Um… hm… This post is late as it is and I’m still having trouble figuring out an intro to show before the link jump. Lesse…
Austin Roll it is!
Austin discovering the beauty of the internet is an exhibit of evidence that God exists.
Now back to the regularly scheduled list.
Welcome, folks! I’m joined by Was Taters, Boco T and Space Jawa. Due to an email snafu, Jawa has both this week and last week’s Ultimate Fallout issues. Just so you know, if anyone out there feels that their favorite comics aren’t represented on ThWiP, by all means, join in. The more the merrier. Just remember the guidelines:
– Try to whittle the entire issue into one panel. Something that gives you a good sell on what it’s all about.
– Splashes that fill an entire page or two don’t count.
– Don’t spoil too much. If the comic is about Wolverine fighting Daken, don’t show a panel of Wolverine standing over a defeated Daken. Something where they’re running at each other with their claws out makes more sense.
– Try not to take anything from the last page.
Send any panels to jaguartooth (at) gmail.com before Sunday night and you’re gravy.
Avengers Academy #17 (Gavok’s pick)
Christos Gage and Sean Chen
Avengers Academy #17 (Boco T’s pick)
Christos Gage and Sean Chen
Yesterday, WWE released a handful of wrestlers. There’s Gail Kim, who just eliminated herself within seconds during a Diva battle royal just because she wanted to see if anyone would notice. Then there’s Melina, who I wouldn’t mind not having to see ever again. David Hart Smith is gone and… yeah, that was a long time coming. Then there’s Chris Masters, which is the biggest shame because the dude actually went to Japan to improve his craft only to get completely underpushed. Seriously, he’s good in the ring these days!
The one that wounds me the most is the loss of Vladimir Kozlov. Sure, he isn’t the best wrestler by any stretch, but I enjoyed him for the most part regardless. Here is his finest moment.
Second best moment is when he dramatically delivered the line, “Then it is settled. Next week I get what I want… OR I will destroy MacGruber.”
Oh well. Maybe he can go back to Baltimore and work with the Greek again. What? You didn’t know he showed up on the Wire for like two seconds?
Anyway, the list.
I guess before I continue the list, I should do some kind of filler intro thing first. Maybe on a later day I’ll go through the matches of this year’s show or whatever. I can’t really think of much in terms of Summerslam trivia outside of an interesting factoid I noticed involving Hulk Hogan. Basically, Hulk Hogan is not only undefeated, but he’s never had a single title match his entire time at Summerslam. Check it out.
Summerslam 88: Is in a tag match with champion Randy Savage against Andre and Dibiase.
Summerslam 89: Hogan is champ, but he’s in a tag match with Beefcake against Savage and Zeus.
Summerslam 90: Singles match against Earthquake while Ultimate Warrior is champ.
Summerslam 91: Is champ again, but he and Warrior are in a tag match against Slaughter and his cronies.
Summerslam 05: Is brought in for the dream match of Hogan vs. Michaels. Neither one is champ.
Summerslam 06: Is challenged by Randy Orton. Again, neither one is champ.
Now that I think of it, Ultimate Warrior’s undefeated at Summerslam too. Hell, he even showed up more often than Hogan until all the post-WCW hoopla.
Good, that filled up enough space. Back to the list!
Before World Wrestling Entertainment oversaturated the pay-per-view market with too many shows per year, they were better about giving us more with less. We had four big PPVs. Wrestlemania was the granddaddy of them all, a major spectacle meant to be the show of the year where major feuds would meet their climax and they’d fit in as many memorable moments and matches as possible. The Royal Rumble would lead into that show with its own exciting and unpredictable 30 (now 40)-man match that’s fun to watch no matter what year it is. Survivor Series would use its gang warfare gimmick to fuel the fire between ongoing feuds while giving us new matchups and its own sense of unpredictability. I’ve covered those three before. That leaves Summerslam.
Summerslam is the fourth corner of that equation and lacks the standout gimmick. It’s more like Wrestlemania Jr. than anything else. It’s a 3-hour show where things are a bigger deal than your average PPV or Saturday Night’s Main Event, but not QUITE as major as Wrestlemania. Comparing Wrestlemania and Summerslam is a lot like comparing WWE’s top shows Raw and Smackdown. One is more about flash and stardom while the other gets a little more freedom in its second place spot and usually tends to have better wrestling overall. I’m going to be honest, I expected this to be a bitch to go through because Summerslam was never all that interesting to me. Going down the list, only 10 of the 23 existing shows have I seen before, either via PPV or Coliseum Home Video. While, yes, there are a couple stinkers in there – as you’ll see here in this first update – the show tends to be quality. Even the #22 spot goes to a show that many would consider to be a quality outing.
With the upcoming Summerslam 2011, where we’ll see CM Punk face John Cena, it’s only fitting that I spend the next eleven days leading up to it by ranking and reviewing every Summerslam from worst to best.
A reminder on how the rating system works. I don’t want one single great match or bad match completely define a show. I rate each match one-to-ten. WWF/WWE Championship and WCW/World Heavyweight Championship matches as well as non-world-title main events count as two matches. The “atmosphere”, which means the stuff on the show that isn’t part of the matches themselves, such as backstage promos and the like count collectively as one match. From there, it’s averaged out.
So let’s get to it. 4thletter says… SLAM.
Wait, did they have a Tony Schiavone voice clip in that intro when he was gone from the company for several years?
Hello, neighbor! This week I’m accompanied by Was Taters and Space Jawa as I inch closer and closer to Week 100. Which is good because I finally came up with an idea of what to do with it.
I’ve been lax on the writing lately as I’ve been trying to finish watching every WWE Summerslam PPV for the countdown series, which will start up this week. I only have two left to sit through and I’m saving 1994 for last. That one features the Undertaker wrestling his evil twin while Leslie Nielson and George Kennedy try to get to the bottom of it. Wrestling is fucking weird.
Captain America and Bucky #620
Ed Brubaker, Marc Andreyko and Chris Samnee
Deadpool MAX #10
David Lapham and Kyle Baker
It’s kind of a bad time for my writing. All my go-to articles have been running dry. Jeph Loeb stopped writing Ultimate Marvel comics, so no more of that. I’ve finished writing about Venom. I don’t have too many wrestling PPV shows to rank and review. Just as bad, Marvel has stopped releasing novelizations of their movies. I can no longer know the story of movies in the Avengers Saga a month or so before they’re released. Because of that, I can’t do any informative lists that show all the scenes that were taken out of the original version of the screenplay.
Or can I? While yes, it appears that there isn’t any novelization for Captain America: The First Avenger, that doesn’t mean I’m empty handed. I called in some favors and got to see the extended original cut of the movie. Oh, man. You won’t believe some of the stuff they got rid of! Mostly because it’s all lies.
An entire hour was cut. Removed scenes include:
– A scene where pre-experiment Steve Rogers gets sand kicked in his face at the beach. He meant to gamble a stamp and send a couple bucks to Charles Atlas to make him a man, but got distracted by news of Pearl Harbor.
– When playing hangman with Bucky, he had only one turn left and only the first letter revealed. After biting on his pencil for a moment, he asked if that letter stood for France. Lucky guess.
– When talking with Erskine, the two of them had a long, hearty laugh about how Disney had released a cartoon where Donald Duck was a Nazi. Steve kept insisting, “This is a thing that actually exists! Look it up! Donald is saluting Hitler and everything!” He later had this same conversation with Colonel Phillips, Peggy and even Red Skull. I’m not sure exactly why Marvel would remove this reference.
– When Red Skull steals the first Cosmic Cube and shatters it on the ground for being a forgery, he then curses a blue streak and realizes that he just busted up the real thing after all. Much of his villain plot is based on him trying to find glue and tape, which was scarce in Nazi Germany.
– Much like Arnim Zola was introduced via his face reflected off a monitor, the character of Helmut Zemo was there too. He was introduced by putting his hands behind his back and his shoeless feet on the table while the shot lingered on his purple socks.
This week the team of Was Taters and Space Jawa bombard me with so many panels that I almost feel like I didn’t read enough. Thanks to both of them. Also, I’m glad Jawa covered the Adam West book, as my shop didn’t get it this week. Though I notice he picked the same panel as I did in the Free Comic Book Day preview.
You’ll have to trust me on this Avengers Academy panel. It was a great character moment.
Avengers #15
Brian Michael Bendis and Chris Bachalo
Avengers Academy #16
Christos Gage and Tom Raney
While all the bloggers are at San Diego, the rest of the freaks are apparently in New York City. Except for me. I’m in the suburbs, about a half hour drive from New York City. That’s close enough, right?
I’ve talked before about my experience of seeing Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Again, I say that I can’t in any good conscience call it good, but I can call it incredibly worth watching due to being too strange to exist. Words are only words, though. Finally, I have something to show you.
Now, since I’ve seen the show, there was a major upheaval. The show was shut down and rewritten because Julie Taymor is fucking crazy and had some overly-strange/stupid ideas in there. A lot of the bad stuff was removed. For instance, everyone loved Patrick Page’s portrayal of the Green Goblin, yet he was killed halfway into the story and only appeared for the rest of it as an illusion meant to torture Peter. In actuality, the true villain of the play was the Greek mythological character Arachne. Now they’ve scaled back Arachne’s role considerably and gave Green Goblin the keys to the villain throne. This in turn caused them to drop a musical number where Arachne sings about… well, shoes. Yes, really.
To make up for this void, Bono and Edge created a new song for Green Goblin which Rolling Stone described as, “the Grinch singing Lady Gaga, with an Abba-esque chorus.” WOW. That rose up my list of shit I needed to see.
Luckily, the Late Show with David Letterman had a Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark-based show where he had Edge and Bono as guests. Check out the final segment of the show.
There’s so much insanity in there, I don’t know where to start. I’ll just let you enjoy it as you repeat viewing it a dozen or so times.
Welcome to Week 95. I got the full crew with me. David Brothers, Was Taters and Space Jawa. Oh, also Boco T. I’d have more to say for this intro, but I’m more excited about this happening.
Punk and Christian are the world champs, Daniel Bryan and Del Rio are main event bound, Mark Henry is awesome and John Cena will hopefully be off TV for a while. Oh, and Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli may be signing with WWE. All is well.
Let’s get into character.
American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest #2
Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy
Batgirl #23
Bryan Q. Miller and Pere Perez
