Take a tough looking heavyweight wrestler. Then, dress him in an ill-fitting singlet (preferably one that is furry on the top and a stomach turning shade of turd-brown at the bottom). Next, slap a F*CKING HUGE bulls head on top of his actual head and send the bewildered b*stard out to face a capacity crowd. The above is the recipe for creating Mantaur, a gimmick so unbelievably stupid that its a wonder the WWE is still in business. Watching Mantaur waddle down to the ring makes it painfully obvious that the poor bastard in the ridiculous suit could barely see where he was going. The announcers may have speculated that he dressed that way in order to intimidate his opponents, but it looked to the audience like he had adopted the outfit in order to wage a one-man war against common sense. Mantaur was an attempt to bring Greek mythology to life in the wrestling ring. It was an approach that had already failed for comic book superheroes and video game characters (amongst others) but, if its worth doing once... Yknow what? Scratch that. It was NEVER worth doing.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
