Seven Wrestlers Who Deserve Their Own Comic Book Title

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The line between professional wrestling and comic books has always been blurry. From Superman battling amnesia for the four billionth time and donning a mask to Hulk Hogan making a cameo in Iron Man No. 227 to the fantastic recent promotional tie-ins from Lucha Underground, the larger-than-life men and women of the squared circle have always been at home inside the colored panels of comic books. Here are seven wrestlers who need their own comic book series.

7. Bray Wyatt

Wait, wait, don’t leave! We just started this! I know the Eater of Worlds (apologies to Galactus and Unicron) has not been booked in the best, ahem, firefly light lately and Monday night’s RAW the less discussed the better. This is why it is the perfect time for Bray to take a loooooonnnnggg vacation and have some precious re-booting to his canon.

Imagine a first issue of The Saga of The Eater of Worlds, where Bray returns to his beloved cult compound only to find it deserted of all of his followers. VERY easy to imagine, yes? Bray spends page after page shaking off the Hawaiian shirt trappings of his previous life. The issue ends with the disillusioned cult members burning his bayou home to the ground with Bray inside, swaying back and forth in his rocking chair muttering, “This is fine.” In the final two-page spread of the issue, Bray explodes out the front door, hurls himself into the swamp and is left for dead at the bottom of the muddy river basin.

Then we would get three Collector’s Edition hardbacks’ worth of slow, dark melancholy that is equal parts Alan Moore’s brilliant Swamp Thing run and a voodoo-drenched True Detective Season 3. The Saga of The Eater of Worlds allows us to keep all the things we loved about Bray, watch him piece himself back together (physically & mentally) and build up the true existential dread his character should have brought to the WWE.

You can’t tell me you wouldn’t flip your shit at a pasty, half-naked, soaking wet Bray Wyatt returning at the No. 30 spot in the 2019 Rumble and refusing to enter because “he’s seen things, maaaaaannnnnn … ” Time is a flat squared circle, brother.

6. The Mysterious And Handsome Stranger

There are a LOT of directions one could go with a Chikara comic book and a certain thunder frog would seem like the obvious choice here. But BOC ain’t trying to get sued on his first solo article for this website, so let’s just move on.

Imagine if Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” was actually a goofy dude in tights who talked like Dusty Rhodes and hung out with a plastic pigeon sidekick. Think of the merchandising potential for the kids!

Beautiful, sweeping vistas done in Alex Ross style watercolors but with a hillbilly Deadpool as its narrator. The Good, The Bad and the Mysteriously Handsome, Hang ‘Em Medium and Once Upon A Time In Western Pennsylvania are but a few of the graphic novel instant classics one could expect from such a mysterious and handsome subject matter.

Personally, if you wouldn’t pay hard cash to see a guy throw a punch through one door of a saloon and knock out a guy 30 feet away standing next to another door, I don’t know if we can be friends. And as for adaptations: Quentin Tarantino finally gets the Rowan Atkinson-starring vehicle he’s always wanted to direct.

5. Magnum T. A.: Private Eye

Magnum T.A. is my favorite wrestler of all time, and his career was tragically cut short due to the nefarious subterfuge of Magnum’s Porsche by Tully Blanchard — because it’s still real to me, dammit. But in comic books, your career is never over!

Let’s just go full hog and make gimmick imitate real life and set up Terry Allen in Hawaii as a former Vietnam vet who solves crimes for money, while staying on retainer for the mysterious Jim Crockett.

Under the watchful eye of Jim Cornette and his two dobermans, Dennis and Bobby, Magnum gets into all sorts of scraps and scrapes with every issue being resolved with the greatest belly-to-belly “sue-play” this world has ever known. Comic relief is provided by his old Marine buddies: Manny Fernandez, who runs the exclusive five-star restaurant, “Baby Doll’s,” and Nikita Koloff, who eats helicopters for a living.

Remember that part above where I said I didn’t want to get sued? Screw it. Come at me CBS. My name is Bill Hanstock.

4. WEAPON: Steve Blackman

Did you think Marvel’s Daredevil had the market cornered on ninja fights? ISH. I see your never-ending, ever-slowly-growing-preposterous-but-still-wildly-entertaining ninja fights and raise you one Steve Blackman, who had the audacity to jump the rail and defend the giant, bald, white monster dude. The true lethal weapon is the one you never see coming. Or understand why they are there in the first place.

But, ah, the twist! Steve Blackman is older now and must train his replacement before he retires from the streets and let’s just reach the logical conclusion that is “Daredevil is their Batman” and smash it all up into Frank Mirvel’s The Blackman Knight Does Kenpo and go apeshit.

The entire series is divided between flashbacks to a young Steve Blackman being trained by aging, karate gimmick Superstar Billy Graham (“Hey, what are all these feather boas in the closet for?” “(sighs) That was a long time ago.”) and present day where Steve Blackman tries to Reign in (not a typo) cocky wild card Dean Ambrose and show him the correct way to use a kendo stick and unplug appliances. Shane Strickland gets his ticket punched to the WWE and gets massive heat when he shows up in Issue #3 and kills Renee Young in a yoga studio.

3. The Gobbledy Gooker

Because Vincent K. McMahon just bought this article and said, “f*ck you that’s why”.

2. L.I.T.A.

I’m a sucker for a good procedural and an Olivia Benson-esque cop who isn’t afraid to bend the rules OR break out the occasional moonsault is exactly the type of gritty, female driven comic book the world has been waiting for and the timing has never been more right.

Representation matters. We need to have heroes that look like us so that we can also believe that we can be heroes in our own right. I liked Lita because during the time where everyone was trying to look like an actual comic book character, she looked like the people I hung out with: the tattoos, the eclectic taste in music, the brief flirtation with JNCO jeans. But I digress.

Lita was one of the first female wrestlers who was just tough. She looked like a wrestler. She would crash and burn and lay it all out and get back up again ready to fight. And she had real flaws. She was human. She made choices that seemed like the choices real people made and they had real consequences. Every single great cop comic book serial needs this sort of anti-hero at the center of it to make you forget you’re holding a bunch of pulpy pieces of paper. A Dame to Kill For? Nah. Lita is a dame who kills.

Whether it’s studying for the bar exam at night or fronting her own punk band on the weekends, Det. Dumas is always on the case. I will leave it to the comments section to ascertain what L.I.T.A. actually is short for while I figure out how it got so dusty in my kitchen.

1. El Generico: The Pride of Tijuana

If this is your second time meeting me, you knew this was going to be my Number One With No Doubt.

Remember that part above where Lita seemed like she had real relationships and real struggles? Show me a guy who never thought he would ever be somebody so he became nobody to become somebody and you better shut up and take my money.

Remember that part above about Magnum T.A. being my favorite wrestler of all time? Well, El Generico was the first wrestler to make me feel like that 8 year old kid again.

You don’t get much more pure of a babyface than a luchador who is always fighting from underneath and most of the time against his best friend in the world. It’s been written on this website many times that Sting is The Dumbest Babyface In The History of Wrestling (™) but imagine if Sting knew Lex was going to turn on him eventually and tagged with him anyway because it was the right thing to do.

To nick a line from Danielle Matheson that I wholeheartedly agree with, friendship-based wrestling is the best wrestling. Young, old, black, white, rich, poor, doesn’t matter: when two heels are beating up a babyface and his buddy comes running from the back to chase them off, whoo-boy, man, NOTHING makes you cheer more in wrestling than that moment.

Brothers reuniting. Former friends turned rivals suddenly remembering everything they’ve been through together. Macho Man begging Elizabeth for forgiveness after she just couldn’t stand to see Sherri hit him anymore and leapt from her seat. I don’t care *who* you are, that hits you right dead center in “the feels”.

The first page opens with El Generico sitting in the orphanage and listening to the call from the main event of Hell In The Cell 2017 on an old transistor radio. As the announcers lose their minds, the Generic Luchador simply nods his head in understanding. This is the way it has always been in their family. It is … destino.

Oh, and he’s friends with Zorro and fights El Chupacabra and drinks beer with Blue Demon and can grow 50 feet tall, because of course he can.

This is a comic book. What did you think we were talking about?

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