in 2019 after law enforcement officers were spotted using it on cars and uniforms, some of the insurrectionists involved in Wednesday’s storming on the Capitol building could be seen with Punisher patches on their clothing. According to Ennis, those that treat the characters as an idol are “halfwits.”

“I’ve said this before a couple of times, but no one actually wants to be the Punisher,” Ennis said. “Nobody wants to pull three tours of duty in a combat zone with the last one going catastrophically wrong, come home with a head full of broken glass, see their families machine-gunned into bloody offal in front of their eyes, and then dedicate the rest of their lives to cold, bleak, heartless slaughter.”

He continued, “The people wearing the logo in this context are kidding themselves, just like the police officers who wore it over the summer. What they actually want is to wear an apparently scary symbol on a T-shirt, throw their weight around a bit, then go home to the wife and kids and resume their everyday life. They’ve thought no harder about the Punisher symbol than the halfwits I saw [on Wednesday], the ones waving the Stars & Stripes while invading the Capitol building.”

Conway said something similar in 2019.

Both seasons of The Punisher are now streaming on Netflix.