In the world of wrestling he's got a relatively boring title, but in the world of comics Steve Ditko's name inspires awe. He has since faded into relative obscurity, but in the sixties Ditko helped design and illustrate the most famous stories of characters like Doctor Strange, with his crowning achievement being the co-creation of Spider-Man - you might have heard of him - with Stan Lee in 1962. By 1991, however, Ditko was a little jaded, and took work wherever he could get it. That year, work took the form of drawing about half the issues (out of five) for the officially-licensed WWF comic Battlemania! Leaving behind the reality that Marvel's WCW title so desperately clung to, each edition of Valiant Comics' bi-monthly Battlemania featured a different couple of wrestling teams duking it out in weird and wacky surroundings. The Legion of Doom went on a road trip that was bust up by arrival of the Natural Disasters, the Bushwackers and the Nasty Boys spoiled dinner in a fancy restaurant by coming to blows, and then-champion Hulk Hogan was not mentioned once (possibly owing to the rumoured deal he had with Marvel over the rights to the name, shared with a certain jolly green giant).
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
