Speaking as someone who once owned Spider Man #1, I would wish that more people would be aware that Gerry Conway, the co-creator of PUNISHER was so upset by the way the Punisher logo was used to spread racial hate and violence that he had 26 t-shirt designs commissioned to raise awareness, with all proceeds going to BLM. (One of them was a very prescient trans-justice design. I'm proud to own 2, as well as several of the other designs sold.)
Unfortunately, not many shirts were sold, as Marvel was (seemingly) unwilling to offer support. Your exceptional article makes the reasons clear.
In addition to owning >25K physical comics, I am also a PC gamer on the Steam gaming site. Shortly after George Floyd's murder, I searched for BLM groups on Steam and found only two; both inactive.
But Steam has too many hate groups to count, and is in fact being investigated for it. Seems hate is indeed where the money is...sometimes.
(As an inside, I once ran into a guy in Walmart wearing some sort of "faux-Punisher" shirt. It actually was a nice shirt, and didn't reference Punisher specifically, so I complimented him on it. I explained to him about the "Skulls 4 Justice" concept, and that Punisher was actually not racist. His response was that "he would never be like that." Clearly, one more "Racist Punisher" fan yet to read a single Punisher story...)
Thank you, Mason. Very thoughtful and immaculately researched.
