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If someone wanted to ignite a particularly fierce debate, they might argue that Holden Caulfield from JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and The Punisher from Marvel Comics are some of the most widely misunderstood characters in fiction. I don't know if I am that person today, but I am sure they are certainly out there, somewhere. 

Either way, I think a lot of us can agree that both characters have quite a bit of depth to them. And for The Punisher, that's thanks in part to writers like Chip Zdarsky, who have brought their own spin on the character to Marvel Comics. If you remember, the Punisher showed up in the first arc of Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto's Daredevil run that began in 2019. As Daredevil writers like Ann Nocenti have shown us, a good Daredevil vs. Punisher fight (whether that's verbal or physical or both) can be everything for Fans Without Fear. 

On the Near Mint Podcast, Zdarsky opened up about his experiences writing Frank Castle, and why he doesn't feel that he could write a solo Punisher series. "I loved writing Punisher as a guy who drops in. I could never write a Punisher book. I couldn’t write him as like the main guy," Zdarsky began. "I wrote him in Daredevil and I wrote him as like a gun-toting Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, where he just calls everyone phonies, and he’s just like nuts. And like that’s great for a guest star. You can’t hold a comic a full title by portraying him that way, you know?”

In all seriousness, the Punisher having Holden Caulfield vibes makes sense, given that Holden's feelings of postwar America being full of phonies was a reflection of JD Salinger's attitude. Salinger was a World War II veteran who had survived fighting on Utah Beach on D-Day while carrying the first few chapters of The Catcher in the Rye on his person. As we know, Frank Castle is a Marine veteran who doesn't exactly have a sunny view of his country, either. 

Fear not, we have the essentials when it comes to Marvel's Daredevil - especially with Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again. Check out:

• The key difference between Netflix's Daredevil and Marvel Studios' Daredevil: Born Again, according to the showrunner
• The best Daredevil stories of all time
• What to watch before Daredevil: Born Again 
• Popverse Picks: Our favorite things for Marvel's Man Without Fear including Ann Nocenti comics, the Netflix series, and more
• How Vincent D'Onofrio reinvented Daredevil's Kingpin
• Marvel's Daredevil actors, ranked from Charlie Cox to Ben Affleck and even Rex Smith
• How Frank Miller accidentally killed a Daredevil cartoon (and Marvel killed a book to avoid pissing him off)
• That time we caught Daredevil actor Charlie Cox sneaking into New York Comic Con as Bluey