Matt D

I wrote this back in August on DVDVR but I've thought a bit more about it since it's remained true for this year. I glanced through one of the DC/Marvel crossover issues but that's about it past reading my youngest part of Bone (as I have with my other kids). ---- This is the first year of my life where I didn't at least check in on what was happening with Marvel. At some point, maybe ten years ago, maybe less, I was reading most of the line. I was very engaged at the start of Krakoa X-Men. Right now I'm not even picking or choosing or going with writers I enjoy or projects that sound interesting. I'll occasionally look at news of new projects or what not, just out of curiosity but I haven't read, new or old. I think some of it was how Krakoa went of the rails. Some of it might be (weirdly enough) getting more into a wrestling space than I was previously which cuts into time (More wrestling projects primarily). It may be that I can watch video on my phone (often wrestling but old movies too) on my commute where I'd read comics before. So there are external issues. But some of it is maybe the floodgates finally breaking on the comics themselves and my relationship with them. For years Marvel's steady continuity helped keep me hooked, and I really learned to enjoy the "thought experiment" style of the 2010s where they'd spend a year or two with a specific thought experiment (Jane Thor, Spider-Ock, etc.) but I think it's just stretched past the point of me being emotionally engaged. I wonder if Krakoa bringing everyone back had something of an impact on that too. It was a lot all at once, especially as it fell off the rails. Some of it is aging past both the characters and the writers too. I enjoyed the mid-2000s-2010s wave where the people who had read comics in the 70s, got out, and then got back with Frank Miller, etc. were bypassed by those who grew up on the Secret Wars era Shooter 80s Marvel runs. And it was sort of nice to see people who came into comics with Liefeld/Nicieza X-Force or whatever like I did. But now I feel like we're edging past that and it's just time. Some of it is that I was never big on art and one thing that kept me going was the big shared universe and the story that never ends and I just feel like that itch isn't as powerful anymore or that you can get it in more places than before. It's almost become the norm in some ways as opposed to something you could ONLY get in superhero comics. It's just kind of weird to reflect on because it was so much a part of my life for so long. ----- What I'd add to this is that past a tiny bit of curiosity for Absolute Martian Manhunter, I really haven't had any interest in either the Ultimate Line or the Absolute line. I'd go farther than before and say that not only do I get that "shared universe" itch scratched other places now, I'm not even looking for it like I was when I was younger. You hit a certain age and have your life full of enough stuff and I do think it's something you outgrow. Unlike some people in this thread, I doubled down on wrestling, new and old, and projects related to that. Part of it, I think, is that the culture around wrestling is so much less developed than the one around comics, so writing about wrestling lets you actually say something interesting that maybe hasn't been said before, whereas everything's been said with comics. I wrote things like this 12 years ago https://placetobenation.com/a-house-divided-civil-war-examined-in-light-of-todays-avengers/ or argued with people all the time on comicbloc back in the day, and I'm writing stuff like this for wrestling all the time, and I just couldn't imagine doing it with comics now. I never loved the medium/craft of comics as much as I loved what I could get out of continuity and lore and shared universe and a story that never ended. And there's so much literature now about how everything in every medium has become like that since COVID. There was a bit back and forth going on yesterday or the day before about people who love video games without ever playing them because they love the lore and the watch parties and what not. And I'm just not interested in any of that anymore. Which I suppose I was sensing a year ago but didn't quite work it out fully until later.

The word “sublime” kept coming up, which I know is a little insane, but you see it too.

I'd argue that it's a bit of a tricky project in that case because so much of what's going to make these WWF house show matches "terrible" is going to be the stalling. For a Secret Santo project years ago I gave someone a match from Houston which had a lot of matwork. They just didn't like matwork. They wanted things moving. It didn't matter if it was good or bad or what. I'm trying to come up with a parallel. You figure food might be. Someone who hates spicy food having to judge a bbq competition where half the entries are spicy. Some of them may be good spicy, some may be bad, but they all come off as spicy to the person. I don't think this match worked nearly as well as it could have worked. It was to the point where the commentators were goofing on it a bit. But it did work pretty well for the crowd at times, and it's interesting to examine why. At least, it is to me.

So I watched this. And I think there are parts of it which are quite sublime. There's an element of performance art here where if remixed and done a little differently, could have worked. There are parts that did work. Scicluna gets heat every time he pulls out the object. The hiding of it is absurd, but also clever and varied. He puts it in his mouth. He hides it under his shoe. At one point, it's under his armpit. There's effort put in here to vary things up and not just do the same thing over and over again. He gets heat whenever he goes to the corner and puts his hands up to stop the action. The bit where he's going in and out of the ring, just one step at a time with DeNucci stepping with him is like something out of a Marx Brothers (or at least Stooges) bit. It all works. It all gets reaction. He's working the crowd. He's working the ref. He's working DeNucci. They go up almost every time DuNucci is about to hit him. They really enjoy the teeter totter comedy bits of comeuppance with the toehold (and I think that is comeuppance). tcg91 may not have enjoyed it, but the crowd chuckled at least. My gut says the issue is that Scicluna was so lame whenever he did actually do any offense, that it was all so low energy and none of it looked effective at all, even with the object, even with the selling. And then part of me wonders if him being actually formidable would break the whole thing because he has to be so lame for this to work. And I think, no, that's not it. Because you could have Bobby Heenan do the exact same match, same stalling, same hiding the object but two things would be different. One, he'd be like a man possessed when he was using the object offensively or laying in kicks. And two, he'd make sure to put in two-three big stooging bumps in there, even if he did exactly everything the same, and it would have worked. I think this did not work overall. I don't think it was a very good match. But I still think parts of it were beautiful and sublime in their bullshit. And I think the crowd probably did too. And I think there are things to be learned from this and things to be experimented with. I think, for instance, if he was still working, RJ City might be able to do something amazing with 80% of this match. He'd just make the other 20% work to make it all come together in a way that didn't at all. But if you see this and you don't think "Hmmmmm." at the parts that almost work and that barely exist at all today, then I'm disappointed in your imagination.

Someone extrapolate forward what Ospreay match he has to watch.

Do we know anything about Sullivan?

Someone remind me to watch this.

Eats up guys to the detriment of the match from 88 on and to a lesser degree from 84 on. People are now lower on Harts tags but higher on Dream Team ones. A lot of what made his case was of the moment and not timeless.

I always suggest people watch the Jumbo test series from the 70s and how hard everything is worked vs Verne, Funk, and Robinson and then how everything is given away for free by Harley.

Speaking of the lack of critical analysis of lucha over time.. Guess who this 1990 quote I just came across is from... "I'm not the world's biggest Lucha Libre fan. To me, it's kind of like you sit and watch a bunch of bad wrestling waiting for the spectacular dives during the finishes."

Lucha can be very vibes based. It’ll be pretty funny if the kids find and glom onto Octagon and Rayo, Jr. or something.

Hey, we're all way better off for having you as part of the community. Keep doing what you're doing.

It's the journey that matters, not the destination!

You should go out and see what it's like out there for a couple of weeks. Not right now since the top of the list and the whole list will make things rough, but maybe in a month. Don't stay there, but just dip your toes. Current wrestling is very cagematch/star rating oriented maybe with arguments about specific spots. Old wrestling tends to be more performance based/clip based/attribute based/summation driven in how it's discussed. (Unless you're talking about Kurt Angle never getting a five star match which comes up once every three months and is very painful).

All I’ll say about Bryan vs HHH is that it might be Hunter’s only match ever that feels shorter than it actually is.