Thanks to Raymond Wong and Blade Braxton for supplying the comics
All I can say is that I was warned.
I was warned, and I laughed it off.
After all, how bad could it possibly be, I thought? Wrestling comic books are nothing new to me. After all, I made it through the WCW comic book. It wasn’t so bad. And I not only lived through the Kevin Nash comic, I was able to withstand the backlash from some of my female readership who took it upon themselves to explain – in far too graphic detail – how the former Oz made them as gooey between the legs as a jelly donut. And let’s not forget that Warrior comic – remember it? The one where he de-pantsed Santa Claus? If the site of Kris Kringle being held as Warrior’s love slave wasn’t enough to bring me down, what on earth possibly could?
I was convinced I could never meet my match. I had never been stopped before.
Until today.
Until I read them.
You know, one of them would have been bad enough. One I probably could have survived. But the combined inaneness of the pair has now left me with an affliction so severe that I am now questioning my very sanity.
For today, I met up with not only the Sable comic book, but the Chyna one as well.
Why, you might rightly inquire, do such items even exist? For you, I have no answer. I can only theorize that when the books were penned, wrestling was so scalding hot that everyone wanted to cash in on the wave of popularity. And thus, two separate companies decided to publish books based on two of the most famous women of wrestling: Joanie “You Could Call Me Chyna Back Then” Lauer and Rena “At That Time, You Couldn’t Legally Call Me Sable” Mero.
And while my gut instinct was to hide ‘neath the covers until this particular storm passed over, something made me stop.
It was almost like a taunt. It was as if Joanie Laurer herself was saying to me, “You’re not man enough to survive my comic book.” Look at her, all smug and cocky, the ink perfectly capturing her overwhelming arrogance. It well and truly pissed me off. And I was all like, “I made it through your egomaniacal autobiography, skank! I’m RD Reynolds! In short…bring it on, BEYOTCH!”
It was the year 2000. Chyna was, of course, in the midst of a run as one of WWE’s top stars, and hadn’t yet had her Playboy appearance that would cause her head to inflate like a hot air balloon. Sable, on the other hand, had already been there, done that, and got the wet t-shirt. Post Playboy, you will recall, Sable wound up leaving the company in a huff over the way she was being portrayed, leading to a lawsuit against WWE in which she claimed damages totalling approximately $14 trillion dollars.
With the WWF marketing machine no longer behind her, Rena took off to capture stardom on her own. And what better way to reach the unwashed masses than with a comic book?
Ah yes, there she is, ladies and gentlemen: Rena Mero.
Um, I guess.
Hmmm…maybe Vince got the rights to her likeness too, because that looks virtually nothing like her at all. I mean, sure, she’s blonde and has a gigantic rack. But who in comic book-dom doesn’t? Be that as it may, Rena is the 10th Muse, a persona with which she fights crime while concealing her secret identity. And how, you might ask, does she obscure her face from the world? Like this!
Yes, that’s IT; she swabs a blue lightning bolt over her eye. Nice disguise. I mean, come on – at least Clark Kent wore a pair of glasses. Rena just slaps on some Max Factor and thinks no one will notice.
Still, it’s better than Chyna’s outfit.
Not even two pages into the Chyna comic, and I’m already tasting my gastric acid. I think that’s a record.
Chyna’s super persona is very creative. See, she’s Chyna. No mask, no leotards. Just black leather wrapped around her heaving saline sacks and jammed up her ass so far as to be invisible. Fortunately for the artists doing the book, this is post-surgery, so they didn’t have to run out of ink drawing her Sgt. Slaughter-esque chin.
She fights for the cause of…um, well, good, I guess. She is, after all, so beloved that little children ask her to tuck them in at night. She kindly obliges while wearing her thong.
You know, that’s really quite creepy. Seriously, just look at that image above. What would you do if you saw your kid being tucked in by THAT? Upon closer examination, even the little kid looks totally wigged out, and rightly so. The image of Joanie Laurer hovering over you, be it in real life or comic-form, is nothing short of old fashioned nightmare fuel.
At this point, you are no doubt asking what super powers these two women possess. The best I can tell, Rena Mero has the power to repel people. That’s really rather ironic, as you would assume that would be Joanie’s specialty. The difference here is that Muse does so with some sort of mystic power, instead of just using her personality. Aside from that, she can bounce up and down like one of those superballs you get out of a gumball machine. No joke – three pages of the comic were dedicated to her bouncing on the bad guys’ heads. Super Mario would be very proud.
As for Chyna, well…she has no super powers, other than having the uncanny ability to punch men right square in the balls. Not sure if that’s really a super power or not. I don’t think I ever saw Wonder Woman do that, although if Chyna was Wonder Woman, she’d probably tie up her male foes in the magic lasso, and then proceed to use the guy’s nutsack as a boxing speedbag.
Both women fight evil, but it’s done in such a manner that you really don’t care and you’re just kind of praying that one of them takes a slug to the head so you can get back to doing something more productive with your life, like removing the lint from your navel or alphabetizing your spice rack or something.
Because let me tell you, these stories make absolutely ZERO sense. I mean, I’ve read them both over and over and over, and I still can’t explain the plot of either of them. I even had Blade read them in an attempt for someone to explain them to me. Instead, he just keeps repeating, “Don’t treat me like a woman. Don’t treat me like a man.” Then he just giggles like a little girl. I’m pretty sure he’s drunk. God knows I can’t blame him.
So the hell with this. I can’t go on. This is the induction I cannot finish. I’ve been beaten. I just can’t do it.
Especially not now, as I’ve been afflicted with the curse.
Yes, the curse. You see, after reading the Chyna comic for the 17th time, something very weird began to happen to me. Not only was I reading this nonsensical, boring as hell text, but I was doing so in Joanie Laurer’s voice. Yes, her voice. That irritating, bassy, nasally, not quite female but definitely not male either voice.
I threw the comic down. That was too creepy. Glutton for punishment I am, I went back to the Sable comic.
And it happened again. CHYNA WAS READING TO ME. And asking me about Britney Spears having a boob job.
My very grip on sanity seemed tenuous at best. No matter what I read, be it the newspaper, old Pro Wrestling Illustrateds, or even the ingredients to a can of pinto beans, it was all in that same voice.
I started to panic, to convulse. My wife ran into the room and asked me what was wrong. And all that came out of my mouth was…
“Don’t treat me like a woman. Don’t treat me like a man.”
You win, Chyna…you win.
Now please get the hell out of my head.