

"The Ultimately Insane Warrior!"

5/30/07

by: Protoclown Sometime last year, Roger discovered a short series of comics based on (and written by) the wrestler Ultimate Warrior on eBay. Recognizing them for the comedy gems that they are, he purchased them, and loaned them out to me so I could write a Longbox column about them. (He already spotlighted the hilariously insane Warrior Christmas Special at the end of last year).



Recently, I decided to remove these comics from the purgatory that is my "to be read eventually" pile (in which there are hundreds of books). After several days of sobbing, tear-filled regret and a near-biblical gnashing of teeth, my brain had recovered enough to finally talk about them.

You've never known what regret truly is until you've read these Warrior comics. First off, I will give you this warning about these comics, should you ever happen across copies of them (perhaps in an archaeological dig, or lining the bottom of a birdcage somewhere). Though there are words printed within (quite a lot of words actually, as the Ultimate Warrior, or simply "Warrior" as he now prefers to be called, is quite a wordy bitch), I would strongly advise against actually reading any of them. Reading the words in a "Warrior" comic affects you not unlike an unspeakable horror from an H.P. Lovecraft tale, twisting your brain around and driving you insane as you struggle to comprehend that which you've just seen. Of course, if you're familiar with the Warrior, you knew that already. If you aren't, look him up on YouTube and you will soon discover that he is incapable of speaking in anything other than disjointed random non sequiturs.



There was far more text in these books than I expected from a former professional wrestler; in fact, some pages were dominated by text with very little else on them. Ironically though, it seemed that the more text was on a page, the less was being said. I would read and reread entire narrative boxes with no comprehension whatsoever of what I'd just read, until it finally dawned on me that absolutely nothing was just said. Because of that, these books force you to take a "look at da purdy pictures" approach to reading them, and since the artwork is provided by an abysmally bad Rob Liefeld copycat, they don't exactly deliver anything in that department either.



One thing you need to (and I use this term very loosely) "understand" before going into these books is the concept of "Destrucity", which Roger defined in his previous coverage of the Christmas issue, but I think it needs to be mentioned again: "Destrucity: tri-fold in its definition, therefore meaning... 1. The name of the Galaxy in WARRIOR wherein the "Terrain of Testament" lies. 2. The Living of one's life in the Way of a Warrior according to a Warrior's 8 Disciplines. Those are as follows: 1) Physical, 2) Beliefs, 3) Moment of Mastery, 4) Attitude, 5) Commitment, 6) Association, 7) Integrity, 8) Wisdom. 3. The creating of a truce between one's Destiny and one's Reality. Promising to stay true to what one is destined to be, yet

accepting what is the now... one's reality." If that didn't make sense, good. That means you're still sane. (If you found yourself nodding along going "Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense to me!", then I urge you to READ NO FURTHER. In fact, it may already be too late to preserve your mind.) So now that you too have no idea what "Destrucity" is, I will summarize the books as best I can, given that I had no fucking clue what the hell was going on during any single point in what passes for the story:



Our story begins with the Ultimate Warrior in his gay purple pajamas floating in a green cosmic cloud, with way too much narration telling us that he has used the power of dreams to travel beyond the "painful world of lost souls" to a world where "a being's only weapons are the cold, hard steel of his self-belief and the essence of his ‘self'; the animal in us all."

The god of the Oompa Loompas lays dormant, waiting for the

distant day his loyal worshippers will finally call for his intervention. Sound like a bunch of pseudo-philosophical bullshit to you? I assure you, you're not alone. Then, what can only be described as "something" happens, where the Warrior's metaphysical dream self is attacked by these little red and blue spirits that are no doubt a metaphysical representation of something else, but mercifully he decides to spare us his thoughts on that and just shows us random guys flying in out of nowhere and tearing off most of his clothes.

So, I hear that Warrior's really homophobic. After reading these

comics, I'm going to bet that he's not very familiar with irony. Then, as randomly as anything happens in these issues, we see something (could it be a meteorite, perhaps?) crash onto the surface of a harsh and unforgiving alien world. Again, accompanied by far too much narration rambling on about "destiny's labor" and "a higher self's birthright".

Just think of these rock chunks as "explosive diarrhea"

and you'll have an idea what's in store for you. Imagine the reader's "surprise" when they discover that it wasn't a meteorite at all that crashed onto the planet, but it was in fact the Warrior himself! Atmospheric reentry is but child's play to one as mighty as the Warrior!

Familiarize yourself with this position, as you'll probably

find yourself in it by the time you've finished these comics. Warrior wonders what happened to him and attempts to get up, but immediately collapses "into the twilight of no thought at all" after the stress of his crash landing. Seasons then pass while the Warrior just lays there unconscious, so we can truly appreciate the hardships he's been through. But, as he points out, the "strength of one's beliefs cannot be subject to the cruelties brought on by the change of seasons". Um, Warrior? What beliefs? You were floating around in dreamland, you were attacked by space monsters, and you crash landed on a planet. What does this have to do with your beliefs?

In Destrucity, there are only three seasons: Wet, Snow, and Dry. The Warrior finally awakens and declares that it's "time to get foked". No, you haven't just heard Warrior's watered-down version of cursing, he has instead made up a new word that means "focused". Because saying "foked" instead of "focused" sounds more INTENSE and X-TREME, which is what comics were all about back in 1996, and that's why the 90s were almost certainly the worst decade in the history of comics.

Back in 1996, 13-year old kids everywhere thought this was the shit. After making sure he's good and foked, Warrior starts running across the "Terrain of Testament", which he has to explain in the preface to issue 2, because god knows he never bothers to explain it in the story itself. It seems that this "Terrain of Testament" is the proving ground where Warrior will become the very first, well, Warrior, so that he may define the concept of what a Warrior is, so that others may then follow his guiding example and become warriors themselves. For no warriors may exist before him. Yeah, it's not like he has an over-inflated ego or anything.

Where on earth has Warrior's other leg gone?

Perhaps it's foked its way right up into his "sit-down parts". He continues to run, his internal monologue rambling on and on about physical perfection, purpose, why he can't remember anything, and other stuff no one cares about, until he finally reaches the edge of a lake, where he stops and puts his hand in the water. At this point, Warrior is confronted by what appears to be the floating head of Zeus, who rambles on and on nearly as much as Warrior himself does about things like Destrucity and "truth of self".

"I could turn into a swan and fuck you right now, dude, you don't even know." "Zeus" then tells Warrior that he must stay true to the eight disciplines of Destrucity, and that his adversary will be of "eight minds, eight bodies, and just as many souls" (why didn't he just say "eight souls"?), and each of these adversaries is capable of taking "all you have ever known, and all you have ever been". At this point, like so many anime series, video games, and anime series based on video games have done before, you might be expecting the story to go in the direction of Warrior having to fight eight guys, "mini-bosses" if you will, to learn the eight disciplines of Destrucity. And in that assumption, you'd be completely wrong. Zeus apparently doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, because these "eight adversaries" never make so much as an appearance in this book. Unless of course, Zeus was talking about the handful of nameless, faceless, tall jawas (who never number more than six) that suddenly materialize behind our hero.

"Dude, it's time to totally foke that guy!" Fortunately for Warrior, he's a "Mary Sue" character who can't possibly fail at anything, and he immediately detects the mysterious mystical presence "foked" on him from behind, and decides to dive into the lake before him so that he has time to get "foked" on his own. It also allows for a lengthy and dramatic underwater internal monologue, at the end of which Warrior seems to forget he's underwater and blurts out a bit of dialogue.

As his lungs fill with Poseidon's cool embrace, Warrior

realizes that talking underwater is kinda stupid. With a battle cry of "The student is ready...and you are NOT!" Warrior bursts out of the water and pummels the shit out of the jawas. During the fight, Warrior muses internally that "a warrior placed within battle becomes... forcefully fierce... concrete in connection... precision in decision... devastating in destruction". Indeed, Warrior has already shown a mastery of the Destrucity disciplines known as Rhyme and Alliteration.

It was the worst Halloween of Warrior's life. After a time, the jawas seem to tire of Warrior's incessant rambling monologue as much as the reader, because they teleport away in the style of a Power Rangers villain and are never seen again.

Not even George Lucas would have his creatures involved in

something this crappy, so he teleported them the hell out of there. A few jawa corpses are left behind however, and Warrior dips his hands in the blood, which transforms into the goofy red ribbons that will forever trail behind him from this point on. It also provides him with his face paint, and somehow changes his boots from purple to gold.

After I read the comics, I blacked out for a while,

and when I came to my hands looked kind of like this. Then we cut to "a synchronous moment... held close... yet so far away", where we find out that the "real-world" Warrior is in a hospital bed, apparently in a coma. My god... so all this stuff is going on in his head, as he fights for his life! Holy shit! That's so deep! Warrior really hit the ball out of the park with the emotional depth and drama of this one! Surely he won an Eisner Award for this?

In this heartwarming scene, the ditzy blonde

sobs over the idiot who treats her like shit. Warrior's woman has really big breasts of course, and she is there sobbing over his prone, unconscious form, completely unaware of the epic struggle currently going on within his head. She says she doesn't even want to imagine a life without him in between tears. Then we cut to some random, sinister looking dude holding what appears to be a planet in the palm of his hand. He looks over at the reader and says "Believe this."

Believe what? Who are you? What's going on? I'm so confused! Aaargghhhh! Could this be the sinister villain manipulating everything behind the scenes? What does he mean by "believe this"? Apparently, Warrior didn't know the answers to these questions either, because you never see this man again. He just shows up out of the blue in one panel, says something meaningless, and disappears just as quickly. As we will soon see is typical of these books, events that occur in one issue have little to no bearing on the next. It seems that Warrior is vaguely trying to tell a continuing story, but the nature of his insanity usually prevents him from maintaining a single train of thought for longer than one issue.

"Join Warrior University, where you can take classes such as

Weight Lifting 101, Weight Lifting 102 and uhhhh Weight Lifting 101". To his credit, the second issue actually does manage to continue the whole "Warrior in a coma" plot thread, as it opens showing some students at "Warrior University" talking about how sad they are that the big man is in a coma.

Is that a giant mockup of the Warrior back there, or is that Frylock? Because there hasn't been enough insanity yet this issue, we then cut to a mysterious cosmic energy flying through space, "an energy bound by purpose... directed by an insatiable desire... to make pointless retribution... of something that happened long ago." Whatever the fuck that means. If you have no expectations of ever finding out, well... you're catching on quick!

Every time the Hale-Bopp comet comes around, the

Heaven's Gate cult produces another issue of "Warrior". We then cut back to the gym, where two guys are about to get into a fight over, well, we have no idea. But the little guy pushes the big guy, and then the big guy imagines that because the little guy touched his special "limited edition Ab-Flex" shirt, he must be trying to steal it. These two meatheads are never seen again, and the outcome of the fight is unknown, but this scene is apparently supposed to illustrate that without the Warrior's guidance and wisdom, his gym (sorry, university) is falling into complete chaos.

You expect me to believe this is the Warrior's gym

when that weight bar back there has NO weight on it? Back to the cosmic energy, we see it fly around through the city for a while, before it homes in on the hospital where Warrior is staying. It flies through his window, and suddenly, Warrior jerks awake with an exclamation of "F-F-U-U-C". Apparently Warrior still wasn't comfortable with cursing in his comic at this point (a limitation completely cast aside by issue 3), so he leaves us to wonder what the final, mystery letter might be.

Warrior wakes up only to realize with disappointment

that he's trapped in the nightmare that is this comic book. This apparently has no effect on the insanity taking hold of his mind however, as we cut to Warrior, still in the galaxy of Destrucity, on the Terrain of Testament, where he apparently still will not curse as he wonders what is going on around him.

Is he actually spelling it out loud? Cuz that's just so badass. A giant tornado appears before Warrior and disappears just as quickly, and then he becomes aware that his ribbons, or "Belief Banners", formed from the blood of his enemies are alive and are talking to him (another concept that Warrior had to explain in the issue's introductory text, since the story itself does a piss-poor job of explaining it).

"Clothes!? Who DARES bedeck my body with clothing of any kind!?" He freaks out and yells at the ribbons to get off of him, but quickly forgets about them as Battlecat breaks out of a strange crystal building that spontaneously appeared before him and charges at him! This is apparently supposed to be symbolic of "the beast within", again illustrating that Warrior is no mere hack, but rather a storyteller capable of amazing depth and emotion!

He-Man's mount attempts to mount Warrior. After defeating the cat by ripping its jaws apart, a silver-coated version of Warrior emerges from the crystal building and attacks! This is supposed to represent the mirror image of the self! His Belief Banners provide helpful commentary during the fight, such as "packaged to unload, Warrior!" and "let's asphalt this asshole!" Okay, so apparently he will curse in this book, he just doesn't want to drop the F-bomb.

Uh oh! You fightin' Colossus now, bitch! He finally defeats his mirror image self by punching it a lot, and then a small green child sprouts (who coincidentally looks like Sprout, the Green Giant's plucky child companion) from the mirror image's back! The Mirror Self apparently deployed his back-child in an effort to convince the Warrior to show compassion, but Warrior sees through this ploy and says one must not mistake weakness for compassion, before punching the shit out of the child and causing him to shatter into a million pieces (like a mirror!)

I'm just glad they decided not to show Sprout's "little sprout". Warrior then shouts to the heavens that he will "take back all that has been taken!", though we never actually learn what in the hell he's referring to. He poses around a lot for the final few pages, before his "real world self" appears to him on a shard of broken mirror and tells him his "presence is requested".

Oh good, does that mean you're recalling all the issues of the comic? Oh but the insanity has just begun!

Click here to continue to part 2 of the story!

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