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Royal Rumble Week: Day 7

January 27th, 2009 Posted by Gavok

The Royal Rumble was last night, meaning you no longer care about anything I have to say. Yeah, well… shut up, okay?

I thought the event was top notch. Jack Swagger vs. John Morrison is going to make a very fine PPV main event one day.

The Rumble match itself was pretty good. It had a lot of fun spots, but got bogged down by keeping the ring too full. They were so determined to keep every single main eventer in the ring until the end while keeping them scattered on the card that it seemed to blow up in their face.

But the highlight of the Rumble?

MAMA MIA!

(thanks to Jerusalem for the gif)

Let’s finish this off and call it a day.

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Stone Cold Steve Ditko Presents WWF Battlemania: Part Two

June 21st, 2007 Posted by Gavok

Oh… that is so wrong.

We’re back for part two of our look of WWF Battlemania. Before starting, I should point out that Sensational Sherri, who was featured in the last article, has passed away at the age of 49. That’s a huge shame. Add another line to the list, I guess.

On a happier note, I’d like to mention that the Wrestlecomics part of 4th Letter got featured on the Wrestling Observer (twice!) and Figure Four Weekly Online. That’s pretty sweet, as Wrestling Observer is like the wrestling equivalent of Newsarama, only with maybe a shuffled step higher.

Continuing on issue #3 of Battlemania, we get to a story involving the Ultimate Warrior that I thought was actually pretty good. It’s shocking. Even more shocking was when I discovered the reason it was so good. Dwayne McDuffie of all people wrote this thing. That’s right. The guy who will soon be writing Justice League of America wrote a story about the Ultimate Warrior. I’m not knocking the guy in any way, and I do understand that you write what you can get, but I think it’s just such a random realization. Next you’re going to tell me that this guy wrote a Double Dragon comic.

Huh? He did? Oh. Well, now I know what I’m reviewing in the future.

“Follow Your Spirit”: Ultimate Warrior’s Workout
Ultimate Warrior vs. Sergeant Slaughter

We start the story with neither the Warrior nor Slaughter, but a battle royal in a second-rate gym filled with generic no-names. One of these generic guys is Ben Bradford. While the announcer mentions that Ben is a bit unorthodox in his wrestling style, he continues to dominate the match. In the front row is Lewis, Ben’s little brother. Lewis is confined to a wheelchair and is a major wrestling fan and art enthusiast.

Ben wins the match and is announced the winner. As a special surprise, his trophy and prize money are delivered by the Ultimate Warrior himself. Warrior holds Ben’s hand up and congratulates him on his victory.

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Stone Cold Steve Ditko Presents WWF Battlemania: Part One

June 6th, 2007 Posted by Gavok

Welcome to the world of WWF Battlemania.

Unlike the WCW comic, Battlemania holds some sense of nostalgia with me. While I only owned one issue as a kid, the series takes off right as I started watching. I recall first catching onto the WWF during January of 1991. The Ultimate Warrior was in his final days of being WWF Champion, before losing the title to Sergeant Slaughter at the Royal Rumble. The Hart Foundation, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart and Bret “Hitman” Hart, were tag champs, destined to relinquish their titles at Wrestlemania to the Nasty Boys. Months earlier, the Undertaker had made his debut, already showing signs of the monster push they were giving him towards the main event. So there is a stronger feel of familiarity with me.

In fact, there are many differences between the WCW and WWF comics. They’re like comparing apples and oranges. The WCW comic is just a bad comic. Battlemania is merely a sad comic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s far more competent than WCW’s ink and paper production in both writing and art. The thing is, that’s one of two reasons why Battlemania is depressing to see exist.

Battlemania was a production by Valiant Comics and half of the stories in the series are drawn by one Steve Ditko. Yes. That Steve Ditko. The guy who co-created Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. The man who came up with the Question and Captain Atom and the Creeper and Speedball. This guy was stuck working on a comic book about a wrestling corrections officer brawling with a wrestling zombie in the middle of a funeral home. It’s kind of disheartening.

Also depressing is the roster. Despite all the wrestlers in the WCW comic, only Rick Rude and the barely-there Brian Pillman are no longer with us. For a comic that only ran for five issues, WWF Battlemania has a harsh list of dead wrestlers. Not counting cameos, nearly every issue features at least one wrestler who has passed away.

One strange thing about the series is the complete lack of Hulk Hogan. For about the entire run, Hogan was the company’s champion. Not only does the Ultimate Warrior get the more marquee showing, but Hogan isn’t even mentioned once. I’m going to guess this comes from the legal issues based on his name and Marvel’s Hulk.

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4l is for… David (and Cassandra) Cain

December 1st, 2006 Posted by david brothers

That’s a pretty fair summary of Bruce Wayne: Murderer, innit?

Anyway, I’m a pretty big fan of Cassandra Cain, former Batgirl, and by extension, her father David. He’s one of the many, many people who trained Bruce Wayne in the way of the Bat and father of Cassandra. He’s the hitman people go to when they want it done right and without the tights. Deathstroke? Sure, fine, he’s the bomb. But, he’s loud, obnoxious, and all of his children are completely crazy. Deadshot? His deathwish makes him take unnecessary risks, and who respects a hitman in a tophat?

I think I’m rambling. Time to ramble in a more productive direction!

Cassandra Cain turned bad OYL. I like the heel turn myself, but a lot of other people don’t. There are a couple of reasons why, but one I’ve heard is that she would never turn evil because she hates her father. That’s one thing I cannot agree with.

I think that both David and Cass love each other. it is definitely a father/daughter-type of love. David definitely loves his daughter. After Batman beats him to a bloody pulp, the only thing he cares about is keeping his tapes of her training in his possession. At one point, he gets involved in a high speed chase away from government agents while carrying those tapes. He watches his “home movies” while drinking in the dark and reminiscing about the old days. At another time, he refuses to kill her when he is hired to. Later, he breaks out of jail to give her a gift. Let’s not even mention the cockamamie insanity that was Bruce Wayne: Murderer.

David Cain is that guy who would look his daughter’s first date in the eye, smile, and inform him that he can put a bullet through a butterfly’s eyeball at twelve hundred yards with one eye closed. Then, he would slide back a secret panel beside the fireplace, revealing the poor kid’s entire family, kidnapped, bound, and gagged.

David: Bring my daughter back by 2200 hours, untouched, or I will feed your father your fingers.
Boy: Uh, yessir
Cassandra: Oh, Dad! :rolleyes:
*canned laughter*

(I would read this comic.)

If anything, I’d say that he has a very genuine, if opportunistic, love for his daughter. She is his biological offpsring who he raised from birth. I think that he originally intended to raise a weapon, but instead, he raised a daughter. A particularly lethal and skilled daughter, but a daughter no less.

I think that Cass loves her father, too. She allows him to escape capture more than once, up until recently, and I think that the fact that he is her father is the only reason why. The problem is, she doesn’t like him very much. She killed a man at eight years old and saw exactly what happens when someone dies. She saw the fear, the hate, and the terror that comes when someone is killed and it wrecked her.

I think it’s important to realize that she wasn’t raised with any sense of right and wrong, beyond “landing punches is right, missing punches is wrong.” She saw death firsthand and was shocked into right and wrong. She realized the upbringing her father gave her was completely, utterly, and if I may be so punny, fatally wrong. So, she left. At, uh, eight years old.

My point is that Cassandra loves her father and he loves her. He raised her for half her life, and it’s kind of clear in early flashbacks that she loved to impress him. She liked having his support and admiration. He liked seeing her turn into the greatest martial artist on the planet.

That was a loving, but abusive, relationship. It’s comic booky, and kind of out there, but it is definitely physical child abuse. Cass knows it and David knows it and it strains their relationship. She doesn’t know if she can forgive him for turning her into a murderer and I feel like he’s feeling pretty guilty about using her.

It’s interesting that when Cass finally gives in to being the ultimate warrior her father raised her to be, her first action is to try to remove him from the field of play. She acts out of spite and hate, but it seems like she’s also playing the role of spurned child. Being Batgirl was taking the high road. It was antithetical to her father’s way of life. It was her way of atoning for her sins. She was Batgirl out of guilt. The new Cass, OYL? Well, the hard way turned out to be too hard for her. She wants revenge.

Deep down, though, I don’t think she actually hates him. She’s lashing out and being selfish, just like a kid would act. She’s Bruce Wayne screaming “I hate you!” at his parents before they died.

I think that the Cass/David relationship could easily hold up to, say, a four issue miniseries. Set it post-Robin, after David gets away from her and the League. Cass goes after her father in a big way. It’ll end with both of them on a burning rooftop, out of ammo, exhausted, and bleeding. So exhausted and broken that they can do nothing but talk. I’m talking serious breakdown-in-tears, heart-to-heart here, but on a burning building in a tropical location.

It ends with the reconciliation that’s been due since Cassandra’s past was first revealed. David Cain and Cassandra Cain finally work through their issues and their past.

Anyway, idle musings.

You know what else would be extraordinarily dope? Cassandra Cain is running the League of Assassins now, right? She offed Nyssa al Ghul?

Well, Talia has a son who may not be too happy that his aunt was killed by the former sidekick of his father.

Damien vs Cassandra. Son of the Bat vs the Greatest Warrior Who Ever Lived? Batboy vs Batgirl? Count me in!

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