Quote:So he is not doing things because that is the law (doing illegal things is what he does)... not doing things for himself. That would be the 'Neutral' part of 'Neutral Evil'. Removing the social axis (Lawful/Chaotic/Neutral) he can only be 3 alignments: Neutral good, True Neutral, or Neutral Evil.
He is not Nuetral Evil - he does not do evil things for evil's sake, and he's not driven by selfish urges at all. He is, in his way, entirely selfless.
So now for the ethical part of the axis. He has an agenda that isn't balance of all sides and he actually cares about things that don't really concern him (he makes them his concern)... so he isn't True Neutral. That only leaves Neutral Good or Neutral Evil.
The Punisher isn't out to die for his cause... he is out to make other people die for his cause... his cause is destroying evil, so it can't prey upon the general populous. That he does his evil only towards evil is irrelevant. The Punisher knows he is going to hell, he is just trying to speed up the trips of those that also deserve to go to hell. That is what makes the Punisher so scary... he has embraced his fate and his mission. He is a dead man walking in his own opinion... everyone can see his dead soulless eyes. The Punisher IS an avatar of his cause, the destruction of evil. The Punisher is a revenant with a living body and a dead soul. Revenge of the Innocent Victims incarnate.
Spiderman is Chaotic Good. He does good for society, even though he is bending a few laws like that one about vigilantism. Many super heroes are CG. Its one of the basic things that makes them Super Heroes in the first place. The Punisher is not Chaotic Good.
The only other alignment I can see is loosely Lawful Neutral (the law in this case the evil men should die for being that way) or Neutral Good.
Everyone has morals. Maybe not good morals. Maybe not understandable morals, but everyone has morals. If they match your personal morals or society's is totally irrelevant. Even the most psychotic and degenerate have a set of morals... even if its only 'What can I do for my own amusement today?' or 'Its rude to eat people you have a personal relationship with'. Having a set of morals is what having an alignment is in the first place... if your morals change too much you change alignments and suffer a personal crisis... you know like the Herman is throughout the story this thread refers to? That is why I brought alignment up... his unstableness is because his ethics and world view are changing.
The 'Shocker Legit' story starts off with Herman choosing to stop a rampaging Gamma mutant... and losing his car in the process. And killing for the first time. It spirals out from there.
I think that the reason that Herman can actually get The Punisher to laugh is he knows Herman is going through the same kind of thing that happened to him right before he was The Punisher. He works with Herman in part, because The Punisher recognizes what Herman is going through and it resonates with something inside him. This is why the Punisher is in the story... a parallel is drawn.
One thing I've found is that the 9 rank alignment system used in D&D is far more flexible that people give it credit for. For instance if your role-playing playing a character it should not be easy for others to tell your alignment from 5 minutes of play... I've known of campaigns that had a lawful good group with a chaotic evil leader... no one could really tell IC. The CE player yelled at everyone to follow orders and took first share of the treasure... which kept them in line and ended conflicts by the principle of if you can't decide its mine now... thus ending the conflict and giving the CE more stuff.
Quote:For The Punisher the choice is really between NG and NE. For me the 'soulless and dead eyes' thing is what puts the Punisher in the NE category. One of the things that games like Baldur's Gate and Fallout 2 have taught me is two characters of radically different alignments can end up doing the virtually same things as each other. Its the minor bits that change things.
He's a really warped form of Nuetral Good, but I think it's the closest the system has.
Alignment is more about how things get accomplished than what gets accomplished. If the Punisher robbed the criminals and funded the poor I'd go with NG or CG... but in the end the Punisher kills people, he thinks deserve a good killing. Also evil is not a synonym for psychotic... that is a character trait thet is separate, but related to evil and good. The Punisher does things that result in good, through evil genocidal methods. He is the evil that consumes evil... as far as I know he doesn't do redemption. In the case of the story he 'interviews' Herman and decides he'd be better to leave on the trail of a great evil. That and the Shocker doesn't have a body count of random civilians.