We’re on the eve of what will be a very important date in wrestling history. The WWE Network is about to go live and a good chunk of the WWE’s future relies on its performance. Making huge risks is a major WWE thing and outside of the first Wrestlemania, people mainly remember the bad decisions that lost a ton of money. The bodybuilding federation, the football league, the political campaigns and so on. Unlike those, the WWE Network is looking like a great idea and I can only cross my fingers and hope it’s something that works out for them as they’re really burning some bridges with it.

I’m picking it up. I know many people who are doing the same. Usually a bunch of us would get together to watch a PPV that only one person ordered, so if we’re all paying $10 for the WWE Network, then maybe they have a chance to pull this off.

In honor of this situation, which will be interesting as hell whether they win or lose, I’m going to try something I saw on a forum years ago. I forgot if it had a name, but I’m just going to call it the Wrestlemania All-Star Challenge. If you have your own blog or whatever and you want to try it, by all means. Use the comments too, if that’s your thing.

Here’s the concept: You have to put together a playlist of the ultimate Wrestlemania. It has to be 29 matches with one match from each Wrestlemania. There are two roadblocks, though. One, no wrestler may get double-duty. You can’t have Hulk Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy from Wrestlemania 2 as well as Undertaker vs. King Kong Bundy from Wrestlemania 11. Not that you’d want to. Non-participant appearances are fine, so you don’t have to worry about managers or run-ins. Similarly, no title belt may get double-duty either. This is going with the idea that the WWF Championship and WWE Championship are the same thing. You can have Steamboat vs. Savage for the Intercontinental Championship or you can have Bret Hart vs. Roddy Piper for the Intercontinental Championship. You just can’t have both.

It’s harder than it looks, coming off as a giant puzzle. It’ll lead to some iffy choices and you’re going to have to drop a match or two that you really like. For instance, I was going to include Hogan vs. Rock, but that caused some problems in other shows where there simply wasn’t a viable match to choose from.

Here’s my list. Noticeably absent are Batista, Chris Benoit, Mick Foley and the Big Show.

WM1: Special Delivery Jones vs. King Kong Bundy. The first Wrestlemania is filled with a lot of nothing matches, but at least this one’s kind of memorable. Bundy squashes Jones in a quick match that they insist is quicker.

WM2: Corporal Kirchner vs. Nikolai Volkoff in a Flag Match. Again, this Wrestlemania has a lot of crap matches and anything passable has somebody I’d rather use for another spot on the list. The Flag Match isn’t that bad. It’s short, but both guys make it watchable enough.

WM3: Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat vs. “Macho Man” Randy Savage for the Intercontinental Championship. It’s the match that stole the show and acted as maybe the best singles match in the first ten years of Wrestlemania. How can I not include it?

WM4: “The Rock” Don Muraco vs. Dino Bravo. Wrestlemania 4 is problematic. There’s nothing especially good and the Jake Roberts/Rick Rude tournament match completely kills the show. Luckily, the first round meeting between Muraco and Bravo has a bit of pep in its step for such a short match.

WM5: The Brain Busters vs. Strike Force. A fun tag match that gives us one of the more memorable tag team splits of the 80’s. Now that I think of it, it’s kind of weird that they split up one of their big face tag teams while being overshadowed by the company’s top angle that was also about a big face tag team splitting up. Back then, the concept wasn’t as overdone as it is now.

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Decided for a Monday update because, I don’t know, I felt like writing about Archibald Peck last night. It happens. Speaking of writing, I did a fun little article at Den of Geek US on RoboCop vs. Commander Cash, an episode of the RoboCop TV series where the cyborg police officer hunted down an insane superhero played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. It’s something I’ve wanted to cover for years. Also at the site, I did an interview with Chris Sims over his new book Down Set Fight!

My crew this week is Gaijin Dan, Matlock and Space Jawa. The first time in a long while that we’ve had three of us reading one book.

All You Need Is Kill #4
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

Avengers #26 (Gavin’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Salvador Larroca

Avengers #26 (Matlock’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Salvador Larroca

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Wrestling company CHIKARA has gone through some interesting stuff in the last nine months. They died and did a rebirth, partially told through a series of YouTube movies that will be shown in its full form in a theater setting in a couple months. So yes, weird.

For Den of Geek US, I’ve been working on a primer for the Death and Return of CHIKARA angle as told via a who’s who of all the players involved. While that should be going up sometime next week or so, there’s one part that I felt such joy in writing about and that’s Archibald Peck. The time-traveling marching band leader’s ridiculous storyline since starting in CHIKARA has been an absolute treasure and even summing up his recent behavior in a couple paragraphs felt wrong. So join me as I go in-depth on the man.

It all started in early 2011. CHIKARA started releasing videos hyping up that the Band was coming. The videos acted like this was a major huge deal and included black and white historical footage and the first two seconds of the New World Order theme. The timing here was key. Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and X-Pac, three major members of the nWo, just left TNA, where they called themselves the Band due to rights issues. CHIKARA was about to build up towards its annual King of Trios tournament, so were they really suggesting that Nash, Hall and Pac were on the way to compete? It was possible. Those guys did do a lot of indy appearances. On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea in the long run due to their personalities and the fact that only one of them was capable of putting on a decent match at the time.

As it came closer to the debut time, it became a little more apparent that it wasn’t going to be the nWo in CHIKARA. Nash just made a big appearance in WWE and Hall was in no condition to compete. Coincidentally, X-Pac would show up at King of Trios a few months later as the 1-2-3 Kid, but the whole “Band is coming!” thing was just a red herring. The band was really Archibald Peck and his majorette Veronica.

It usually takes people months to pick up on how they’re “Archie and Veronica.”

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Okay, well, maybe “mediocre” is going too far. Superior Carnage had a really good first four issues, but then the last one put all the interesting toys back in the box.

MASSIVE week of panels this time around with 40+ images. I read a lot, but so did Matlock, who is still keeping up with DC’s big event for whatever reason. Though I guess Bane dressed as Batman riding a horse isn’t the worst reason. Flanking us as usual are Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa.

Though, I’m wondering. Should I fail them?

All-New Invaders #2 (Gavin’s pick)
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All-New Invaders #2 (Matlock’s pick)
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All You Need is Kill #3
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

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I try to do a couple of big blogging projects a year, whether it’s blacking out on the whole of Frank Miller’s work on Batman or scratching the surface of why I like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira. It’s a chance to focus and do just one thing for a while, to empty thoughts out of my head I couldn’t find another place for, and to satisfy my own curiosity. Robin McConnell asked me to think about doing some stuff for his Inkstuds comics podcast over a year ago, and last month, I saw a space in my schedule between a relatively complicated winter and the beginning of con season, had a brainstorm, and took the opportunity.

So here’s what it is: Inkstuds Spotlight is a chance for me to satisfy my own curiosity about what it’s like to “be in comics.” I made the move from fan to employee last year, and it brought with it a whole new set of things to worry about. But I don’t really care about me, because I’m way more interested in what cartoonists, academics, bloggers, critics, and other people in or adjacent to comics do. Hawking books, working tables, coming up with lesson plans, making minis, covering comics, all of that.

Over the course of the next month, I’m going to put up a bunch of interviews in the 30-40 minute range—I’m aiming for two a week, but I may end up with a few more—with people in and around comics, talking about what they do and why. I don’t have a script, preferring to let the conversation go where it wants to go, but I did ask each person how they came to comics and what their comics community is like. Beyond that, it’s anything goes. This won’t be exhaustive or comprehensive, because there are literally not enough hours in the day for that. But hopefully it will be a lot at the very least.

I’m really happy about this and hopefully you’ll dig it, too. To make sure you can’t escape my voice, my friend Joe Hughes at ComicsAlliance is going to syndicate the posts in addition to them going up on Inkstuds, since I really believe that site has something to offer and I probably miss contributing there a little.

The plan is for podcasts to go up on Tuesday and Thursday morning each week, hopefully at 0900 Eastern. We’re looking at slight technical difficulties this morning, but we’ll get it sorted and then you can maximize your crush on me by making my laugh into your text message alert. (I laugh a lot. Sorry.) I’ll link posts here as they go up if you don’t visit either of those sites.

I promise this isn’t a way to trick you into listening to rap music by accident.

Edit: the Inkstuds post is live, and so is the one from ComicsAlliance!

Saturday Night Live recently added Sasheer Zamata to their roster, apparently the first black lady to join the cast in about six years. I’ve been throwing her videos into a youtube playlist and ended up binging on Saturday while I worked. As it turns out, she’s funny as heck. I thought this one was glorious, all the way down to “Man, FUCK Storm!”:

I thought this story of her being flashed, which she’s used in stand-up before, was stellar:

Her mannerisms and style as the dude comedian are so on point it’s not even funny.

The killer bit, though, was this one, about a morning after a one night stand:

Zamata is super funny and a strong writer. I’m not super into SNL—that’s Gavin’s job—but it’s awesome that someone as funny as her gets a huge platform like that.

All right, back on schedule! I had an awesome time at yesterday’s National Pro Wrestling Day, which featured the much-needed return of CHIKARA. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that the show featured a run-in via time travel where a guy literally drove in in a Delorean. It was amazing.

I’m joined by Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. This week happens to feature a terrible comic starring Bruce Wayne’s son as Batman, a decent comic starring Bruce Wayne as Batman and an awesome comic starring Bruce Wayne’s dad as Batman.

All-Star Western #27
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Moritat

All You Need Is Kill #2
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

Aquaman #27
Jeff Parker, Paul Pelletier and Netho Diaz

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It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted anything about CHIKARA Pro Wrestling and with good reason: CHIKARA is dead. Sort of.

Eight month ago, they did a big, climactic internet PPV during the mid-point of their season. During the show, a disgruntled former referee revealed that Titor, the company owning CHIKARA, was really involved in some shady stuff. The brass got really mad about this and during the main event, a wave of security guards washed over the ring and removed both the wrestlers and the acting referee. The set was destroyed, the live feed went out and everyone was told to go home. After that, all of CHIKARA’s future dates were cancelled and the company was gone.

After a month or so of inactivity, Icarus, a longtime heel, decided that he wouldn’t let CHIKARA die and tried to find assistance in a rebellion. He got some fans to help him, but finding other wrestlers to rally on his side was easier said than done. A series of YouTube videos have been released over the past few months called Ashes that tell the story of Icarus’ search for allies, as well as other subplots involving CHIKARA talent (mainly Fire Ant and Green Ant searching for their missing teammate Soldier Ant and tag team 3.0 venturing to Parts Unknown to find time-traveling marching band leader Archibald Peck). The videos were initially released weeks apart, but have since been released weekly and several have popped up in the past week.

As for actual wrestling, there were several affiliated promotions that popped up right before CHIKARA went under. Wrestling is Intense, Wrestling is Respect, Wrestling is Cool, etc. Put them all together with Kaiju Big Battel and you spell out “CHIKARA”. These shows were pretty uneventful until they were snuffed out. Various heel factions from CHIKARA’s past would show up and end these promotions, revealing some kind of massive Secret Society of Superheels. Dr. Cube and his Posse, the GEKIDO, the BDK, Sinn Bodhi and the Odditorium, the Colony XTREME Force and the Wrecking Crew have joined together as an unstoppable army.

A lot of this is going to come to a head at National Pro Wrestling Day 2014, a free show featuring at least 7 matches that’s trying to raise money for the Against Malaria Foundation. It’s this Saturday, February 1st and starts up at 1pm. Here are the announced matches:

Colt Cabana vs. Drew Gulak
(Best 2 Out of 3 Falls)
Mike Bennett vs. Hallowicked
The Baltic Seige vs. Bloc Party
(Six-Man Tag Match)
Sonjay Dutt vs. Eric Corvis
Juan Francisco de Coronado vs. Shynron
(No Disqualification Match)
Eddie Kingston vs. Francis O’Rourke
Heidi Lovelace vs. Joe Pittman
(For Wrestling is Heart’s La Copa)

Some of those matches should be really good, but naturally, I’m more interested in seeing the Return of CHIKARA plotline move forward. Really, that’s what most people are interested in because the backlash to this whole storyline has been brutal. It looks like they’ll be coming back wholesale in May, but NPWD should be good enough for the meantime.

As the Royal Rumble ends and the Superbowl is on the horizon, it’s This Week in Panels! This week, I’m helped out by Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. Meanwhile, I read way more than last week, including Superman being a dick to Jim Gordon, which is just too terrible for words no matter what universe you’re in. Never be mean to Gordon. He’s a good guy.

The Deadpool digital comic is seriously good, though. It has some of the best use of the digital format and it’s fun regardless.

All-New Invaders #1
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

Animal Man #27
Jeff Lemire and Rafael Albuquerque

Atomic Robo: The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur #5
Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener

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Over the years, I’ve written much about my love for WWE’s annual Royal Rumble PPV/match. Back in 2009, I did a countdown of all the matches from worst to best. Then last year, I spent 20 days or so talking about various battle royals. This year, I decided to revisit it as an excuse to write up a bunch of stuff for Den of Geek US.

That meant having to watch all the previous Rumble matches. That’s nearly 30 matches by this point and they’re mostly about an hour. A couple months ago, I decided to use that to my advantage. I’d transfer the matches onto my tablet and make it so that the only time I was allowed to watch them was at the gym. That got me motivated to go to the gym about five times a week, just so I could spend an hour running and watching.

So here’s what I’ve ended up writing.

The 15 Best (and 5 Worst) WWE Royal Rumble One-Timers: I became kind of intrigued by seeing the wrestlers who only made one Rumble appearance. Sometimes they were really obscure and sometimes they were a big deal, but only for a limited time. I wrote a list about those who did really well during their one shot and those who lasted mere seconds.

The 20 Worst Royal Rumble Moments: A lot of stuff that irked me in my massive rewatch. A lot of it was bad booking and storytelling, but the top spots go to stuff that I found legitimately hard to watch.

WWE Royal Rumble 2014 Predictions: Me and some of the other Den of Geek guys discuss who we think will win the various matches at the PPV. Pretty straightforward.

The Top 100 Royal Rumble Moments: This one took a lot of work and effort and is one of the reasons why I’ve been so lax on this site and why This Week in Panels has been regularly delayed. Recently, I’ve been getting overtime at work, so my free time to write has been sparse. Mike, my editor, seemed genuinely concerned about me getting this done in terms of my health, but like many of my gigantic writing projects, I did it out of passion and I saw it through. It ended up being the longest single article I’ve ever written, coming in at 31 pages on MS Word. Not to mention gathering the images took an entire night to do. I’ll admit, I didn’t get as much sleep this week as I would have liked, but I got it done.

I’m proud of how it turned out and that it actually got done. That said, I think I’ve said all that there is to say about the Royal Rumble.

Actually, no! While I have you here, I should probably mention one of the more fun things about the match that I’ve recently become involved in. My friend Bob tends to throw get-togethers for WWE PPVs, especially the big ones like Rumble and Wrestlemania. For the Royal Rumble, he’s created an incredibly fun party game. If you find yourself watching the show with a handful of people, I suggest giving it a try. Here are the rules:

– Everyone picks numbers 1-30 out of a hat. Hopefully your party is made up of enough people to make it even, like how we tend to have ten people, meaning three picks each. You are represented by whoever comes out at those numbers.

– Someone has to keep a tally. The actions in the ring gain points. When a wrestler hits a signature move, it’s one point. When a wrestler hits a finisher, it’s two points. When a wrestler eliminates someone, it’s three points. Reaching third place is three points, second place is four points and winning is five.

– Once the match is over, all the points are added up to see who wins.

There are certain people you want to get in these situations, even though you know they won’t win. For instance, Randy Orton is like hitting the jackpot because he tends to do spots in each Rumble where he hits a series of RKOs. Khali is the same way, as all of his movies count as either signatures or finishers, especially his brain chop.

The first year I was involved with this, it was 2011 when they did the 40-man Rumble. There were 13 of us, meaning we all got three picks and a Macho Man action figure was given #21 (which ended up being Booker T). Before the show, we bought a crappy championship belt from the toy aisle at a store and decided that it would be the prize. One guy brought his girlfriend to watch with us and she didn’t know wrestling. She ended up getting #1, which was CM Punk.

Thanks to the New Nexus helping him out, CM Punk got a ton of eliminations and won this girl a lot of points. Then it was time for her next pick, #22. We joked that with her luck, she’d probably get John Cena. Cena’s music started playing, Bob got up, walked across the room, brought back the title belt, handed it to her and then sat back down.

One year I got zero points because I ended up with Primo, Epico and Hunico. Even if they actually did anything, none of us could figure out what their signatures or finishers were.