CONTACTABOUTFACEBOOKTWITTERPODCAST IPHONE APPANDROID APPAMAZON APPRSS
Pro Wrestling Torch
Pro Wrestling Torch Reaches The Most Wrestling Fans Every Week: #1 in iTunes • #1 on iPhone and iPad • #1 on Android • #1 on Kindle
GOT THE PWTORCH APP YET?
iPhone & iPad
Android
Amazon Kindle
Windows Phone
PWTorch Phone App
MITCHELL'S TAKE
MITCHELL: Review of Andre the Giant: A Graphic Novel

May 29, 2014 - 4:46:55 PM
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO BOOKMARK US & VISIT US DAILY


Staff11Mitchell_wide_1.png


You’d think comic books and pro wrestling would be a natural fit. They share a lot in common. Ridiculous violence. Larger-than-life musculatures. Melodramatic storylines that build to a big blow off. Stilted dialogue.

That the two seem to be a natural fit has occurred to a lot of folks over the years. C.M. Punk adopted Ben Grimm’s fifty-plus year catch phrase “It’s Clobberin’ Time!” as his own. Christopher Daniels and Kazarian got letters printed in a Spiderman book a few months ago. Hell, Raven co-wrote a Spiderman book years ago. There’s a PWTorch VIPer who writes Star Trek and Doctor Who comics for IDW publishing – Scott Tipton.

Chikara tried to tap into the dual market, and simultaneously hold up the indy tradition a few years back of producing DVD covers where a reasonable person would have no idea what the DVD was about, by creating cool tributes to famous comic book covers. Jerry Lawler, a longtime Frank Frazetta fan who broke into wrestling with his comic art depictions of Memphis wrestling stars like Jackie Fargo and Lance Russell, did covers for Headlocked, a fictional series about pro wrestling, and the afterword for a recent major Frazetta coffee-table book retrospective. Mick Foley collaborated with the great artist Jill Thompson on one of his children’s books.

On the other side, Marvel did a pretty crappy WCW comic book for a while there, one that they clearly had difficulty getting decent artists and writers to produce. There was a forgettable Undertaker horror book that lasted a few issues. And who could forget new WWE Hall of Famer The Ultimate Warrior’s book?

Holy Moley! Horrible art ripping off Rob Liefeld (and Rob Liefeld was the worst big-time comic book artist of the last twenty-five years) and Warrior philosophizin’ and inspirin’ the Little Warriors with a half-assed religion he made up by himself called Destrucity was, like, the exact opposite of what Will Eisner had in mind. There was yet another WWE eyesore a little while ago where the artists, whoever they were, tried to outdo the Warrior in the ridiculous muscle department with every single character.

With the exception of Antonio Rocca’s long-ago cameo in a Superman book, Los Bros Hernandez’s shoot strips on Adrian Adonis and the like, and honestly, Mick Foley’s new WWE series, which isn’t bad at all and probably as close as any WWE product ever produced to depict what it is WWE would really like to be doing with its Superstars (hint – no ring), most of the direct tie-ins between the two similar genres have been uniformly terrible.

“Andre The Giant – Life and Legend,” the new graphic art biography from First Second Books by Ignatz Award winning indy cartoonist Box Brown, transcends all that, probably because it eschews all those supposed commonalities. Brown’s spare style, one that owes much more to Chester Brown than Jack Kirby, taps into the loneliness that was at the heart of Andre’s life, the isolation that he felt because the very thing that made him rich and famous was, in the end, killing him. Brown doesn’t draw an extra inch in the entire book. Every panel, every line, scrupulously serves Andre’s story.

It’s the nature of graphic art biographies that the content has to be picked carefully, in a decompressed style. Brown picks the right thumbnail stories that get to Andre’s essence – the upbringing, his legendary drinking life, the sex, the promoters and their manipulations (it’s cool to see his subtle characterizations of the famous wrestling figures that surrounded the Giant), The Princess Bride (but no Six Million Dollar Man), the sad relationship with his daughter, what happened when fans and big-time wrestlers alike tried him on, and the tragedy of the acromegaly that slowly robbed him of life.

Brown gets how Andre The Giant’s world-touring gimmick worked, and why it worked so well.

It’s only when Brown gets to Wrestlemania III and his huge money match with Hulk Hogan that he serves the hype more than the legend, and that choice serves the art, and allows Andre’s subsequent quick decline to stand in sad conquest.

“Andre The Giant: Life and Legend” deserves a place on the bookshelf of the best of pro wrestling biographies, and an equal place in any serious comic book reader’s collection.

(Bruce Mitchell has been a PWTorch columnist since 1990. He hosts the PWTorch Livecast every Monday night in the hour before Raw with Travis Bryant at www.PWTorchLivecast.com. The weekly two-hour Bruce Mitchell Audio Show with host Wade Keller is a VIP audio staple for years. His column archives dating back to 1990 are available in the Bruce Mitchell Library at the PWTorch VIP website. On the March 16 episode of the Bruce Mitchell Audio Show, he talked in-depth about why Carlos Colon being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame is a disgrace based on how he handled the murder of Bruiser Brody in his company in 1987.)


We suggest these recent related articles...
25 YEARS OF BRUCE MITCHELL - DAY 10 (2000): Titled “Death of Hardcore” as Bruce discusses the apparent end of the Hardcore Wrestling era and also suggests what ECW must do to regain relevance
25 YEARS OF BRUCE MITCHELL - DAY 9 (1999): Titled “Children” as Bruce discusses Vince McMahon's marketing approach toward children and how he deals with controversy like a child would (with a great opening line)
25 YEARS OF BRUCE MITCHELL - DAY 8 (1998): “Stolen Moments” - Bruce lays out case for Flair as Greatest of All-Time as he dealt with locker room politics in WCW Nitro era
prowrestling.net
CLICK HERE FOR EVEN MORE PW.NET HEADLINES


CLICK TO EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO MAIN LISTING

NEW! SIGN UP FOR FREE PWTORCH BREAKING NEWS EMAIL ALERTS
BECOME A PWTORCH VIP MEMBER
-FORMER MEMBERS LOGIN HERE TO RENEW
-NEW MEMBERS CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
SELECT BY ARTICLES CATEGORY
SEARCH PWTORCH.COM



CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF UPCOMING PRO WRESTLING EVENTS
MORE HEADLINES AT AFFILIATE SITES
MMATorch
LATEST HEADLINES - CLICK TO READ CLICK HERE FOR MORE MMATORCH HEADLINES


PWTORCH POLL - VOTE NOW!
RAW POLL 10/12: Vote on Monday's show
 
pollcode.com free polls


RAW POLL 10/12: What was the Best Match on Raw?
 
pollcode.com free polls
MCNEILL LIVECAST POLL: TNA will have a 32-person tournament to determine a new Hvt. champion - your thoughts?
 
pollcode.com free polls
CENA POLL: If John Cena takes a year-end break, who should win the U.S. Title from Cena?
 
pollcode.com free polls
VOTE IN OR SEE RESULTS OF PREVIOUS POLLS



LATEST HEADLINES - CLICK TO READ CLICK HERE FOR EVEN MORE INC HEADLINES

_
LATEST FREE AUDIO SHOWS - CLICK TO LISTEN VIEW MORE PWTORCH LIVECAST EPISODES
DOWNLOAD PWTORCH LIVECAST APP
SUBSCRIBE TO PWTORCH LIVECAST IN ITUNES


ABOUT US

THE TORCH REACHES MORE COMBAT ENTERTAINMENT FANS THAN ANY OTHER SOURCE

PWTorch editor Wade Keller has covered pro wrestling full time since 1987 starting with the Pro Wrestling Torch print newsletter. PWTorch.com launched in 1999 and the PWTorch Apps launched in 2008.

He has conducted "Torch Talk" insider interviews with Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Steve Austin, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Eric Bischoff, Jesse Ventura, Lou Thesz, Jerry Lawler, Mick Foley, Jim Ross, Paul Heyman, Bruno Sammartino, Goldberg, more.

He has interviewed big-name players in person incluiding Vince McMahon (at WWE Headquarters), Dana White (in Las Vegas), Eric Bischoff (at the first Nitro at Mall of America), Brock Lesnar (after his first UFC win).

He hosted the weekly Pro Wrestling Focus radio show on KFAN in the early 1990s and hosted the Ultimate Insiders DVD series distributed in retail stories internationally in the mid-2000s including interviews filmed in Los Angeles with Vince Russo & Ed Ferrara and Matt & Jeff Hardy. He currently hosts the most listened to pro wrestling audio show in the world, (the PWTorch Livecast, top ranked in iTunes)


REACHING 1 MILLION+ UNIQUE USERS PER MONTH
500 MILLION CLICKS & LISTENS PER YEAR
MILLIONS OF PWTORCH NEWSLETTERS SOLD
PWTORCH STAFF

EDITORS:
Wade Keller, editor
(kellerwade@gmail.com)

James Caldwell, assistant editor
(pwtorch@gmail.com)

STAFF COLUMNISTS:
Bruce Mitchell (since 1990)
Pat McNeill (since 2001)
Greg Parks (since 2007)
Sean Radican (since 2003)

We also have a great team of
TV Reporters
and Specialists and Artists.

PWTORCH VIP MEMBERSHIP

PWTorch offers a VIP membership for $10 a month (or less with an annual sub). It includes nearly 25 years worth of archives from our coverage of pro wrestling dating back to PWTorch Newsletters from the late-'80s filled with insider secrets from every era that are available to VIPers in digital PDF format and Keller's radio show from the early 1990s.

Also, new exclusive top-shelf content every day including a new VIP-exclusive weekly 16 page digital magazine-style (PC and iPad compatible) PDF newsletter packed with exclusive articles and news.

The following features come with a VIP membership which tens of thousands of fans worldwide have enjoyed for many years...

-New Digital PWTorch Newsletter every week
-3 New Digital PDF Back Issues from 5, 10, 20 years ago
-Over 60 new VIP Audio Shows each week
-Ad-free access to all PWTorch.com free articles
-VIP Forum access with daily interaction with PWTorch staff and well-informed fellow wrestling fans
-Tons of archived audio and text articles
-Decades of Torch Talk insider interviews in transcript and audio formats with big name stars.


**SIGN UP FOR VIP ACCESS HERE**

CONTACTABOUTFACEBOOKTWITTERPODCASTIPHONE APPANDROID APPAMAZON APPRSS
VIP SIGN-UP
VIP LOGIN
THE TORCH: #1 IN COMBAT ENTERTAINMENT COVERAGE | © 1999-2013 TDH Communications Inc. • All rights reserved -- PRIVACY POLICY