A very lonely edition of ThWiP. Only ten panels in total. One from Was Taters. One from Space Jawa. Nothing from David. And Esther had that cease-and-desist order made about me asking for panels passed months ago, so that’s a no-go. Man, that judge was a dick.
Speaking of dicks, here’s Eric O’Grady Ant-Man, everybody!
Ant-Man & Wasp #3
Tim Seeley
Avengers Prime #5
Brian Michael Bendis and Alan Davis
We got a lot of good panels from me and David and Was Taters and Space Jawa. Shockingly, not one of us included a single panel from Shadowland/Daredevil. That’s too bad.
Great week for me, though. For one, there’s more WWE Heroes insanity. Taskmaster has concluded, finalizing that it’s a depressingly great miniseries. Then there’s a mundane What If issue featuring an amazing backup story that I’ve included for its own panel. Even still, there are three more parts to it!
Oh, and Taters was late in reading last week’s pile, so there’s a Thor: The Mighty Avenger in there.
Action Comics Annual #13
Paul Cornell, Marco Rudy and Ed Benes
Ant-Man & Wasp #2
Tim Seeley
Wow, it’s Week 50 already? I should do something special for it. Like… Uh… I could…
Anyway, Week 52 is coming and that’s a bigger deal, so we’ll wait on that.
Deadpool Pulp #1
Adam Glass, Mike Benson and Laurence Campbell
Franken-Castle #20
Rick Remender, Tony Moore, Paco Diaz and John Lucas
WWE Heroes is not a good comic book. It really isn’t. It’s stupid, silly, incompetent and can’t be described with a straight face.
Yet I find myself buying it every month and it’s always the very first comic that I read. Probably because of those exact reasons. It’s enjoyably ridiculous and unlike most bad comics, I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth without being at the expense of another comic or the characters within. It’s ultimately a harmless series. It isn’t going to ruin characters for anyone or mess with continuity. It isn’t like that comic where the paragon of virtue is walking across the country and acting like a total douchebag to everyone he passes. It isn’t killing a bunch of beloved characters and negatively screwing with so many status quos for the sake of one writer’s hackneyed vision. It’s a wrestling comic and wrestling comics are inherently dumb. I say this as both a fan of comics and wrestling. When you mix the two together, you’re asking for trouble.
Not that it’s impossible to write a good comic with a wrestling license. The issue of World Championship Wrestling where Sting gave a kid the spirit to fight cancer was overall pretty decent, as was Dwayne McDuffie’s Ultimate Warrior story in WWF Battlemania. It’s just that if you’re saddled with a project like this, you have to know your chances of success and go to town. Writer Keith Champagne is no dummy. The guy has written some fine stuff over the years, such as Ghostbusters: The Other Side and his short run on Green Lantern Corps. His miniseries Countdown: Arena was undoubtedly terrible, but you’d be hard pressed to blame it on him when DC editorial set him up to fail. When given the WWE license, the guy obviously decided to have fun with it and be as outlandish as possible. Who can really blame him?
So far there are six issues out, getting us through the first arc. The art is by Andy Smith, a longtime veteran of the comics game. This creative team has worked together several times before, including an issue of DC’s World War III miniseries. There must be some kind of WCW joke I can make in there… eh, fuck it. Oh, they also collaborated on Dean Koontz’s Nevermore. There must be some kind of Raven joke I can make in there… eh, fuck that too. Hey, they also teamed up to do the miniseries Armor X! There must be some kind of… uh… shit, I got nothing. Moving on.
Before I get to the first issue, I should mention issue #0. #0 was released as a free iPhone app and my memory of it is fuzzy due to reading it off my buddy’s iPhone a long while ago. Here’s a promotional video that shows the first few panels.
WILL BIG SHOW STRETCH? WHY IS JERICHO WEARING BROKEN CHAINS ON HIS TIGHTS? IS IT A GOOD IDEA TO DO A HEEL VS. HEEL MATCH AT A “TRIBUTE FOR THE TROOPS” SHOW? Download the app and find out!
Welcome back to another week of showing the gist of the comics we’ve read from this week. Not an overly fantastic week, but my personal picks for the better comics are Franken-Castle, Punisher MAX and Generation Lost.
Authority: The Lost Year #11
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen and Brandon Badeaux
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #4
Grant Morrison and Georges Jeanty
40 isn’t a very special number, but we got a lot on the plate this time around anyway, so let’s pretend it matters. Oh, and we also get three doses of Grant Morrison. Well… only two of them count, but whatever.
Amazing Spider-Man #635
Joe Kelly and Michael Lark among others
American Vampire #4
Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Stephen King
This week’s update took me longer than it should have because my scanner was being a dick. Everyone join me in yelling at my scanner for being a dick.
Age of Heroes #1
Kurt Busiek, Marko Djurdjevic and many others
Atlas #1
Jeff Parker, Gabriel Hardman and Ramon Rosanas
Just got back from CHIKARA’s King of Trios and I’m completely exhausted. I’ll do a little trip report of sorts later. For now, it’s panel time.
Amazing Spider-Man #628
Roger Stern, Lee Weeks, Mark Waid, Tom Peyer and Todd Nauck
American Vampire #2
Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque, Stephen King and Rafael Albuquerque
For those who haven’t noticed or forgot, a nasty storm caused me to lose my cable connection last week and rather than wait a day to post TWiP, I made the dumbass decision to add it onto the next week. Apparently I was too busy to notice that this week was a huge one regardless, making this a gigantic update. Welp, let’s get moving.
The A-Team: Shotgun Wedding #1
Joe Carnahan, Tom Waltz, Stephen Mooney
Amazing Spider-Man #624
Mark Waid, Tom Peyer, Paul Azaceta and Javier Rodriguez
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.
