But have you seen American Power? Writing for the arch-conservative FrontPageMagazine.com, Michael Lackner turns an eye to The Punisher comics series, and the "leftist propagandizing" of Marvel and "Irishman Garth Ennis" (h-h-he's not even American!):

"In a just released special one-shot story, this comic book franchise is used to denounce America’s pursuit of the War on Terrorism. In The Punisher – The End we find our hero in an America totally devastated by nuclear war caused by -– of course -– American militarism and corporate greed. We are treated to a pedantic 'Progressive' discourse by the enlightened Punisher: 'Once upon a time there was a bunch of evil f-cks. [fully spelled] Hardly anyone knew, because they were so good at keeping it quiet. But these particular evil f-cks owned the world. And they made the world a cruel and terrible place. They ran the great industries that poisoned the air. Their businesses turned whole countries into slaves. … They made puppets out of presidents and started wars for profit. Eventually, they came to believe that there was nothing that they couldn’t do. And so one day – inevitably – they pushed the planet’s luck too far.'"

Lackner, who in 2003 co-authored a white paper with Michael Medved called "The Betrayal of Captain America" for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, sums up the problem with The Punisher thusly:

"It appears that Ennis and Marvel prefer to live in a vulgar world of leftist fantasy, where an evil American government allied with greedy multinational corporations is the enemy of humanity. If such self-hating beliefs are allowed to permeate the popular culture unchallenged, if our strength of will is sapped before we defeat our real enemies, our very survival may be jeopardized.

"As if that were not enough –- all this is really bad storytelling. Garth Ennis uses the Punisher as a two-dimensional stick figure to spout his 'Progressive' political platitudes. Very uncreative."