Showing posts with label Wrasslin'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wrasslin'. Show all posts

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.


Monday, February 2, 2009

WCW World Championship Wrestling #1 (April 1992, Marvel)


Remember the good ol' days when comic book properties themselves weren't looked at as potential seeds for multimedia franchises? Back when the big publishers would license nearly anything, hoping to catch some of the backend cashflow from whatever might just happen to become the next big fad or trend? Well, this book is yet another casualty of that by-gone era, and one of the more enjoyable "WTF?!?" moments of 1990s Marvel (and there were alot of those).



Now, I'm a HUGE fan of old-school wrasslin', steeped heavy in the seemingly long-gone practice of kayfabe...and was a HUGE fan of this particular promotion, which was a natural evolution of my childhood love of the southern promotions involved in the "sport" (i.e., the AWA, NWA, USWA, Smokey Mountain Wrestlin, etc.,....). During the "Monday Night War" (the last time I took an active interest in professional wrestling), I was a member of the WCW side of the battle.

What I really enjoy is going back a re-watching the pre Monday Nitro (pre-1995) WCW, back when it was just a programming filler on Saturday nights on TBS, back when it was still knee-deep in kayfabe and some of the really....interesting....gimmicks and acts were being pawned off on the viewers.

This book is ridiculously corny, but chock to the brim with unitentional humor and just bad.....no, mean REALLY BAD artwork and scripts. It lasted 12 issues, and trust me, it's murder to try and make er way through 'em.

Which is why they're perfect fodder for inflicting pain on my readers.....

Download Link (Hosted by Rapidshare)
WCW World Championship Wrestling #1 CBR file