Punisher Retrospective Cosplay Gallery On National Vietnam Veterans Day
Today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day, which got started in 1974, marking the then one-year anniversary of the last U.S. forces leaving Vietnam. Since then, it became a widely recognized unofficial day of observance, until 2018 when the federal government recognized March 29 officially as the day to honor the service of veterans of the Vietnam War.
To mark this day, I have a brand-new cosplay retrospective gallery of a character I’m surprised I haven’t highlighted before — Frank Castle, U.S. Marine sniper and Vietnam War veteran, a.k.a. Punisher. Since the character first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #129 in 1974, Frank Castle’s background has been updated with the times to a veteran of the Iraq War. For decades though, he was a Vietnam War veteran and I think that qualifies him for being the right choice for this day.
The Netflix series The Punisher does a fantastic job of framing the struggles of veterans returning home from war, both from Castle’s perspective and that of other soldiers he meets in a support group. Initially the comic character’s background as a vet was mostly for character flavor, but as Punisher evolved, so did the stories about his service and his return to civilian life. Published under Marvel’s adult MAX imprint in the early 2000s, writer Garth Ennis explored Castle’s time in Vietnam in a number of limited run titles, such as The Punisher, Born, and PunisherMAX.
Cosplayers in this gallery include Nicole Marie Jean, christians_comics87, thekeithzen, abbydarkstar, lounatic_cosplay, ashleydarkphoenix, and many more.
We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.
To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.
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