A.Glass updates and insight (update 41)

 One of my fantasies (yes I am humble) is to write a Punisher series.  Using it as a proxy to somehow break the spine of the inundation of extremely skilled U.K writers, that in all retrospect have taken over American comic  book culture, I mean lets face the facts, the best American 'non American' writers for comic books are English citizens; bitter, uptight, cynical Brits like Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis etc etc etc.  In which I adore Alan Moore's sobering reminder, please refer to Alan Moore - Watchmen comic excerpt and recent interview, that the American comic industry was created by gangsters in the 1930's.  What better passing shot at an industry that you rose to fame in and have since become disillusioned with.  Using that realization and cynicism of  a commercialized American pop culture, is to say that it was created by organized crime.  Such is life in a commercial and capitalistic world.

Getting back to The Punisher. He is so 1970's with late 1980's crime ridden city as the backdrop, a stoic reminder of a writers, albeit magnified perception, that the subways of New York City is where the muggers, junkies, rapists and killers reside.  With the crime families living atop inside their mansions - all targets for a rogue vigilante.  It is that enveloping fantasy within ones mind that formulates a character like The Punisher,  as you sit on a train late at night, a slight paranoia encroaches, to the point you imagine being a vigilante - seeing yourself as that Punisher (refer to popular culture flashbacks to Martin Scorsese's brilliant expose of single male paranoia and fear ala Taxidriver).  The Punisher represents this desire of punishments outside from our legal system, he is such a quintessential male fantasy, almost perfectly created as a delivering vigilante, that kills what we fear and acts on our helplessness, our complacency. 

But with commercialized contradictions aside (a popular culture vigilante owned by mafia style businesses), maybe I'll settle for my own creation, that being  Sally Lucas aka Vengeance (of The Chaos Syndicate) a vigilante from Canada.  Probably the closest (but more satisfying) then I'll get to penning The Punisher, is reveling in ones own creation.  And be reminded by Moore's resonating warning, regarding the comic book industries (main players) roots.

"You have to remember that the comics industry was set up in the 1920s by Legs Diamond, Meyer Lansky, it was set up as a cover for bootlegging," said Moore.

"I'm talking about the original gangsters, as I believe the young people like to phrase it these days, the Meyer Lanskys and the Legs Diamonds. The ethics of the comics industry have not changed since those days when they were cheating Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who were two teenagers from Cleveland, who had created Superman, and National Comics.

"They waited until Siegel and Shuster were going off to fight in the Second World War. And then they told them that 'we need to own the characters while you're away, but you'll get them back as soon as you return'. These are the ethics that the industry runs on, they've not changed significantly in 70 years."