WWE’s NXT experiment has been going on for a bit over a year and despite its ups and downs, it still draws me in with its uniqueness. For those late to the party, the show is about 6-8 wrestling “Rookies” who are trying to earn their way onto the main roster by being paired with their “Pros”. A group of established wrestlers mentor these new guys and it’s turned into a fake reality show where these guys are voted off based on internet popularity and the consensus of the Pros. It’s a mess of a show, but one that I watch regularly. When it’s good, it’s good. When it’s bad, it’s usually so bad it’s good.

Currently, it’s in its fifth season. The first season, which aired on SyFy, ended with Wade Barrett winning decisively. He would go on to lead the Nexus in a storyline that was plenty awesome until they wrote themselves into a corner and “fired” John Cena despite his continued appearances on the show. The winner of the second season was Kaval, an indy wrestling darling whose victory was short-lived. WWE has a boneheaded tendency to shove popular acts down the card to see how they react. If they take their burial in stride? They’ll be pushed stronger later. If you’re like Kaval and you complain about it on Twitter? You’re gone. The third season was an all-female roster and was renowned for being a gigantic train wreck. By this time, it stopped airing on TV and became broadcast on the internet only (SyFy started airing Smackdown as their lone WWE show instead). The winner was Kaitlyn, who has gone on to do nothing since she really isn’t prepared to be on TV yet in the first place. For the fourth season, the winner was Johnny Curtis, who has gone on to do absolutely nothing, boggling the mind of anyone following the show.

Sometimes it isn’t the winners who matter. I want to talk about the losers. One of the more interesting parts of the show is when they have to vote off a Rookie. The way it will usually go is that all the remaining Rookies will line up outside the ring and the host Matt Striker will direct their attention to a roulette-like graphic that stops on the one the fans and Pros decided was the least impressive. That doomed wrestler will then look all bummed and will be given the opportunity to give a farewell promo. With a couple exceptions, there’s value to find in all of these. Sometimes they’ll give a promo so good that you might wonder, “Why didn’t this guy act this awesome before he got voted off?” Sometimes they’ll mumble through some embarrassing tirade that makes you shake your head in disbelief. Sometimes fights will break out. Sometimes the Pros will mess with them. Either way, it’s always a highlight.

So here’s the top 25 goodbyes in NXT history. How can there be 25 when there were 24 losers? I’ll get to that in time. Keep in mind, these aren’t listed from worst to best. No, that would be another list entirely. These are in order from how entertained I was by them.

25) NAOMI
Season 3
Date: November 30, 2010 (Week 13)
Rank: 2nd
Pro: Kelly Kelly

Naomi reacted to the news that Kaitlyn is the next breakout star by shrugging, calling it bittersweet and spending five seconds talking about how everyone worked hard. Yep, that’s it.

Not only are the women lacking in the last name department, but most of them lack the personality as shown in this list. Let’s get the other two out of the way.

Read the rest of this entry �

Welp, I’m back from watching this year’s Wrestlemania. If you missed it, it was a really bad show that featured the burials of Sheamus (US Champion), Daniel Bryan, Alberto Del Rio (Royal Rumble winner), Wade Barrett (Intercontinental Champion), Heath Slater (Tag Team Champion), Justin Gabriel (other Tag Team Champion), Ezekiel Jackson, Jack Swagger, John Morrison and Dolph Ziggler. Why push what should be the future of the business on the show of the year when you can instead have Triple H and Undertaker boringly masturbate for 45 minutes?

At least things turned out well for Cody Rhodes. Good on you, Rey Mysterio.

This week I’m joined by Was Taters, Space Jawa and VersasoVantare in a week where I lose both Remender’s Punisher and Deadpool Team-Up. This has not been a good week for my hobbies.

Avengers #11
Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr.

Captain America #616
Ed Brubaker, Mike Deodato and many others

Read the rest of this entry �

Guest article series by Gabriel “TheJoker138″ Coleman.

We start off this week in Zhu Zin, with Kung and Siro in the marketplace, browsing around. Siro stops a pickpocket, but lets him go, saying if he tries anything like that again he’s likely to lose a hand. He and Kung look at some knives for a while, but Kung isn’t interested in them and goes to browse other vendors while Siro stays. The pickpocket comes back, with three of his friends and we get our first fight scene of the episode. By the way, there’s another onscreen title on this episode. It’s “Queen,” which, much like the last time I noticed the title, has nothing at all to do with anything that actually happens in the episode.

In the other episodes, when they have our heroes fight some nameless adversaries, at least they’re usually henchmen or something. This time it’s just a group of completely unimportant street rats. I can forgive it this one time though, as this fight is actually a fairly major plot point to this episode. Siro beats them all pretty badly, but one of them gets a lucky hit in that sends him careening through a tent and then they overpower him via sheer numbers. Kung makes a timely return, the pickpocket recognizes him as the victor of Mortal Kombat and they all run away. Siro seems off-put by Kung coming in to “save” him and stays to look at that knife while Kung goes home.

It was at this point I had the realization that there were no half-naked women hanging around in the marketplace like usual, but luckily one showed up. Instead of just an extra though, this one is an actual character, named Ankha. She tells Siro that he should visit her and her friend, Kiri, at the House of the Falcon. Kiri is a seer and Ankha says that it seems like Siro could use her guidance and she gives him a falcon talisman. Siro is skeptical, but keeps the talisman and heads home.

Oh yeah, that’s more like it

When he arrives, Taja has already heard about the fight and gives him some crap over it, saying that at least he got hit in his thick skull instead of somewhere more easily breakable. It seems she’s finally started to lighten up, but now Siro is a humorless jerk. He’s really acting out of character so far in this episode. I’m actually kind of amazed that he has a character to act out of, as I wasn’t expecting anything more from this show than ridiculous freak-of-the-week monsters and kung fu fighting.

Read the rest of this entry �

Currently, Sean McKeever and Filipe Andrade are releasing Onslaught Unleashed, the latest chapter in the saga of Marvel’s sinister hybrid of Charles Xavier, Magneto, Juggernaut and Apocalypse. With the recent surge of popularity of this once-toxic property, it made me reflect on the recent comic miniseries Onslaught Reborn by Jeph Loeb and Rob Liefeld. I’ve always felt the need to talk about it, but never got around to it.

I rag on Jeph Loeb a lot. A LOT. A WHOLE. FREAKING. LOT. It was my bread and butter for a couple years, but with Onslaught Reborn, I can’t continue that hate. It’s no Long Halloween, but this comic is Jeph Loeb’s best work in the past decade. There’s no murder mystery, so that helps a lot. There’s also a reason for there to be a big ensemble cast instead of adding in extra guys from all over for no reason.

Then again, the whole Earth/Counter-Earth thing boggles my mind. Didn’t the Heroes Reborn characters stop existing or something when things returned to the status quo? I mean, I guess not, but in that one Thunderbolts storyline… No, I’m not falling down this rabbit hole. I have a review to write.

To catch you guys up on what’s going on for this story: Onslaught was this big bad from the 90’s created from Xavier mind-raping Magneto and gaining his powers and corruption. Once defeated by the team of Mega Man and Venom (with Arthur as their helper character), Onslaught turned into some kind of evil black hole fog thing and a bunch of superheroes sacrificed themselves like lemmings. Franklin Richards used his childhood omnipotence powers to create a second Earth on the other side of the sun where these dead heroes would live on in EXTREME recreations.

That brings us to our story, which takes place a day after House of M. As Scarlet Witch has removed the powers of most mutants, the mutant magic of Xavier and Magneto has merged together to recreate Onslaught as his own being. Now he’s out to track down and I guess take over Franklin Richards. Franklin sneaks away to the Counter-Earth he created, where he meets the teenage girl version of Captain America’s sidekick Bucky. He and all the heroes of Counter-Earth, as well as a couple villains, have to team up to take down Onslaught.

Read the rest of this entry �

Good evening or morning or whenever you’re reading this. This week I’m helped out by David Brothers and Space Jawa.

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #5
Jason Aaron and Adam Kubert

Batman Incorporated #4
Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham

Read the rest of this entry �

Guest article series by Gabriel “TheJoker138″ Coleman who wants to apologize for the iffy VHS quality in the images.

We start today’s adventure in Outworld, where a girl with her shirt half ripped off is being tortured by a Shadow Priest. Now that’s kind of a weird character to choose for your MK series. I hope Mokap shows up next. Anyway, this is easily the most violent thing (save for fantasy stuff like Sub-Zero freezing people) that this show has done yet, but it’s still not the ridiculous somewhat light-hearted violence of the games. He is straight up burning this woman with a red hot branding iron. He’s trying to get information from her about something called the Essence, which Shao Kahn believes his step-daughter, Princess Kitana, has hidden somewhere in Earthrealm.

Speak of the devil, here come Shao Kahn himself, and with him is another woman, named Qali, who he accuses of being loyal to Kitana, who she has been friends with since childhood. There’s also the small fact that when he staged his coup to take over Outworld, he had her father beheaded in front of his entire army, which is a decent enough reason to hold a grudge. She insists that no, she is loyal to no one but Kahn, but he’s not convinced. The Shadow Priest on the other hand is convinced that the woman he had been torturing really doesn’t know who took the Essence, or where it is, so Kahn has him slit her throat, as a message to Qali. In the shadows, another cloaked figure has been watching this whole thing.

We’re only through the pre-credits teaser this week and there’s already two things I need to talk about. Let’s start with the good. Shao Kahn is awesome. He looks, and acts, like a complete evil bad ass. Meek has toned down his performance since the first episode, but now instead of over-the-top he has a more hateful, rage-filled, burning to every line he says. His voice is completely different as it is in his dual role of Raiden, as is his posture, and just the way he carries himself. In what has so far been a series that has ranged from mediocre to painful as far as acting goes, Meek is the one truly stand-out performance. Every scene he’s in drips with energy, and he’s fun to watch, regardless of whether he’s playing Raiden or Shao Kahn.

He also looks great too. The Raiden costume hides his physique, but the guy is huge. And despite the fact that instead of going full monster face like in the games he is just wearing a skull mask at all times, it’s still miles ahead of the “incompetent bald guy” portrayal of the character from Annihilation.

He makes this look work.

Read the rest of this entry �

To go with the upcoming Mortal Kombat game, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the more popular clones. There were a lot of derivatives of the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games throughout the 90’s, back when they were cheaper and easier to do than now. Many are long forgotten, whether they deserve to be or not (you’re still awesome, Kizuna Encounter!). Yet with the blood-based fighters, there were some who didn’t fall into obscurity without a fight.

Killer Instinct, Primal Rage and Eternal Champions are all interesting in how they almost became big deals. People remember them, but they’re all series that tried to last longer and collapsed before they could for various reasons. You don’t see any modern-day incarnations of those three non-Kombat games despite the way someone my age might light up and say, “Fulgore was the shit!” when the game is namedropped. They all had just enough play in the 90’s to receive their own comic books.

I’ve covered the Killer Instinct comic series before and Eternal Champions will be covered in due time. Today, I’m going to discuss Sirius Comics’ Primal Rage.

Primal Rage is based on the vicious Atari-released fighter from the mid-90’s. The basic premise of the game is King Kong vs. Godzilla as a fighting game. Giant dinosaurs and gorillas created with stop-motion animation duel over their domains. I’ve never been a big fan of the game and despite the excellent animation, you can see why it never truly took off. The game only had seven characters (using five character models and changing the palette on two of them) and no end boss. It seemed a bit barebones.

The story, I’ve discovered, is incredibly metal. A giant meteor crashed into earth, causing a major cataclysm. Tidal waves washed over the Earth. Cities were destroyed. Continents shifted back into one major mass of land. The people who survived lived on in caves, allowing civilization to degrade and turn itself into a series of violent tribes. The cataclysm also caused dormant beasts to awaken and battle, with humans worshipping them. Each one is considered a god of some sort. The God of Good, the God of Evil, the God of Life, the God of Decay, the God of Hunger, the God of Survival and the Goddess of Madness. They would all battle for supremacy until one was left standing.

The miniseries goes for four issues and is written by Christopher Knowles. The first issue, released in 1996, has art by Kevin Rasel. It’s a good-looking comic that’s refreshing in how straightforward it is. Unlike all the other fighting game comics, it actually holds itself down as a fighting game story without losing track of what it’s supposed to be. It starts off in an icy mountain where the side resembles that of a gorilla’s skull. Inside, we see Blizzard, a blue gorilla and God of Good, sitting on a throne in front of his gathered followers and a couple gorillas.

Read the rest of this entry �

Guest article series by Gabriel “TheJoker138″ Coleman.

Let’s get right to it this time, shall we? We start off in Outworld, where Not-Jade is sitting around naked. This is the scene they took the shots of her for the opening credits from. She essentially has set up a sauna, and is using flowers as perfume. Shang comes in and implies that she must have whored herself out to get those flowers into the mines, which understandably pisses her off. He touches her hand, which causes it to wither and age, and then turns it back with a wave of his hand, saying that she hasn’t seen anything yet.

It cuts to the temple of the order of light, where Kung is meditating with the other monks. He has brought Taja and Siro with him, and she looks bored, while Siro is asleep and snoring loudly. She throws a pebble at him to wake him up, and then leaves. He follows, followed shortly by Kung. He asks them what’s wrong, and is actually quite understanding that they don’t feel the whole meditation and spiritual thing is for them. They decide to head back to the trading post, despite the fact that there is a heatwave going on, and it’s very, very hot out. Before they leave the head of the order of light, Master Wang, talks to both Kung Lao and them, saying that he’s sorry to see them leaving so soon and wishes them a good journey.

Heh heh… Wang…

Siro and Taja walk off, and Master Wang runs after them, giving them Kung Lao’s water bag to take with them. He’s out of breath from the run, and drinks from it as well. There is a person dressed in all black following him back to the temple. He rejoins Kung and the others in their meditation, but drops dead soon after, and his body decomposes into a shitty looking CGI skeleton and then to dust as Kung and the others watch. They figure it must be sorcery of some type, which causes the person in black earlier to run from the room, Kung giving chase. He catches up to the black clad figure, and pulls off their hood, revealing that it’s Not-Jade. She jumps through a portal back to the mines before he can do anything to her.

Shang is pissed that Kung saw her, and says that he’ll have to deal with the situation himself now. They also go on to explain why Shang doesn’t just use one of his portals to escape, by saying that there are guards and spies in the prison who would report back Shao Kahn if he was one day gone, and that they would track him and punish him wherever he went. I don’t quite buy this, but at least it’s something. Shang steals the soul of one of the other prisoners to make himself more powerful, and heads to Earthrealm despite Not-Jade warning him about the guards and spies.

Read the rest of this entry �

On Friday night, I journeyed into New York City to see the show that I was destined to see. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark has been the butt of many jokes and it’s hard not to join in. David Uzumeri summed it up for me nicely with the term “spiderfreude”. The whole broadway show concept, the inflated budget, the head-scratching reviews and the laundry list of injuries and mishaps has made it a phenomenon for absurdity-loving comic fans such as myself. The whole thing is too strange to exist and I knew I had to get on the train before it crashes for good.

Lo and behold my amazing, spectacular Christmas gift of tickets to see the show.

And it’s a good thing, too! The show is being closed down in a few weeks for the sake of being retooled. Best case scenario, they’re going to change a lot of stuff and I got to see the rougher draft of the Broadway show. Worst case scenario, they’re going to deep six the entire production and I got to look into God’s eyes before it was too late.

It also makes me feel less bad about going into full spoiler mode. For those who don’t want to muck through the spoilers and want the gist of my experience, I didn’t think it was bad. There are parts that are pretty awful and kind of embarrassing, but it really starts to gain steam. The performances are really good, especially Patrick Page as the Green Goblin and the set designs are so extravagant that at no point do you wonder where all those millions of dollars went. The music… I’m not really qualified to comment on. I’m no theater expert and I’m sure if I listened to them in one more go I’d have more impressions, but my main reaction was mostly, “Yes, that is most certainly something inspired by Bono.”

I should also get the obvious out of the way. No, nobody died or got horribly injured from what I saw. The only mishaps were few:

1) One of the Spider-Man stuntman guys swung around over the crowd, bounced around and ended up on a high platform where the right side of the stage cuts off. Noticed by some, he could be seen momentarily strangled by his cables before getting free.

2) The obligatory “Spider-Man: NO MORE!” scene lost a little oomph when Peter’s tights bounced out of the garbage can and fell on the floor.

3) There was a part in the second act where the curtain wasn’t closed all the way and some could get a pretty good look at one of the actresses during a costume change. Actually, scratch everything I said. This show was awesome.

Read the rest of this entry �

Hey there and welcome to another week of ThWiP. This week I’m joined by David Brothers, Space Jawa and Was Taters. It’s Taters who contributes the most contrasting of comics in Tiny Titans and Vampirella. Yes, indeed, not only is Vampirella of all comics making an appearance here, but it’s sent in by the one female contributor. I don’t get it either.

Now to get this out of the way so I can continue writing my review of the most amazing and spectacular Broadway musical that I happened to catch last Friday.

5 Ronin #3 (Punisher)
Peter Milligan and Laurence Campbell

Avengers Academy #11
Christos Gage and Tom Raney

Read the rest of this entry �