Wrestling & Comics
When we started this little blog 7 1/2 years ago (WOW!), comic books were a lot more exciting than they are now. DC was going through a revolution, with Geoff Johns reviving the Green Lantern franchise and then bringing back the multiverse in Infinite Crisis. Marvel, my first love in comics, had become my whipping boy, with Joe Quesada giving Brian Michael Bendis free reign to destroy everything I loved about the House of Ideas. There was a lot to praise and a lot to complain about. Today, comics just aren’t as exciting. Sure, series like Invincible, Daredevil, Aquaman and The Walking Dead still keep me interested enough to go to the comic shop every week, but there isn’t really that buzz around the industry that there was back then.
DC’s New 52 really sucked out most of my interest in the company. Suddenly, all the characters I’d spent the last decade getting to know weren’t themselves anymore. Infinite Crisis, the story that got me interested in DC in the first place, probably doesn’t even exist in the continuity anymore. Of course, we don’t know for sure, because DC won’t frakking explain what happened and what didn’t in their new universe. For continuity buffs like myself, that’s a hard pill to swallow.
Marvel hasn’t really evolved much over the last decade either. It seems like they have a mega-crossover event that changes the status quo forever twice a year now, which makes you wonder what the status quo ever was to begin with. Instead of ruining the Avengers for me, Bendis is now ruining the X-Men, but they’ve really been ruined for a while anyway. Ed Brubaker, the best thing going at Marvel, has stepped away from superhero comics for the time being. And for some reason Marvel thinks it’s their responsibility to make me angry.
The declining frequency of our posts is a clear indication of how much we’ve really stopped caring. Back in the day we’d have a new post everyday, sometimes twice a day. We’d do weekly reviews of comics. We’d do Books of Doom that we’d review as a group. Now we can barely be bothered to post a Podcast of Doom transcript or bitch about stupid crap. Which brings me to the title of this blog post.
Jim Doom, Doom DeLuise and myself, Doomkopf’s version of the DC’s Trinity (before you make the joke guys, I realize I’m Wonder Woman), have two foundations to our friendship. One is comics, and the fact that we seem to agree on most aspects of storytelling and art styles. The other is professional wrestling, and the fact that we seem to agree on most aspects of storytelling and in-ring styles.
Tonight is Wrestlemania night. As I’m writing this in Austin, TX, I’m a little sad that I’m not sitting next to my buddies at DJ’s Dugout in Omaha, NE. We’ve been watching the big pay-per-views together for as long as we’ve been doing this blog. Now I’m in Austin, and DeLuise is about ready to leave the country, and we’re not going to be able to do that together anymore. But one thing we CAN do together is bitch about it on the internet. So as of right now, Doomkopf is officially a blog about comics AND wrestling. And I can’t think of a more appropriate day to do it than on Wrestlemania day.
I’m not sure if this means we’ll be posting more frequently, but it does mean we’ll have a lot more to talk about. Starting tomorrow with a review of Wrestlemania XXIX, naturally. I hope my fellow wrestling buddies will do the same.