I’ve been asked to comment on the recent announcement about the new WWE Heroes comic on its way. For those who haven’t heard, 20 issues will be released by Titan Publishing, depicting the WWE wrestlers as fighting zombies and leopard men and stuff. I don’t know.

The press release mentions the inclusion of these wrestlers and personalities: Triple H, Undertaker, Randy Orton, Batista, Shawn Michaels, Big Show, John Cena, CM Punk, Kane, Edge, Chris Jericho, Matt Hardy, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Carlito, Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler and Kelly Kelly. Wait, Roddy Piper?! What? Why?

Another thing that bothers me is that why are they going to go through the trouble of doing a WWE comic book and NOT include the Hurricane, who is a wrestling superhero? He was born for this role! What is up with that?

I’ve followed the history of licensed wrestling comics. First we had WWF Battlemania in 1991, which I covered in two parts. It was doofy and kiddy, but not overly offensive in the grand scheme of things. A year later, Marvel released World Championship Wrestling, which I reviewed in three different parts. That one was both poorly written and showed the reasons for why doing a month-by-month story based on wrestling that’s written and drawn long in advance is a recipe for failure. At the end of the decade, we were given WWF comics by Chaos. This included comics based on Steve Austin, Mankind, the Rock, Chyna and the Undertaker. I recently reviewed Undertaker in two parts.

So I think I have enough authority to say that this is going to be bad on an epic scale. I can’t wait. I just feel sorry for writer Keith Champagne, who already took a hit for being assigned the job of writing Countdown: Arena. God, what a mess that was.

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The history of the WWF/WWE can more or less be broken up into eras. There’s the Golden Age, followed by the Hogan Era, followed by the New Generation, followed by the Attitude Era, followed by the Crossover Era, followed by the Cena Era. At least, that’s how I see it. The Attitude Era is easily the most successful era, regarded for bringing wrestling into the media forefront. Chronologically, it begins with Stone Cold Steve Austin’s rise as a top face and ends with Wrestlemania 17, where Austin turns on the fans shortly after the company had freshly bought their competition, WCW.

Professional wrestling was at its apex during this era, mostly due to WWF and WCW trying to outdo each other. It seems silly now, but the idea of a WWF comic was pretty natural back then. In 1999, Chaos Comics got the rights to the property and let loose with a handful of comics. Mankind, The Rock and Chyna each got their own one-shot, while Steve Austin got a four-issue miniseries. I’ll save those for a later day.

Today I’m going to discuss The Undertaker’s comic. Unlike the others, he got a full-blown series out of the deal. It lasted 10 issues, plus specials. On one hand, it makes sense. Undertaker was always one of the most unrealistic and open-ended characters in the WWF. On the other hand, during the release of this series, Undertaker was the top heel of the company. We’re basically meant to root for the WWF’s top villain.

I’ll get into a who’s who for those uninitiated with wrestling in a bit, but first I’ll go over the Undertaker Halloween Special. While it did come out towards the end of the series, it doesn’t exactly fit in with anything and makes as a good introduction to the four wrestling-based characters.

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Some people believe I always go out of my way to search for weird comics. Not always. The truth is that most of the time, weird comics go out of their way to find me.

For instance, one day I’m flipping through some back issues, when I find a batch of issues for a Honeymooners comic from the mid-80’s. I didn’t even know there was a Honeymooners series. I’m still not certain why there was one in the 80’s, considering the show was long dead and gone for decades. Now that I think about it, it does give me hope for one day reading Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Perfect Strangers.

Okay. So now we have an old sitcom re-imagined into a comic years after the fact. That’s a good start. I looked through the covers and found one that completely stood out. It’s the kind of comic that makes you question the industry and reality itself for allowing such a thing to exist. Ralph Kramden in a comic book? I guess I could buy that.

Ralph Kramden in a comic book, wrestling alongside Captain Lou Albano?! Welcome to flavor country.

Much like the epic battle of Superman and Muhammad Ali, there are plenty of cameos in that crowd. I notice Frankenstein’s monster, Gumby, White Spy, Groucho Marx (obviously not amused by rest-hold spots), Alfred E. Newman and Gorbechaf.

Also note the top right corner. Not only is this issue #7, but it’s #7 of 24. That’s… odd. I guess Triad must have had a two-year contract and decided to flaunt it. Though from what I’ve found, the series didn’t make it past the twelfth issue. No other wrestler cameos, from what I’ve gathered.

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I’m sure some of you may have seen the site Tube Dubber. It takes two YouTube videos and merges them, showing one vid’s visuals and the other’s audio. As it turns out, there are a mountain of wrestling entrance videos, otherwise known as Titantrons, on YouTube. These being the looped highlight reel videos that play on the big screen whenever someone walks to the ring. Not only are seemingly all of them on YouTube, but some fans decided to make these videos for those wrestlers from earlier eras.

At the Something Awful wrestling sub-forum Wrestlehut, a bunch of us started playing around with Tube Dubber and seeing what we could do to improve on these wrestling Titantrons. Here are some of my better ones.

The Hurricane
Doink the Clown
Vladimir Kozlov
The Ultimate Warrior
Jeff Hardy (my favorite one)
CM Punk
Adam Bomb
Brutus Beefcake
John Morrison (listen, the guy slows down time. I had to do this one)
JBL… if he was a face.
Rated RKO
The Miz
Mike Knox
The New World Order

Later on, I decided to take some CHIKARA and indy highlight videos and tack on a new soundtrack.

The Osirian Portal
The Super Smash Brothers
Chuck Taylor
Mike Quackenbush

This is way too fun. Try it!

For the past couple years, I’d take a second every once and a while to talk about CHIKARA, an indy wrestling organization based out of Philadelphia. Founded by wrestler and head trainer Mike Quackenbush, it’s a school that turned into its own federation. With seven years under its belt, it’s grown to have its own cult following and for good reason.

I regularly bring guests to their shows, tending to take those along who know little or nothing to do with wrestling. They always have a blast. Where else can you see a mute sea monster in a muscle suit team up with a amateur wrestling Rocky Balboa against two clown-like figures dressed up like ice cream people? And not only that, but the wrestling is actually GOOD! It’s routinely funny and the storytelling is top notch.

Back when I first got into it, I did a post about how a bunch of the DVD covers are homages to notable comic book covers. As time went on, the article became a bit popular, but I lost track after a while and kept putting off an update. Now, I think it’s time not to pick up from after I left off, but to redo it from beginning to end. Here we go!

Kids Eat Free On Tuesday & Pick Up Or Delivery
Based on: Flash #123
Features: Mike Quackenbush… and Mike Quackenbush

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It’s been a while since I’ve given some love towards my favoritest wrestling fed in the whole wide world. I do have a full-on comic-to-DVD cover gallery in the works, but first I have to wait for an older show to reach my mailbox because nobody on the internet seems to have a good picture of the damn thing’s cover.

In the meantime, here are some YouTubian reasons why you should check out CHIKARA.

(The sound on this next one is a little off, but it’s Player Uno — the only wrestler to have his own pause button — debating the raving psychopath Delirious about Nintendo and its competitors)

So fun.

Personally, I highly suggest checking out all three nights of King of Trios 2009. Especially Night 2, which features an amazing four-way elimination match between El Generico, Nick Jackson, Jigsaw and Kota Ibushi.

You may have noticed that there are 22 spots on this list and – at the time of this writing – 21 Royal Rumble shows. That’s because there was an extra Rumble match that was so good that I couldn’t help but include it.

I was going to include the Corporate Royal Rumble for the hell of it, but that would have been #23 and that would’ve been pointless. There was a Royal Rumble match in ECW back in late 1996 that I remember, but unfortunately I’m unable to track down footage of it for my rewatching pleasure. The same could be said for a Rumble match they had on WCW Nitro years back, but that one was an epic failure. I recall intervals of about 30 seconds with order that didn’t come close to looking random.

Back to the list.

19) Royal Rumble 1993

Heh. Ultimate Warrior and Nailz were long gone by the time this show happened. Kamala wasn’t at the show either.

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I’m going to go in a different direction for the next week.

Since I was a kid, long before I even got into comics in the first place, I was into professional wrestling. The flashiness, the controlled violence, the good vs. evil and so on caught my eye. As I got older, I grew to appreciate more about it. I was able to tell that, wow, the Ultimate Warrior wasn’t very good and that someone like Tito Santana or Ted Dibiase was more worth my time. Even at its worst over the years, I’ve still followed it on some level. They always have at least a couple things worth watching for.

I started watching in early 1991. I remember this because on the episode of WWF Superstars, they kept going over the upcoming Royal Rumble pay-per-view. I ended up ordering the show and having a bunch of friends over to watch it. I was hooked. Fast-forward to the present. It’s a week away from the 2009 Royal Rumble and I have in my collection the ridiculous 20-disc set of the first 20 shows, as well as the DVD for last year’s event.

I’ve decided to rank them. Why? Because that set was fucking expensive and I want to get as much mileage out of it as I can. Even at its worst, it’s always a fun match and tends to be as unpredictable as you can get.

The rules of the Royal Rumble are simple. Thirty men draw a number from #1 to #30. The men who drew #1 and #2 enter first. Every minute or two later, another guy comes out. The way to eliminate someone else is to throw them over the top rope so that both feet hit the floor. The last man standing is considered the winner. In the early days, the winner would get bragging rights. Later, the winner would get a guaranteed title shot at Wrestlemania. And of course, there was the one time where the match itself was for the championship.

I’m only counting the Rumble matches themselves here, not the shows. Nobody cares about the Hogan/Andre contract signing or Razor Ramon vs. IRS.

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Between enduring the holidays and following it up with Ultimatum Edit, I’ve been a bit exhausted. That’s why I haven’t been doing any updates. Luckily, hermanos has been doing well enough. Esther too, though hermanos has to overshadow her posts with comments that are twice as long. Jerk.

Oh, hey! The new What If issues came out over the past month. Not a great batch this year, but there were two really good issues in there. One is What If: Newer Fantastic Four, which is a sequel to the Mike Wieringo tribute, also featuring the Mini-Marvels conclusion to World War Hulk. Even better is the issue that came out last week, based on Doctor Doom holding onto the Beyonder’s power from Secret Wars. Beautiful art and a perfect ending.

When I finish the We Care a Lot series, I think I’m going to redo the Top 100 What If Countdown. Enough has come out since then to justify it.

We Care a Lot is on a slight hiatus. Nothing too drastic. After all, I need to get my installment about Hybrid up for Black History Month. It’s just that I’ve been spending the past week or so getting ready for another series of articles.

You see, hermanos just did his whole rap countdown. It wasn’t comic-related. So if he’s doing his series of non-comic countdown articles, then damn it, so will I!

It’s coming.

One last thing, I’m going to be checking out all three days of New York Comic Con. Which of yous guys can I expect to see there?

This is several days late, but like I’ve said, computer troubles. Read it anyway.

Secret Invasion has come and gone. Skrulls are old news and now the more beloved villains are beginning to step forward, forming their own little Evil Illuminati. Fittingly, they all counter the original Marvel faction in their own way.

– Tony Stark is replaced by a more ruthless businessman/inventor in Norman Osborn, who shares similar ideals on unity among the powerful.
– Reed Richards is replaced by Victor Von Doom, his eternal rival when it comes to his intelligence.
– Charles Xavier is replaced by Emma Frost, who, while heroic, could potentially do some more underhanded things to help her race. Then again, look at who I’m talking about. Xavier’s done some shady stuff already. Bendis originally wanted Magneto for the role, but you know how it is for that guy.
– Doctor Strange is replaced by the Hood, the magical avatar of the Dread Dormammu himself.
– The enigmatic and overly powerful Black Bolt is replaced by the more enigmatic and more powerful Loki, now in a female form.
– Namor, once a proud king able to own the room with his regal presence, is replaced by a meeker, disheveled and more desperate shell of himself.

Norman puts together his own Secret Society concept and tries to sell it onto the others. The two main points of interest are the mystery man – which I will get to in a second – and the suggestion by Doom to Namor that this will all lead into some kind of massive supervillain Civil War in the future.

That discussion is for another time. Let’s discuss the mystery man.

“If you so choose as to even lift a suspicious eyebrow towards me and mine… you and my friend here will have some words. Emma, you’re a psychic, I can feel you poking around in my head now… You read minds… Tell me… Am I lying?”

“No.”

“Something for even a goddess of mischief to think about.”

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