This is not a post about games...

While making myself supper, I estimated, for the sake of argument, how many people the Punisher would have killed since he started his "business".

First, let's forgo any North Vietnamese he killed on his three Vietnam tours. That's a big number we can ignore.

He started in 1976 after his family's death, but really got into it only around 1978-79. So up to today, that will be 30 years of activity.

Let's give him a yearly average of one (1) low-life every other day (a drug dealer, a pimp, whatever). That's one-hundred and eighty-two (182).

But, take a few days off to make it a big round number, and to take into account droughts that may occur (the Rudolph Juliani years in NYC, for example, or just seasonal droughts provoked after a good "spring cleanup"). So within a year, he's got a batting average of one-hundred and fifty (150) scumbags and creeps. The guy's job really doesn't call for week-ends, but a few days off are sure to help him at the very least reload his guns...

Sometimes, he gets big orders : gangs, the Russian mob, and mafia families. Now, with surveillance and stakeouts, he can't be bagging slews of them every night, but still, we'll give him something around fifteen (15) goons and goombas bi-monthly. That's ninety (90) soldiers and Tony-Montana-Wannabes yearly.

Of course, as mentioned above, the Punisher goes into spring cleaning mode once in a while. And the man knows how to keep a tidy house, so we'll allocate a cluster of thirty (30) rotten pieces of shit, yearly again; to just, you know, get rid of the extra slack.

Of perverts and slavers, may they be child pornographers, rapists or "Eastern-bloc entrepreneurs", we'll estimate at least twenty (20) a year.

Considering all these numbers, we must remember that 30 years have past. The Punisher wasn't always this active, and spent some time out of Country, and in hideaway. It would be best to slash off 5 years from that. So we are left with a career of 25 years (and going!).

The final rundown?

25 years X (150 + 90 + 30 + 20) = 7250 criminals.

That's a small rural town.

It would be fair to say that the only Marvel character to have a bigger body count all to himself is GALACTUS.

I had never put it in numbers before, but it confirms my thoughts about Frank Castle : he's insane, especially if you consider the definition of insanity to be "repeating something and expecting a different result every time".

But then again, he knows it's a losers battle...