on the topic of my frank being a slipknot punisher.... what happened to frank's family is a tragedy - even people who don't like or agree with frank will agree on as much. but it was brutal too.
there's a panel somewhere that i didn't save where he describes how he'd had to hold lisa's insides inside after she'd been shot. how he'd had to watch maria fall first, who was shot the most amount of times but miraculously had nothing vital hit that would give the mercy of killing her instantly. how frankie looked relatively okay injury wise as frank looks at him head on - but when his son, screaming, turned to run when the shooting began, he was shot in the back of his head and the bullet went straight through his open mouth. so frank's last drop of hope is gone when it finally catches up to frankie and he collapses face first, showing frank the wound.
frank can't be with all of them. he can't keep lisa held together while she chokes on her own blood. he can't go and hold his son one last time. he can't check on his wife, riddled with bullet holes and bleeding out just feet away. and when lisa's choked sobs cut off abruptly, the adrenaline wears off and frank is left to lie in a puddle of blood formed by the people he loved most. forced to feel it seep into his clothes, forced to feel the earth beneath him soften, forced to smell the blood and the lingering acrid stench of a freshly fired gun. all he can hear is the paramedics pronouncing his children dead and deeming his wife a lost cause and there's nothing he can do about it. no choice but to hear them say his wife, his lovely maria, the mother of his children, his first love, the woman whose heart he was already breaking, was a lost cause.
and then there's the whole process after. the way no punishment is dished out because enough judges and enough cops are all on the payroll of the mafia. how frank has to live with the fact that his suggestion to go to the park, where he and the wife he loved but couldn't be there for discussed divorce, is what got them killed. how maria died thinking he didn't love her. when he did. so much. to the point where he did what he thought was right (offered her a way out) because he knew he could never be the man she needed nor deserved. on one hand, the people that killed his family need to be punished. something needs to happen. he needs to avenge them. but frank also hurt them, which is why 'the punisher' is as much a punishment for frank as it is for criminals.
the fact that everybody got away with it boils his blood. not only that they came out of it bloody but unscathed, but because of the pain they caused. frankie's death was relatively quick, but lisa and maria died in agony. frank had to look his daughter in the eye, holding her guts inside her, and reassure her that it was all going to be okay even though he already knew it was futile. it was a gory, merciless slaughter against innocent people. frank deems it necessary to give that same pain back. quick deaths aren't for those who don't grant them themselves. of course frank doesn't torture everyone because that would be time consuming, but the leaders and the kingpins? the ones who do cause pain and enjoy doing as much? frank likes to make it hurt. like it's revenge for all the people they hurt along the way. all the families they broke up. all the people they maimed for no reason outside of monetary gain or simply for their own sick desires.
frank needs to strike that same fear and pain into those who do it to innocent people without mercy or regret. their last moments need to be as terrifying and as painful as they deserve for the things they've done. frank would rather discard the knife lodged in a mans chest in favour of putting his boot on the lower half of his jaw and curling his fingers into the top half so he can tear them apart. i hate thinking about curb stomping because it makes me sick but if someone deserves it? frank is doing it. without hesitation, without remorse, just as they do the things they do. he will do all the nasty, violent, horrific things he has to until just hearing his name makes criminals piss themselves out of fear. they need to live in the same fear they make others drown in.