Wrestling and Comics: My Little Pony

Not a hoax, not an imaginary story! It's My Little Pony's EWE (Equestria Wrestling Entertainment)'s Championship Main Event!

You don't know My Little Pony? Welcome to my age group! A friend sent me the following scans from a comic book he bought for his daughter:

I was quite excited to find something that I never figured would exist: My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic #29.

MLP is a Hasbro toy line of diminutive Equus Caballus with colorful manes and distinctive tattoos (or "cutie marks").

Similar to He-Man, the toy line franchise was promoted with TV series, movies and comic books and according to Wikipedia was "moderately successful until the beginning of the 2010s when its popularity drastically exploded into previously undreamed of demographic groups such as teenage boys and adult men and women".

Adult men and women? Get a life! Why don't you start watching pro wrestling instead?

Anyhoo, this particular comic book series has been published by IWD Publishing since 2012.

I don't know much about the content of the stories, it's probably about little ponies doing what they do best, whatever that is.

Which brings us to the MLP/Wrestling crossover.

"Cherilee gets a visit from her sister who happens to be one of the most famous wrestlers in Equestria! A long-simmering grudge between the siblings threatens to explode unless Rarity and friends can figure out a way for the two to mend hurt feelings."

Not to spoil too much, but apparently, they do manage to figure out a way for the two sisters to get along again and win the championship along the way.

It's a sweet story, has really cute drawings, but if I hadn't read the title, I would have thought they were cats...

Still, really fun, if only for novelty value.

Wrestling and Cartoons: Wrestling Mishmash

This is a really cool idea. The history of (modern) wrestling on one poster!

Alex Bennett, who also created a great poster about the history of football (soccer), managed to create a poster featuring over 530 incidents and 700 characters.

The poster measures at 69cm (h) x 99cm (w), which is 27¹¹⁄₆₄in x 38³¹⁄₃₂in (thanks to www.metric-conversions.org) and you can get it signed by the artist.

I think it is a really great piece of cartooning and you can get it here: www.wrestlingmishmash.com .

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Wrestling and Comic Strips: Doonesbury

Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury is far more highbrow than the average comic book, often focusing on political issues, but sometimes there is an overlap where politics and wrestling can be combined. For instance on a USO tour of Afghanistan:

Not sure if WWE Star "Crisis" is supposed to be Edge or just a generic wrestler, but he certainly looks ready to kick ass.

Certainly not showing a lack of self-esteem, either.

Warning to younger readers: this is obviously a fabrication of the liberal media elite. IT'S STILL REAL TO ME, DAMMIT!

Hey, all of us who were brought up on HulkaMania still eat our prayers and say our vitamins!


Doonesbury is ©Gary Trudeau.

Wrestling And Comic Strips: Bloom County

Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed is one of my favourite comic strips of all time and while I knew that pro wrestling had been mentioned in one of Opus' first appearances in February 1982,

 

I was very surprised to find that there was a whole week's worth of stories focusing on pro wrestling in April 1985. April 1985? What did that time period have to do with wrestling? Oh yes, it was immediately after WrestleMania 1, the granddaddy of them all, when Vince McMahon, Jr. finally took wrestling out of the smoke filled rooms and bingo halls and brought it into our living rooms.

Wrestling was hip: 

 

And, as we all know, wrestling always needs new Superstars, but just who is this masked man?

   

At least he has a firm grasp on his motivations for becoming a wrestler: 

 

So who is this mysterious woman that could drive a man to become embroiled in the dirty world of professional wrestling?

I would bet money that Opus is reading "Professional Wrestling Finishing Holds" by "Judo" Gene LeBelle. Really fun book. And so educational! 

The full sequence of strips can be found in "Bloom County: The Complete Library Volume 5".

Highly recommended!



Bloom County is ©Berkeley Breathed.

Wrestling Comics: Andre The Giant: Life and Legend

This is a pretty new graphic novel about Andre the Giant, published in 2014. The author/artist Box Brown (that would be a good wrestling name, wouldn't it?) put a lot of effort into ensuring that the story is as accurate as possible. He even includes dozens of footnotes to corroborate many of the stories that have become legendary in wrestling circles (Andre/Bad News Brown heat, Andre/Blackjack Mulligan fight, etc).

As you can see, the art is pretty simple and straightforward, but Box Brown certainly has an eye for detail, as you can tell in this sequence from the WrestleMania 3 match against Hogan. I'm not going to post the whole match here, but if you have seen it, Brown captures the important moments really well.

The best parts of the book, however, are the more personal details about Andre and his life. His suffering from acromegaly made him as much an outsider in his private life as it made him a star in the ring. The author has collected many personal anecdotes from Andre's peers, which makes the graphic novel a very touching affair. 

The graphic novel is decently sized, with 243 pages and certainly worth checking out. Probably the best "pure" wrestling comic book out there.