One of the most popular brands under the Marvel banner is none other than “Marvel Zombies,” which often sees beloved Marvel characters forced to endure a variety of zombie apocalypses. Aside from comics, the brand has been used to promote other forms of merchandise, such as an upcoming Marvel Zombies board game. Unfortunately, it looks like one notable character – The Punisher – won’t be appearing at all. As it turns out, Marvel and Disney have actually blocked The Punisher from being included in the Marvel Zombies game for what the publisher calls “licensing restrictions.”
CMON, the publisher that’s currently crowdfunding the board game, has already raised more than $7.1 million. They’ve explained that there are multiple game modes, including the core game which is titled “Zombie Mode.” As an alternative game mode, however, there is “Hero Mode.”
The aforementioned “Zombie Mode” features a variety of “Zombie Heroes.” These zombified superheroes include Captain America, Deadpool, Wasp, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and Hulk. On the opposing side, titled “Enemy Super Heroes,” we have Spider-Man, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange, Ms. Marvel, and Black Panther. Meanwhile, “Eating Bystanders” are made up of Okoye, Mary Jane, J. Jonah Jameson, Pepper Potts, Wong, Blind Al, Bob, Sharon Carter, Aunt May, Agent Coulson, Betty Ross, and Thunderbolt Ross along with varying S.H.I.E.L.D. team members.
With “Hero Mode,” there’s a group of “Living Super Heroes” which consists of Colossus, Rogue, Wolverine, Magneto, Storm, and Mystique. They’re joined by “Rescuing Bystanders,” which includes Senator Kelly, Abigail Brand, Trish Tilby, Callisto, Ka-Zar, Valerie Cooper, Mariko Yashida, William Stryker, Shanna, Amanda Sefton, Bolivar Trask, and Moira MacTaggert. Along with those, there are Multiple Man zombie pieces, Reavers, and Hellfire Soldiers. Furthermore, there are “Zombie Heroes” featuring Iceman, Juggernaut, Cyclops, Dark Phoenix, Psylocke, and Sabretooth.
With so many characters included, it’s definitely strange to see Punisher being left out of the Marvel Zombies game. This was further explained by CMON Senior Producer Thiago Aranha, who explained the following during a live stream:
“Of course, we wanted Punisher in the game and we tried to get him. It makes sense to have him in Marvel Zombies. But there are licensing restrictions that means we can’t have Punisher in Marvel Zombies at least at this time. So that’s the gist of it.”
“There are licensing restrictions, which means there are some characters that we can’t use. So some characters besides Punisher that won’t show up that might be the reason. Of course, there’s also the reason that there are many characters and we just can’t do them all at least not right now,” he elaborated.
He continued:
“There’s also the limitations of zombie versions of characters, where we discussed this in terms of Spider-Man and Black Panther. There are others due to licensing restrictions we can’t do zombie versions of.
That’s also one of the reasons why in the end there are more superheroes than zombie heroes in the game. We wanted to include as many characters as possible but sometimes we can’t do both versions for various reasons.”
As added by designer Michael Shinall:
“If we could include the Punisher, we absolutely would have, but we received a no on that one.”
Sadly, it seems that Marvel’s restrictions just wouldn’t allow for the character to be included. Unfortunately, there is no reason given as to why Marvel would block the character from being used. But considering the various controversies involved with his recent appearances in the comics and the use of his logo in real-life scenarios, there could be some major revisions to Frank Castle in the near future.