Tuesday, June 30, 2009

His Thoughts! His Feelings! His Weapons!

It always amazes how reg'lar folk respond to you when you talk about different aspects of our little hobby.

The other night, I met a lovely young lady who happens to be working at The History Channel in their "hour long documentaries about shit that goes, "BOOM!" or "TWANG" division.

Guns were never really my "thing." As a former inner city black child, the only time I've ever held a gun was when I was dragged into the wilds of Virginia by strange men calling themselves, "scoutmasters." They put guns in my hand, forcing me to shoot their guns and toss around hatchets in a contest pitting me against boys my age in order to wear patches proclaiming our supposed mastery of things.

There were no women around, adding to my thoughts that something extremely suspect was afoot.

So, my only point of reference with what this woman does was either the above story or what I learned from comics.

Everything I know about guns I learned from The Punisher, specifically, Punisher Armory.

Yes, once upon a time, The Punisher was so popular that he could carry a comic where all he did was provide DVD documentary-style narration to his fucking guns.

It was sort of cool, actually.

It always went a little something like this, "Whenever I need to sweep a crackspot, I use The Mangulator K-9. It fires shit-covered bullets at a million rounds per millisecond, giving me the extra kick I need to send them all to hell. Just saying, "No," isn't an option anymore."

The look on this woman's face was absolutely priceless and one I wish I could bottle and take back to the initial pitch meeting for "Armory."

Mission accomplished, Marvel. The Punisher bridges all sorts of gaps, Racial. Gender. Philosophical. Sociological. And all with one simple truth:

Comics about comic book characters talking about guns makes girls laugh.

1 comment:

Garnet said...

Once you got to know the weapons better -- their hopes, their dreams, their rates of fire -- you could appreciate them better as guest-stars in the regular Punisher comic. "This month: Frank teams up with a Heckler & Koch P7!"