9. WWF Battlemania






Published by Acclaim/Valiant from 1991 to 1992, WWF Battlemania only ran for 5 issues. But it was a pretty good run, if you ask me.

It's debatable whether wrestling is still as popular now. It certainly does well financially, but we are at saturation point with the likes of WWE putting out a weekly three-hour show, monthly events, SmackDown, etc. We truly are in the wrestling era of saturation.

In the early 90s, the WWF had a few syndicated shows, which ran for about 42 minutes once you took out the ad breaks. And they put out four PPV events a year (a fifth was added in 1993). So for those of us who couldn't quite get enough WWF action, WWF Battlemania provided us with a "fix".

The stories pretty much took place outside the wrestling ring (there were ring scenes, though). It was quite a novelty, seeing wrestlers battling outside the ring, whether it be two tag teams battling in a restaurant, two wrestlers battling in the wilds of Canada, or two of the top wrestlers of the time battling in a parking lot.

The art was very good. There was also the fact that the Undertaker's word balloon had a black background. Gimmicky, yes, but that can be commonplace now, what with the likes of Deadpool having yellow word balloons. And, like the WCW Comics I mentioned elsewhere, whoever was tasked with writing these clearly had a handle on the characters.

It might have been tempting for a publisher to churn out a wrestling comic solely to make a quick buck, but there does appear to be a lot of effort here; it's sad the comic lasted a mere five issues as it was very entertaining.

There is also a three volume "The P. Craig Russell Library of Opera Adaptations" which I discovered by googling this work. Guess what is now on my Amazon wishlist

Thanks for that context. Yes, I guess they did take the jobs seriously. The characters sounded like the TV versions. Maybe it was luck, but it certainly *felt* like they were trying to get a handle on the characters.

Incidentally, I don't recall seeing a single Valiant title on the shelves here in England (I bought those WWF books around 1993 as part of a collected edition in a bookstore).

I never saw any of the pre-superhero Valiants in shops at the time.

Interesting.

I wonder if they had any issues with Hulk Hogan. Still arguably the most popular WWF wrestler of the time (even if his popularity had waned since the 80s), he never appeared in any Battlemania issues. I found that odd.

9. Rocky and his Fiendish Friends #4 (June 1963)



I’m guessing just a bit on this because my memory is a bit hazy going back 56 years. What I do know for sure is that my grandmother bought me a Rocky comic off the spinner rack in a candy store in early 1963, just after I’d started to fall in love with comic books.

The first couple of issues of this titles were 25-cent 80-pagers, and I think I would have remembered such a big comic if it had been one of those. I’m settling on issue #4 because the cover strikes the gentlest of chords in my memory and because it was not a winter day when we were in that candy store.

So now you’re probably saying, “Well, prince hal, that must have been one hell of an adaptation if that’s best you can do for a memory of it!”

Bear with me. I chose this Rocky title because I know I had at least one of them, and I would have wanted it because I loved the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. If you read my write-up about MAD you’ll know what I mean when I say that these cartoons (and hence the comic book versions of them) were very much like MAD for younger kids, minus the snark. They were the Horatian satire where MAD was Juvenalian, not bitter or acerbic, but gentler and more tolerant of human weakness.
Which made them no less humorous. They poked fun at just about everything: Russian spies; the Cold War; old-time serials; movies and TV shows; the space race; celebrities (supposedly, professional sidekick Durward Kirby was furious that they Spoonerized his name to designate the magical hat known as the Kirwood Derby); politics; and historical characters.

The stories were anarchic, goofy, and post-modern before that term existed. The dialogue was laced with allusions of all kinds, self-referential remarks, more than a few smashings of the fourth-wall, and of course, puns, puns and more puns. ("Boris Badenov" being the most famous example.) All of it is still funny, trust me.

Anyway, I knew Rocky from the cartoons and that led me to the Rocky comic, which I remember not for what I read, but for how I read it. And how I read it was in a state of complete enjoyment. Dudley Do-Right, Captain Peter Peachfuzz, Mr. Peabody and the stars themselves were just as engaging and funny in print as they were on television.

And for all those fond memories, and for being yet another reason I am the cynical, pun-loving wreck I am today, I pick Rocky’s Fiendish Friends as my Number 9 choice.

PS: Here's a page of punny stuff, but it's from issue 5, a spoof of the poem "Barbara Frietchie." (Couldn't find any pages from issue four, I'm afraid.) You can't help but hear those perfect cartoon voices...

Frost Giant's Daughter, By REH
Adapted by Busiek/Nord/Stewart
Dark Horse 2004

This is my favorite version of my favorite Conan story.. and they nailed it. I don't always love Cary Nord, but he was sure amazing here:.
I'm sure just about everyone here is familiar, so I'll just post some images