Author: dtm666

I ramble about things.

Chris Jericho Is Finally A WWF World Champion…

…and an UNDISPUTED World champion on top of that. Something we haven’t had in years.

I guess, at some point, Jericho has won all the other World titles in the world that nobody knows about. The ones in New Japan, All Japan, NOAH, those Lucha promos, and many others all over the World. You can’t have an UNDISPUTED WORLD CHAMPION when other promotions around the world still have World champions to call their own… which is probably why he has since been downgraded to Undisputed WWF Champion, instead.

Hey, congrats to Jericho for the win. Probably should have gotten it sooner if I’m being honest and would have spiced up the main event scene instead of having the same tired faces stink up said scene… especially if this year is anything to go by. And having to beat Rock and Austin on the same night to win that very accolade has to be worth something, right?

But let’s be fair. Jericho is probably dropping the title to Hunter come Wrestlemania and then we can do the same old dance all over again… but now he’s a good guy or something.

So I say enjoy the Jericho WWF title run while it lasts, people. I have a feeling it’s the only one he’s getting for a long, long time.

Quick Thoughts On The New Planet Of The Apes

Not going to lie here, I’ve never actually saw any of the original Planet Of The Apes movies, so how this compares to those movies is something that is beyond the scope of my brief thoughts because what I know of those films are mostly through synopses and second-hand accounts. Just about the only thing I could say is that this somewhat made me want to watch those flicks one of these days. I liked the movie well enough, I thought the ape designs were well done, and the ape stunts were pretty good. The acting is kinda hit or miss, but for what is essentially sci-fi schlock, it was fine. Again, it sates that curiosity of wanting to watch the old movies to see how this compares to those. Some day, I guess…

In the meantime, we’ll see if this Tim Burton remake or reboot or whatever you want to call it ends up doing well enough for a sequel because that’s certainly a tease if there ever was one. For what it’s worth, the original Apes movie had a somewhat similar grim ending that didn’t quite tease a sequel, but we ended up with four of them. I don’t think we’ll be getting that much out of this because that would require Tim Burton sticking around to do more than one movie. Even today, I’m amazed Batman Returns is a thing.

WWF Buys WCW… And Somehow Loses.

It’s over.

After a long, hard-fought battle, the World Wrestling Federation has outlasted its rival promotion World Championship Wrestling and bought off its remains, putting an end to the storied rivalry in years and giving Vincent K. McMahon the sports entertainment monopoly he’s always wanted.

It was tight in the beginning. WCW Monday Nitro started in 1995 and went head to head with WWF during a time when the show was an hour long and ran a bunch of bad matches and stories featuring largely cartoonish gimmicks.

And then Scott Hall and Kevin Nash jumped ship to WCW, wrecked havoc (in more ways than one), and formed the New World Order with a Hulk Hogan who had gone bad in an effort to change his stale act. And for the first time in a good long while, WCW was on top of the world, beating the WWF in the ratings, pay-per-view buys, and other areas that the geeks would consider important. The WWF struggled, but couldn’t quite nudge.

But WCW proved two things; they had one good idea and most of their top stars were old guys from the WWF’s prime years in the eighties. Eventually, people got tired of the nWo gimmick and clamored for something new… and that something new came from Stone Cold Steve Austin feuding with Vince McMahon. Suddenly, people were hot for WWF again to the point where WCW was suddenly feeling left behind.

In an effort to gain back their dominance, WCW made stupid mistakes. They ended the streak of their hottest star, Goldberg, and went back to the nWo well one time too many. They hired one of the creative minds behind the WWF’s recent run and they ended up with the same stuff that was on the other show, which begs the question why anyone would want to watch second-rate WWF television on the WCW show when they could just watch RAW. They let four talented wrestlers leave for the competition. They brought back the two guys responsible for the company’s woes to try and liven things up again, only to fail miserably and harder than before.

And these are just scratching the service.

Eventually, the heads at Time Warner decided to sell the thing off and then someone else decided to cancel all the WCW shows, leaving Vince to come in and buy his competition. He might not have the shows, but he has the trademarks, the titles, and some of the stars… but not the big guns. No Goldberg, no Steiner, no Jarrett or anyone like that… well, they got DDP… that’s something, I guess, right?

So this is it… WWF is the only show on television right now… and how do they celebrate this big milestone?

They make Shane the new owner of WCW and have Steve Austin turn on the Rock to join forces with Vince McMahon.

The next day, a friend of mine who had been watching wrestling since the 80s was so upset by this turn of events that he swore off wrestling forever. We’ll see if he actually means it… but if that’s the case, then I wonder how many other people would feel the same way. More to the point… how many people who used to watch WCW until the very end – still feels funny saying that – are actually going to make the jump to WWF?

I was not the biggest WCW fan in the world; the old guys and the constant nWo stuff killed it for me… but it was the place for great wrestling. And there used to be this mentality that WWF was more focused on the entertainment aspects while WCW was more about the sport… something that wasn’t readily apparent the first time around when you had a bunch of old guys in the main event.

So two shows with two different styles… and one goes away… does the one show get the other audience or do they go away?

One thing’s for sure; this acquisition could very well make this whole WWF vs. WCW thing a reality… even if it feels half-assed

COMIC REVIEW – Stone Cold Steve Austin (Chaos! Comics Miniseries)

In 1999, the World Wrestling Federation did a deal with publisher CHAOS! Comics to produce a bunch of comic book based on their various WWF Superstars. This included a Undertaker series that lasted several issues, along with a few one shots based on Mankind, Chyna, and The Rock. None of these comics have anything to do with wrestling, but rather take these characters on zany adventures outside their comfort zone. Undertaker fighting actual demons… Rock dealing with fixed fights… Chyna doing bodyguard work for other people… that sort of thing.

And then there was the Stone Cold Steve Austin miniseries… yes, a miniseries that lasted four issues… and once again, this has nothing to do with Austin delivering Stone Cold Stunners to other WWF Superstars or giving beer baths to Vince McMahon, but rather we’ve got Austin in the role of mysterious stranger coming into a Texas town owned by a less-than-honest Texas owner doing bad things. Your classic modern-day western of sorts… except instead of mysterious strange, you have Stone Cold Steve Austin, who has the ability to command a small crowd of townspeople fearing for their lives to give him a Hell Yeah whenever he calls for it. It’s simply amazing.

I mean… hell, when you think about it, the story itself is rather pedestrian and uninteresting. There’s a certain mystery surrounding someone who was run out of town, but that’s secondary to Austin beating up thugs and not selling a damn thing. They throw attack choppers and biker gangs his way and he blows through all of them. This would have been fine for a one-shot, but four issues is stretching it and there’s only so many ways you can depict Stone Cold opening various cans of whoop ass and stomping various mudholes through many asses before it gets a bit tiresome.

There’s a reference to The Corporation – the faction headed by Vince McMahon – but don’t expect any other WWF talent to actually show up in these books. I guess there was no artist on earth who would dare draw HHH and his big gonzo nose. Speaking of which, the art is alright. The action bits are well depicted, seeing Stunners on the drawn page look somewhat impactful, and the layouts are fairly clean by late-90s comic standards.

It’s not exactly a great comic by any means. The joke pretty much runs itself through the dirt about two issues and by the time you reach the end, it’s just… eh. That said, if you ever wanted a comic about Stone Cold Steve Austin being a total badass who’s nigh impervious to pain, then this is the book for you. They’re an amusing curiosity if nothing else, but not much more than that… which more than sums up the entirety of the WWF/CHAOS! Comics partnership if I’m being totally honest.

Spider-Man Unlimited… meh.

So I liked the Spider-Man cartoon that’s on Fox. I think it does a good enough job of adapting some of the more popular comic stories onto the small screen with its own little continuity and it has a pretty catchy theme song. Almost as catchy as that classic Spidey tune from the old cartoon from the 60s or something.

The show ended on a cliffhanger, with Spider-Man and that Webb lady looking for Mary Jane in some other dimension or something… but rather than continue that angle, we got another Spider-Man cartoon… called Spider-Man Unlimited.

This Spider-Man featured Spider-Man going to another dimension – a Counter-Earth, if you will – and now he has to help some rebels fend off against some other villains while also having to deal with mutated versions of Venom and Carnage. Spidey also sports a new suit with a bunch of gadgets and… I’m not a fan. Spidey has had costume changes before, but this looks god-awful.

Spider-Man Unlimited is a good show on its own… good original storylines, decent animation, but it’s not the Spider-Man I know from reading the comics. While there are some familiar faces, they don’t always show their face, leaving our poor webhead to make friends with some new faces, who vaguely resemble some characters from the comics.

I’m not going to bash this cartoon because it doesn’t follow the roots of which it came from. It’s a good show, but it would have been a better show if Spidey ditched the hi-tech crap and stuck with his basic web shooters and proportionate spider strength.

Or at least came up with a better suit.

MOVIE REVIEW – Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994)

For those who felt that the live-action Street Fighter movie was too much of a Van Damme movie and not enough of a proper Street Fighter movie, then perhaps Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie may be more to your liking.

When I first bought a VHS copy of this film, I bought it mainly for two reasons. It’s based on the popular video game of which I’ve played many times and I’ve always wanted to kick off my own collection of anime films… a goal that has fallen off the waysides as of late. I wasn’t expecting much – the Van Damme version wasn’t all that great of a film, although I’ll happily admit here that I do enjoy some of the cheese it provides… maybe I should’ve added that bit to the imdb review.

Turns out that the people behind the animated movie knew what they were doing and were more than willing to keep the movie faithful to the video game source it was based upon rather than try to craft their own narrative with all the players they were given. All sixteen fighters from Super Street Fighter II Turbo are represented – hell, they even snuck in a cameo by then-secret fighter Akuma as a background bit – and they’re all portrayed as close to as they should be. The fight sequences are also well-done and are a highlight of the film… as they should be in a movie called Street Fighter.

There were two localized versions of the film released: an unedited version (which is the version I saw) and a version edited for general audiences, which I assume mostly involves editing some choice words and some shots here and there. Neither version retains the few seconds of the Chun-Li Shower Scene where she bares all, which may disappoint all the perverts out there. But for the rest of you, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie does the games justice and is just a solid film in its own right. Well worth the watch.

MOVIE REVIEW – Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998 Documentary)

I had seen this film back when it first aired on A&E channel a year or so back and when I saw the VHS tape available for sale and had the money for it, I snapped at the opportunity to pick this up.

What started as a simple documentary about wrestling became a compelling drama, which pits the hero Bret Hart against the manipulative Vince McMahon. What results of this confrontation is one of the biggest controversies in wrestling history. And you know something? That wasn’t in the script.

What’s wrong with this film? It features real people doing real things, real backstage politics, and yet there is something about this film that makes it so dramatic… so exciting that it seems like it’s scripted. But any wrestling insider will tell that it’s no work… no storyline concocted… this is very real.

There’s an additional bonus on the VHS version; an additional interview with Bret Hart and filmmaker Paul Jay reflecting on the film and the events that have transpired since the events of Montreal and the film’s subsequent release. It provides a nice bit of depth and despair to the existing story.

This isn’t exactly the greatest wrestling documentary ever made (although some people will disagree), but it is one of the few which holds nothing back except what happens behind the curtain. A good drama in my view.

My Conversation With A Man Of Steel

So a while back, I had come across MAD About Superheroes, which was a collection of MAD Magazine strips and pieces about superheroes. One of the pieces included was called “Superman R.I.P.” and was no doubt released during the hype period surrounding the Death of Superman story in the 90s… and yes, Superman is still around today, so that amounted to nothing.

Anyway, in one of the frames, Superman is shelling out his guts to a therapist and the thought occurred… what was the guy actually saying during that session? I don’t know, either… but I ended up writing this thing, which turned out to be… quite something else.

Originally dubbed a “Fictional Interview” but retitled something less mechanical and soulless… and yes, there are more of these to come.

Continue reading “My Conversation With A Man Of Steel”

Birthday Wish

Well, it’s my birthday today… nineteen years on this ball of soil called Earth.

I wish I could say that things were looking up from my point of view… but all I could really say is that things are going smoothly enough. So that’s guaranteed to not come true. There is something of a birthday wish that I would like to share… and I have no qualms about sharing it because it’s an outlandish wish that will never come true.

I wish that I had a more positive outlook on life.

I wish that I wasn’t as naïve about the real world as I turned out to be.

I wish that I was in a better place… or at least, a better frame of mind.

That’s my wish… and now that I’ve shared it, no chance of it happening any time soon…

Unless…