25 years ago, Marvel predicted the story of Luigi Mangione in a Punisher comic

There is no one left in the world who does not know Luigi Mangione, the man romanticized by the Internet who cold-bloodedly murdered the CEO of UnitedHealthCare. Some call him a hero, others consider him a villain of our times, and some believe it has been the wake-up call that the United States needs to change its values regarding healthcare. And a few have delved into pop culture to find similarities. Because, as they said in Battlestar Galactica, all of this has happened before… and will happen again.

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Punisher Mangione

It was the year 2000 when Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, and Jimmy Palmiotti tried to revitalize the story of Punisher, which had been in limbo with very short collections for a while. The vigilante from Marvel, always with his gun ready to dispense his justice where the courts cannot (or do not want to) returned at the hands of a team that did not hold back in violence and blood, and at the beginning of the century, that was saying a lot.

In that story, Frank Castle returned to action, discovering that his actions had created antiheroes like Mister Payback. And what did this man do? He took revenge against the CEOs of companies by murdering them throughout New York. Does it sound familiar? Moreover, he had a manifesto: after shooting one of these bosses live, he spoke to the television cameras saying “They call me a criminal, although all I do is execute trash that feeds off the blood of millions of people (…) and run American businesses like a gigantic death machine”.

Of course, Punisher had a problem with him: in his killings, they also accidentally killed up to four innocents, and he was not willing to allow it… so he finished them off with clean shots. And regardless of what anyone thinks, we can see Luigi Mangione in all these panels… And fortunately, that ending doesn’t seem likely.

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