Friday, February 19, 2010

Warrior (Ultimate Creations, 1996)- The Worst Comic Book Of All Time?


Here's a slice of surreal pie from the former professional wrasslin' superstar, The Ultimate Warrior....

From Wikipedia:

Warrior was a comic book based on the Ultimate Warrior, starting in 1996. It was written by Warrior with art by Jim Callahan (Issues #1 through 3, Christmas Special) and The Sharp Brothers (issue #4).

The comics sold well in the first two months of their distribution, before sales plummeted and the comic was taken out of circulation in early 1997. The initial success of the comic and its ultimate failure is often attributed to the same things. There was also speculation that the reason the comic failed was because after the first two issuses Warrior decided that the publishing company was getting too much money. He then decided to publish and distribute it himself through his own website.

As a comic book, fans argued that WARRIOR was a failure: there were virtually no characters other than Warrior, little action, and considerably more text than the average comic (in the first issue, at least one entire page is nothing but text, with a small picture of Warrior in the corner).

The comic's most enduring issue, and the one which has received the most ridicule and is now worth the most money, is one of the final issues, which breaks away from the main storyline into a Christmas tale. The plot of the comic is hard to decipher, as it contains no dialogue, monologue, or text boxes. Inexplicably, Warrior attacks the North Pole, usurps Santa Claus' authority over the elves, and in the final frame, which gained the comic its enduring popularity, a sweaty Warrior forces Santa into bondage gear and poses beside him. The apparent sexual undertones, lack of an actual plot, and non-sequitur nature (nothing from the previous issue served to segue into the Santa attack issue) gained the comic cult popularity, especially on the internet. Though nothing sexually explicit is depicted in the comic, some fans have come to describe it as the "santa rape" issue; more commonly, it is referred to as "the one where Warrior puts Santa in bondage".

According to Warrior, six issues of the WARRIOR comic book were created, as well as a "Warrior Graphic Novel that revealed the story behind the creation of Warrior’s Comic Book Universe". However, only the first four issues of the comic were actually produced.

The comic was reviewed by The Spoony Experiment along with Linkara. In the video, it is depicted as the single worst comic in existence, dubbing it the "anti-comic". Spoony heavily criticized the comic's over-abundance of text, the odd and over-muscled artwork, and the lack of any clear storyline. However, the main source of criticism was the bizarre and unusual manner of grammar and speech. This ranged from poorly-written speeches on pseudo-philosophy, the invention of words such as "destrucity" and "foked", and too many ellipses in the dialogue.


Issue #2

Issue #3

Issue #4

The following YouTube video could probably serve as a pretty good trailer for the comic, because it makes about as much sense. Pretty much, Warrior was batshit insane.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh wow. I'm aware of some crappy wrestling comics out there (actually, I'm not aware of any GOOD ones out there), but I've never heard of this one. It sounds like I'm about to find out what happens when homoeroticism and psychosis have a lovechild.

I'll have to see if I can track down #1 and complete the set. Maybe I'll hunt down some of the other wrestling comics while I'm at it... I escapism doesn't come much more mindless than comics based on wrestlers.

yrkel said...

could you , please reupload the cbr? the links are dead. thanks

justin said...

Yeah, any chance of a reupload? Can't find these comics anywhere