We all have our hobbies and passions. Of course, professional wrestling is one of mine, but one that over the past few years I have become more and more infatuated with is the world of comic books. I’ve always enjoyed the characters that the Marvel and DC universes created but was too enthralled with other things as a kid to really delve into it past the cartoons and movies. Also, reading? For fun? Get out of here.
It was bound to happen, though. With my brother always being a Marvel connoisseur, some of my closer friends in college constantly recommending titles to me, and the growing influence superheroes have had on the pop culture industry at large, it was only a matter of time before I got into it. “The New 52” that DC Comics thrust upon readers in Summer of 2011 was the jumping on point I was looking. Thanks to Leonard F. Chikarason’s “Weekly Longbox” podcast, I have been able to keep track of what’s coming up and what to keep my eyes peeled for. Now I have a steady diet of comics I take in from week to week. Although my comic fandom has hit its zenith in recently, I’ve purchased comics from time to time throughout my life.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that my first foray into this medium was through wrestling. I remember browsing through the gigantic collection of comics at a comic shop in my local mall when I came across one of the final issues of the WCW comic book. Keep in mind, as a kid, I hardly watched WCW ever. What I knew of WCW came through action figures, the one or two tapes my Blockbuster offered, an episode of Saturday Night, and now this comic book. As someone who strictly took in WWF, I was easily persuaded to give the company a look when I recognized Ric Flair, Sid Justice, and Lex Luger. Pretty much any merchandise with WWF or WCW at this point I had to have, and luckily for me, my father agreed to plop down the $1.25 for this final issue of the WCW book. Over the years I would end up acquiring the rest of the 12 issues series and decided to take a look back on it to coincide with a wonderful holiday: Free Comic Book Day (more on that later).
The WCW comic book ran for 12 issues. From April 1992 to March 1993, a new issue of the book was published from Marvel monthly. Yes, the same Marvel that boasts such titles as Spiderman, the X-Men and many others was publishing a WCW book. Authored by Mike Lackey (who also wrote such alternative books for Marvel like Ren & Stimpy and Beavis & Butt-Head), the WCW comic book read just like any other comic. The wrestling world is compared to the world of comics often: larger than life heroes and villains fighting for what they feel is right, often times in spandex? Yep, sounds about right. So what happens when you take a real life comic and translate it into a literal written comic? You get some downright zany moments.
Just like in professional wrestling, titles are king in WCW. The first issue features a Battle Royal in which the winner not only gets a shot at then champion Lex Luger but also a “Wrestler of the Year” trophy. Ron Simmons ends up the eventual winner and a trenchcoat laden Luger hops in from the crowd and gives Ron a piledriver onto the trophy. Although their match did happen in the second issue, Luger was done and gone by Issue 3. He had signed on to be apart of the WBF and then WWF at the time, which made for an awkward transition in the comic itself. Rather than write him out, in Issue 4 we’re told the title is vacated without purpose. Truth be told, that sounds remarkably like WCW in its latter years.
The main character in the story is “The Ghoul”, a ghastly green character who is accompanied by a manager type named Max. We first hear whispers about the Ghoul on commentary and don’t see him for the first time in full until Issue 4. The Ghoul’s mission is to take out the hero of WCW, and eventual World champion, Sting. Sting is far and away the most focused on character in the short-lived comic’s history. He’s the epicenter of every issue and the main foil for “The Ghoul.” When I talk about the zaniness of this comic, Issue 3 comes to mind. Sting is on a WCW “Bruise Cruise” in which fans and wrestlers joined on a cruise ship for a weeks worth of fun, sun, and of course professional wrestling. The mysterious Ghoul paid off The Southern Boys and Cactus Jack to attack Sting and then BLOW UP THE SHIP. Not only that, but the Ghoul’s instructions to his henchmen were to keep Sting alive, which sounds difficult if your plan is to blow an entire cruise ship to smithereens. Hijinx ensue with Sting saving Tracy Smothers almost getting obliterated by the gears of the ships engine and fighting Cactus Jack off the smoke stacks to save the day. It turns out that in the first arc of the story that “Ravishing” Rick Rude was the Ghoul and went under the guise to play mind games with Sting so that he could become the new WCW champion.
As silly as this sounds, it led to far and away the best issue in the series: WAR GAMES. By now, Rude had become a member of Paul E. Dangerously’s “Dangerous Alliance” faction with “Stunning” Steve Easton, “Beautiful” Bobby Eaton, and “The Enforcer” Arn Anderson. The latter two had spent the first few issues discussing their goal to become the new WCW tag team champions who at the time were The Steiner Brothers. Sting’s team consisted not just of the brothers from Michigan but also “Z-Man” Tom Zenk who got a surprising amount of time in the book for a character who ended up being irrelevant to wrestling by and large. This War Games was under “I Quit” rules. In what came of as a genuinely touching moment, Sting quit the War Games match because he was tied up and Scott Steiner was going to be crippled were he not to do so. The issue itself read like a masterfully told wrestling match. Given the tongue and cheekiness the book would take from time to time, this was very refreshing.
The Ghoul makes a return for the latter half of the story. As it turns out, Paul E. made an arrangement for Rude to wear the Ghouls’ costume to get the world title and then return the outfit (dry cleaned and pressed of course, as the writers pointed out) to the real Ghoul. The real Ghoul had his own motives to torture Sting and take out WCW, motives we wouldn’t find out about until later. How did the Ghoul make Sting’s life a nightmare? It’s quite simple really. First, get a semi-deranged person to wallop Sting in the head with a foreign object to the point of amnesia. Cactus Jack sounds like the right guy for the job, and that’s exactly what he does. Second, get your manager, who for some reason or another has certain hypnotizing qualities to him, to trick Sting into thinking that he hates everybody except for himself and The Ghoul. Finally, have Sting dye his hair black, called himself “The Black Stinger”, and have him become a heel and team with the Ghoul. THIS ALL HAPPENED. What I found interesting was that the book itself said that Sting had made a “heel turn.” I can tell you for a fact that if I read that issue as a six or seven year old, I wouldn’t have any idea what a heel was. Certainly it was easy to tell that Sting was now a “bad guy” but I found the use of insider terms quite weird. Do insider terms like that add THAT much enjoyment to somebody who would actually get it?
The weirdest part of the Sting heel turn was that the issue right after saw him as a face visiting kids in a hospital. Face Sting was back to cheer up the spirits of kids with terminal cancer. I have to admit, it was a bizarre read and felt a little self-gratifying. I understand that it was a “tug on your heart strings after school special” type of story but it came out of nowhere. This is not a new thing for comics though so I am willing to forgive and forget. Besides, it actually led somewhere. The most downtrodden kid became motivated by Sting’s words of encouragement and was inspired to live by them when he got to witness the hero defeat Cactus Jack from the front row. Then, Black Stinger, smashed his homemade chocolate birthday cake an issue or two later. WHAT A HEEL! Even comic books can’t stray from cheap heat. It doesn’t get much cheaper than exploiting a kid with terminal cancer.
So how exactly does Sting come back to being normal? You see, Cactus Jack never got his entire pay from the Bruise Cruise or his first attack on Sting, so he decides to clobber Sting in the head again to turn him back to normal. By this point though, everyone was enemies with Sting so he had to convince them of what happened. Everyone seemed to believe him a little too easily. He made a strange bedfellows union with Rick Rude to take down the Ghoul who as we’re told (but not shown) was Sting’s original trainer. Then, in the final issue, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in the previous 11 issues, Big Van Vader defeats Sting for the WCW title and Ron Simmons & Barry Windham defeat Arn Anderson and Steve Austin in a Bunkhouse Brawl match. Yep, the final issue of the WCW comic is self-contained. It’s not even really an epilogue to the Ghoul story. It’s not a bad issue, just a strange way to go out.
There’s a lot of other things to discuss. For one, Johnny B. Badd is very flamboyant. He does commentary for a lot of issues probably because the author had so much fun writing his dialogue. Minor characters show up often, such as PN News, Van Hammer, and made up characters like Punch Fresh, a rapper who only speaks in rhymes. Characters come and go pretty much as the author pleases. Cactus Jack is a hilarious read if you think about his actual character and Mick Foley himself. The Steiner Brothers also drop off the face of the Earth in the final few issues due to them heading to the Fed (just like Luger). There’s also hilarious instances where to those within the Marvel/WCW universe, professional wrestling is the most important thing on Earth. For instance, another focus of Sting throughout the story is that his knee is constantly being damaged. Jim Ross theorizes that he may no longer be able to walk, or worse, wrestle. That’s right folks, not being able to walk for the rest of your life is bad, but not being able to wrestle IS WORSE.
I could go on and on in the minutiae of the comic, but by now you get the idea of how the wrestling was portrayed within the contents of its pages. For what the comic was, I ended up enjoying it for the most part. It’s campy, it can make you laugh, roll your eyes, and at times pine for days when wrestling storytelling was good. I’m not going to tell you it’s a good comic but it could have been so much worse. If you were a kid who picked this up on a whim knowing nothing about wrestling, the story was easy to follow and the faces/heels were well defined. Even though WWE had a short article on the book a little over a month ago, I seriously doubt we’ll ever see the book in print again and maybe not even through the digital medium. If you’re so inclined to pick up the series, ebay is your best bet. You could probably gather up the entire collection for not that much money. Of course, searching through your local comic stores is highly encouraged, but finding a 21 year old book with an incredibly niche audience at this point is near impossible.
Further Reading:
WWE.com explores some of the more bizarre moments of the first 4 issues of the WCW Comic Book.
4th Letter Presented a three part telling of the comic: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Photos were lifted from both sites and I thank them both immensely.
The timing for this article is not coincidental. I wanted to write something about comic books for this upcoming weekend because Saturday May 4th is “Free Comic Book Day.” Publishers print comics specifically for this day and send them to your local shops to pick up. Some of these issues are special editions, while others preview what’s coming up in the Summer/Fall. There’s also many selections for children, so if you have little ones, bring them along. You can check out what titles are available and what stores are participating in Free Comic Book day here. While you’re at it, support your local shops if you’re coming to pick up some free books. Most stores offer special sales or other types of activities on this day. I’ve found people who work at these shops to be the most friendly and welcoming people in the world.
Also, if you’re looking for recommendations or just want to chat about wrestling/comics, feel free to follow me on Twitter and start a dialogue. I also recommend checking out this article by LFC about Free Comic Book Day, and this “cheat sheet” from NPR to guide your way.
Happy reading, everyone!