If there was ever a time for a spree-killer superhero on television – an open question, certainly – the time might not be now.

The Punisher is a bloodthirsty vigilante and the protagonist of Marvel’s latest Netflix offering. It’s, unsurprisingly, awash in stylish ultra-violence, away from the more restrictive rules that govern network-dwelling comic book adaptations. It’s been the mode of almost all of the streaming giant’s Marvel shows: dull, often pointlessly nasty brutality with some languid speechifying between crunching bones. In the Punisher’s case, though, it’s not even artful fist-fighting but the titular character blasting away at flesh-and-blood humans with a variety of automatic weapons.

Iron Fist is a terrible show – and it's not Donald Trump's fault Read more

He’s one of the more markably odd Marvel Universe creations, introduced by writer Gerry Conway and artist John Romita Sr in 1974 to be a minor Spider-Man villain. “I kill only those who deserve killing, Jackal,” he explains to one of the series’ less ambiguous bad guys. Do go on.

A few months later, after trying to kill Spider-Man as the result of what must have been a very embarrassing mix-up, it turned out the Punisher was a man named Frank Castle who had been to Vietnam and returned home only briefly before his family was killed in the crossfire of a gunfight between gangsters during a day at the park, a scene vividly realized in the new series.

Much like Batman, but without the fun villains, millions of dollars, or respect for the sanctity of life, Castle prowled dark alleys in black body armor with a white skull on it looking for any old crook to destroy in empty vengeance, and, having become one of Marvel’s stock players after a few years, was never allowed to die convincingly or grow into someone more complex in the infinite story that is the Marvel Universe. In his original incarnation, the Punisher was a judge, as well as an executioner, in a mode not too different from pulp characters like The Shadow who anticipated the birth of superheroes.

The Punisher’s drive to simply kill anyone who seems to deserve it is extremely hard to countenance on the heels of multiple horrible shootings available for viewing in current nonfiction programming. But of course it is also part of the character’s appeal – his motives aren’t inscrutable, after all. It’s in the name.

And that’s a lot of the problem: Frank Castle exists at the intersection of the uncomfortably appealing and the unforgivable – a crowded cultural waypoint at the moment. There’s not much to like: Frank embodies a hateful stereotype about damaged veterans who lose their marbles, violence is his first resort, and the less said about the character’s diehard fans, the better: Chris Cantwell, a neo-Nazi who helped to organize the lethal “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, posed, biceps flexed, in a tight T-shirt with the Punisher logo emblazoned on it in his now-deleted OkCupid dating profile. “Frank Castle wants to have a chat with you, Cantwell,” tweeted a disgusted Conway.

But the character is wildly popular, and not just with cretins like Cantwell, and the question becomes how to, er, execute a Punisher story in a way that doesn’t simply pander to the reader’s worst self (a tactic that has, admittedly, also been tried).

The problem with Frank Castle, and the solution to writing him well, is that if you sympathize with him, something has gone terribly wrong somewhere. The best take on the Punisher’s predicament so far is a hundred or so issues by writer Garth Ennis, who makes the convincing case for Frank’s mission as a sort of tragic punishment. Tantalus got that fruit, Sisyphus got that boulder, Frank got his arsenal and an endless supply of bad men.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jon Bernthal in The Punisher. Photograph: Nicole Rivelli /Netflix

It helps that Ennis is something of a war wonk – his newest project with the character, The Platoon, is set during Frank’s pre-Punisher years in Vietnam and is enthusiastically accurate about the Tet offensive – and the expansion of the Punisher’s life story under Ennis gave the character some grace notes that the writer would use to offer the reader the tiniest glimmers of hope that Frank might be able to find redemption, only to snatch them away. It was, by most measures, a horror comic.

Will Hollywood ever end its love affair with guns? Read more

Marvel has chosen to change a lot of this for the Netflix show; Frank’s war is Afghanistan – a war still being fought, though Conway didn’t make the Punisher’s roots in Vietnam explicit until three months after that war was over. He’s also a character capable of close emotional bonds, something the better takes on the character make a show of avoiding. And Jon Bernthal is a talented actor with emotional range; Ennis’s Punisher is more Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven. It’s a mark of how likable Bernthal seems that we want to see him saved in the new show.

In his most frightening and vivid incarnation in the comics, the Punisher will be consumed by his mission, and it will destroy him. Ennis wrote that story a few years ago, set far in the future, a parable of dying by the sword: Frank, having recently emerged from a bunker where he has ended all hope of continued human life, begins to hallucinate that he’s back in Central Park with his family just before their murders. He isn’t – he’s dying of radiation poisoning as he walks between heaps of bones of the last people, save him, to die. “Maybe this time,” he thinks, “I’ll be in time to save them.”