I Know There Are People Who Would Pay Money For This

And here I was, worried I'd have nothing to post about tonight. Sally has this post, which talks a bit about Batman, his current adventures in time, and includes that panel of Batman tied up with cavemen all around.

Looking at it, I think Bats looks rather like Frank Castle. I think it's the stubble, or maybe the lines around his mouth. They make him look older, and I'd figure Castle should be older than Bruce Wayne*. This, of course, lead me to wonder what happens if the Punisher becomes lost in time. If he meets cavemen, and one of those cavemen tries to kill another because, you know, they're trying to survive, or they want the other one's stuff, or whatever, does Castle do what he does?

Initially, I was thinking of it in terms of whether he'd risk the timeline, but considering his timeline leads to the death of his wife and kids, I don't think he'd care**. There was a story in Marvel Knights Punisher about Castle getting Nick Fury to convince Reed Richards to send Frank back to Capone's time to kill him, under some premise that killing Capone would keep the sort of organized crime that took his family from existing. Yeah, I know, it was all a dream story, don't sweat it. At any rate, it would suggest Castle doesn't particularly worry about stuff like that.

Then I started wondering whether law exists at that time. If there are no laws stating it's illegal to take another person's stuff, or cave their head in with a rock, is it still criminal to do so?It could be considered immoral (that would depend on who is making the judgment, though), but without laws prohibiting it, it could be argued the person isn't actually a criminal***. Then I remembered Castle isn't much for technicalities, a crook is a crook, so if he saw a caveman doing something he considered criminal, he'd kill them.

* Though I'm not sure how old Bruce needs to be to incorporate his years of training, then Grayson's years of being Robin, then Nightwing, and Drake's time as Robin, and everything else. Wayne has to be in his early forties at least, right? I figure Castle's pushing 60, though.

** Plus there's Marvel's bit about how you actions in the past only create new timelines where those actions have an effect, but the original persists unchanged. When writers actually use that, anyway.

*** It reminds me of a piece from The Forgotten War, that I read back in March. Hierry talked about how the Germans would let a native of the islands off with a warning if they committed a crime, but were from a section of the island the Germans hadn't reached with their administrative and judicial offices. The reasoning being, they didn't know the law, so it would be wrong to exile them, or sentence them to hard labor. In that case the laws exist, but since the person in question wasn't aware of them, the laws in a way don't exist until the moment the Germans let them know about them.