Sorry to drag the Punisher discourse back here, but – the most frustrating thing about this character and his fandom is the way people keep using his ‘you’re one bad day away from being me’ line. I know that’s a show thing, but – Matt has had a whole succession of bad days and will probably have more if the next season is going to deal with his comics-canon periods of homelessness. Still not killing. Jessica Jones, whose life was torture for months and who still has killed *once*, in desperate-

-circumstances, when there was no other choice. Luke Cage, who has been through *so much shit*, has lost family, has been unjustly imprisoned – genuinely unjustly, not ‘I don’t want to take responsibility for all those people I killed’ – and so many others. It’s just- It’s frustrating that this is never called out, because the *choice* to commit violent acts is important. Making it seem like something beyond control makes it something somehow above or below criticism and it’s so frustrating!

Good point. One of the things I liked about Daredevil Season 2, although there was plenty I didn’t like, was the way it inverted the whole scene where Punisher chains Daredevil to a chimney with a gun and has him choose between letting the Punisher kill someone or shooting the Punisher in the head. The original scene – written by Garth Ennis, one of my least favorite comic book writers ever – is supposed to show that the Punisher is right and Daredevil is a hypocrite and morally weak:

Ultimately, Daredevil pulls the trigger, only to find out that the Punisher removed the firing pin ahead of time so that he can both expose Daredevil as a moral fraud and kill someone at the same time. Because Ennis is always more interested in inflicting a humiliation conga on his antagonists than writing actually compelling storytelling. 

In the show, we get something far more interesting: Daredevil finds a third option, shooting the chain and freeing himself, stopping the Punisher in the nick of time, and then saving the Punisher’s life from an entire biker gang without killing anyone, by using the gun as a club and the chain as a flail. It’s a statement, that what makes a superhero is that they go beyond the limits in order to pursue justice while upholding their principles, by not taking the easy way out.