Lothar wrestles in Mandrake The Magician

I READ about this little gem in the classic The Comic-Book Book (1973, reprinted 1998) by Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff. Dick O'Donnell's essay "It's Magic" enthuses greatly about Mandrake The Magician's earliest newspaper adventures, written by Lee Falk and illustrated by Phil Davis. He discusses one of Mandrake's earliest adventures, 'The Hidden Kingdom of Murderers', which first ran in US newspapers from February 3 to May 26, 1935.

Dick discusses one sequence where the magician's large Nubian manservant Lothar is forced to wrestle "the champion of the murderers" above a flaming pit. Naturally, Lothar wins. And Mandrake saves the doomed wrestler from a fiery death by levitating him to safety.

Amazingly, I found this art sequence (albeit, the Italian translated version) at the excellent Mandrake The Magician blog.

And here it is. Enjoy.

Blood And Alcohol

WHOA! How could I forget this misanthropic classic from WA's D. Rat? His 2000 A5 comic was full of one-page toons and a few strips that featured - in between the limbless naked chicks and Nazi symbols - a masked wrestler. So there you go. Not sure what became of the dude. Liked his artwork tho.

Ayre farce

IT’LL never appear or, if it does, it’ll disappear without a trace – a lot like BodogFIGHT itself – but ex-Bodog boss and billionaire Calvin Ayre will supposedly star in a new graphic novel called Ayre Force.
It’s a tenuous link for this blog – but MMA’s an offshoot of pro wrestling and, besides, Ayre Force features three of my fave things: MMA fighters, tattooed rocker Bif Naked and sexy-as poker player Evelyn Ng.

MMA athlete Tara Larosa...

...indy rocker Bif Naked...

...sexy pro poker player Evelyn Ng

They are part of a covert ops unit involved in a war with evil corporation Wintercorp, led by the sinister Janus Winter.
Ayre’s got some reasonably heavy hitters on board to produce Ayre Force including writers Adam Slutsky (Maxim, Bluff) and Joseph Phillip Illidge (Batman) and artist Shawn Martinbrough (Batman: Detective Comics, World War Hulk: Frontline).
For all the bullshit hype, more art and info, head to www.bodoglife.net/ayreforce.
And for a more critical look at Ayre, check out this article.

Calvin.......oooooooh, he's so tough

I don't like John Byrne, but this is fuckin' crazy

FROM John Byrne's web site (byrnerobotics.com) on April 11:

HEADING: Well, that was fun
"Got a call from Paul Kupperberg yesterday. Apparently the WWE has decided that kids don't read comics (is Joe Quesada working for them as a consultant?) so all the strips are being dropped from the magazine.
And Paul has been fired."

"I have to say this is upsetting. Not only because it leaves a guy like Paul Kupperberg out of a job, but the fact that the magazine publisher falls into the same stereotype that most people have about wrestling fans. That their fans, which is largely made up by children, don't like to read. It is a magazine for crying out loud! They would have to read the articles, why not a fun comic strip putting their favorite wrestlers in fantastic situations? Is this thing just going to be 80 pages of pictures and no captions? It also amazes me they wouldn't have waited for the first few issues of their new childrens magazine to actually be published and read by their fans, before making such a decision.
••
Discussing this with Paul, I noted that there is more to it than simple economics or "kids don't read" mentality. Some things simply do not cross over into other forms. Sports are high on that list. Billions of dollars spent every year, in this country alone, on sports of all kinds, yet if we take all the thousands upon thousands of comics published in the last 75 years or so, how many of them were sports oriented? And of the few that were, how many were successful.
Same with movies. So many millions of miles of film, yet so few sports movies. Novels are the same. Such books/movies/TV shows etc do exist, but they are by far the exception, and really successful examples are an exception to the exception.
It falls into the same category as comics based on videogames, I think. More millions spent by consumers, yet how many of those consumers want to read about the characters, instead of being the characters?"

More KROZOR...because YOU didn't ask for it!!

Oh...my...sweet...jesus. How utterly, utterly horrible.

I quote Comic Shop News #1085...

"Grant Morrison & JG Jones deliver more surprises in DC's Final Crisis #2. Meet Japan's No. 1 pop culture heroes, the Super Young Team and their languid leader, Most Excellent Superbat! Join legendary wrestler Sonny Sumo and super escape artist Mister Miracle as they team to face the offspring of the Anti-Life Equation...etc etc."

You know, I hate DC and I hate what it's done to its universe over the past four years.......but I may well pick up this issue. Sigh...

Krozor: how did I miss THIS one?

FROM the current issue of WWE Magazine on sale in Aussie newsstands ("The 500th Anniversary Issue") comes this little tidbit (above). How did I miss Krozor? Sounds godawful, like all those Chaos! comics put out at around that time (remember The Rock, The Undertaker, Chyna, etc? Ugh!).
Anyone got a copy of the April '97 issue they can send me, so I can review Krozor properly?