This Thursday at New York Comic Con, BOOM!
Also, Im going to be moderating it.
Lets start off in 1991 with Valiant ComicsWWF Battlemania.
The series lasted five issues, released bi-monthly.
While nothing to set the world on fire, it at least had some admittedly cool aspects to it.
Ad content continues below
Each issue ofBattlemaniaincluded two stand-alone stories based on two wrestlers feuding.
I recalled thinking that the Ultimate Warrior vs. Then I noticed the writer is none other than the late, great Dwayne McDuffie.
The most inventive thing to come out ofBattlemaniawas the pair of fold-out posters.
They really need to bring this back…with better shadowing.
Immediately after Valiant and WWF went their separate ways, Marvel started their own 12-issue run withWorld Championship Wrestling.
During the latter part of the series, the Ghoul is able to brainwash Sting into turning heel.
What separatedWorld Championship WrestlingfromWWF Battlemaniawas that it had an ongoing storyline and not a series of one-shots.
That became very, very dangerous.
Wrestlers change gimmicks, change alignment, and even change companies!
El Gigante and PN News also end up vanishing without a trace due to leaving the company.
1996 was a pretty hilarious year for the World Wrestling Federation and its relationship with sequential art.
Scratch that last part.
Im not sure exactly how much Santa Claus bondage was going on at Warrior University.
It could have been a lot.
While thats a good guess, Warrior has nothing onWWF Krozor, which came out in the same year.
A preview ofKrozorappeared inWWF Magazinewith information on how to order to full graphic novel.
It never went further than the preview, but Sweet Papi Sanchez, what a preview it was.
The story is this: theres an alternate dimension where native beings have evolved in reverse.
The Undertaker gets visions of whats to come and alerts everyone else by screaming, THEYRE COMING!
Stills of wrestlers traced over with color pencils.
Drawings of Undertaker and Steve Austin copied and pasted with the occasional change in eye color.
More gradients than you could shake a stick at.
Vince McMahon shows up with what gives the impression of a drawn head and CGI hands.
Chaos mainly ran anUndertakerongoing that went on for ten issues, plus a Halloween special.
Jezebel is the half-sister of Kane and tends to give him direction.
Her origin is and I kid you not that Paul Bearer had his way with her mother.
To drive the point home, heres some naked Paul Bearer.
No means, OH, YES!
Chaos didnt stop with just the Undertaker.
Mankind and the Rock got their own one-shots with Rocks being sort of okay.
God, how awesome that could have been.
Nash I can almost understand, but Mero?
Speaking of Kevin Nash, WCW and Marvel once again teamed up in 2000 for a new series calledS.L.A.M.
Force(Secret Legion Against Monsters).
Wait, the villain is again called Ghoul?
I wonder if this is canon with the other Marvel WCW comic.
They were better off without him, anyway.
He totally would have gone all Parallax on the team.
At least he didnt call them curtain jerkers.
Josiah figures out the Firstborn is in the WWE and tries to narrow it down.
Could it be John Cena?
Josiah and the other followers takeWrestleManiahostage and proceed to punk out every wrestler to keep them in line.
Thing is, Michaels turns on them because Triple H has taught him the meaning of friendship.
The art isnt so bad at first glance, but its wildly incompetent.
Presumably, a lot of it had to be changed due to fluctuating rosters.
Mickie James hair and tights change color from panel to panel.
TheSummerSlambanner appears at a show specifically explained as beingWrestleMania.
John Cena is shown competing atWrestleMania 24in a baseball cap for some reason.
This leads to the next storyline, calledWWE Heroes: Timequake.
It never saw print, but hes since released two inked pages from it.
Next came Papercutz, who released two different titles.
One wasSlam City, based on the animated shorts for kids that WWE released a few years ago.
The plot being that all the wrestlers have day jobs due to WWE being shut down.
Then wackiness ensues, mostly in the form of one-page gag stories.
The comics arent really worth talking about for the most part, really.
Its Papercutzs other title that deserves the attention.
Of the core series, every four issues told its own wildly separate story.
It begins with Money in the Bank with art mostly by Alitha Martinez.
Its WWE as a noir crime story, basically.
It begins as somewhat clever, but after several issues, the novelty wears out its welcome.
Mostly due to the story becoming muddied and confusing while adding more and more characters at every turn.
It doesnt help that the final issue drops the ball with the art.
Martinez cant make the deadline, so several pages are filled in by someone named Puste.
Pustes art is…not so good.
Especially during this big, climactic brawl.
No, your eyes are not deceiving you.
The Undertaker just changed clothes in-between two panels.
With the second arc comes good news and bad news.
They all blacked out, as if they were drugged.
They have several hours to get to the bottom of things or else Vince will fire them all.
Buuuuuuuut unfortunately, Puste is on art for all four issues, so were in for some serious eyesores.
Im not saying he draws him badly.
I mean that El Torito is literally portrayed as a Noob Saibot silhouette with red eyes at all times.
Its a special key in of low effort.
Theres also a big elephant in the room with the cast.
See, the series started coming out late-2013/early-2014.
CM Punk left the company in January of 2014.
That led to two interesting things.
First, the end of Haze of Glory has Foley and Riches give Punk their own sendoff.
It makes little sense in the context of the story, but its still rather touching in a way.
Then Punk leaves the scene while waving goodbye.
Hey, its a better sendoff than he got on TV, thats for sure.
The comic made a tiny bit of news after that because Punk was, naturally, off-limits.
I dont think they ever got to that point.
I certainly havent seen any evidence.
Paris Cullins took over art duties forWWE Superstars #9-12and thats when things started to get crazier.
The storyline is called Legends, otherwise known as The Secret Raw.
Theyre led by a half-Dusty Rhodes/half-Trish Stratus monstrosity for…some reason.
If theyre in the distant future, pulling names from throughout time, why are there no wrestlersafterour present?
Is the Roman Reigns Era that much of a financial disaster?
It came outthat exact day.
I Comixologyd that without a second thought and Im a better person for it.
Absolute, uncut bonkers.
Its about those who were left behind from the Secret Raw as the world is starting to fall apart.
It would have been about Roman Reigns and Sting fighting crime together or some such.
Thats a real paradox.
Coincidentally (or not), that final Papercutz trade was released on the same day that BOOM!
Studios announced their new partnership with WWE.
will be going in a different direction than all the other companies.
Rather than finding new adventures for WWEs roster, kinda looks theyll be doing the opposite.
Now its about focusing on established storylines and expanding upon them.
After all, we only see so much on TV.
Surely, theres more to the Shields rise and eventual breakup than what we see on the screen.
The same basic concept worked well enough forLucha Underground.
Will it work for WWE?
Well see soon enough, but BOOM!
tends to know what theyre doing with licensed properties.
Theyve done great withPower Rangers,Darkwing Duck,RoboCop, andwait.
Do they still have that RoboCop license?
Because we totally need someWCW Capital Combatbackstory and we need it now!
