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To Be The Man: Evil Ain't Good: Chapters 1-4 Collected Edition
Awwww, hell yeah! The first four chapters of the hottest indie graphic novel in the territory are now collected into a single edition! . . . The 80’s. Reagan’s ‘Murica. Where fantasy and reality are one and the same, and the heroes of the day are the booze-fueled demigods of the squared circle… “Fabulous” Frank Hazard and Greg “The Gargoyle” Grimes are just a couple of “the boys,” traveling up and down the road in search of fame, fortune, and glory. With their violent, blood-and-guts Southern territory under threat of extinction from the cartoonish promotion up North, Hazard and Grimes’s heated rivalry has spilled out of the ropes and into the batshit-insanity of their daily lives. But when the greedy promoter from the New York-based federation of World Wrestling All-Stars literally sells his soul to steal control of the southerners’ coveted championship belt, the two boozy bruisers will have to set aside their boiling hatred to form an unlikely tag team that must fight Evil in and out of the ring.
48 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 26, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 4, 2024
To Be The Man: Evil Ain’t Good collects issues 1-4 of the comic series written by Jared Davis with art and colors by Josh Taylor.
Greg “The Gargoyle” Grimes and “Fabulous” Frank Hazard are the biggest heel and face in Southern Championship Wrestling and they absolutely hate each other. The duo are forced to team up to battle an army of the undead and demons after the dastardly owner of the New York-based World Wrestling All-Stars sells his soul for his company’s shot at wrestling dominance.
Set in the 1980s as the wrestling territories are dying, To Be The Man features some rather obvious analogs to Ric Flair (“Fabulous” Frank Hazard), Jim Crockett Promotions aka WCW (Southern Championship Wrestling), WWF/WWE (World Wrestling All-Stars), Don Jon-Jon (Hulk Hogan),
and Vince McMahon (Bruce McMaverick). This comic is extremely crude - unironically, Vince would probably actually love it. The backstage shenanigans are presented in an over the top fashion during this era of excess. The art is extremely cartoony and sketchy, but fits the tone of the book.
I am disappointed that this by a complete story and I don’t see any additional issues released since 2019, so if you are going to read this, go in knowing that you may not ever get a finished story.
Greg “The Gargoyle” Grimes and “Fabulous” Frank Hazard are the biggest heel and face in Southern Championship Wrestling and they absolutely hate each other. The duo are forced to team up to battle an army of the undead and demons after the dastardly owner of the New York-based World Wrestling All-Stars sells his soul for his company’s shot at wrestling dominance.
Set in the 1980s as the wrestling territories are dying, To Be The Man features some rather obvious analogs to Ric Flair (“Fabulous” Frank Hazard), Jim Crockett Promotions aka WCW (Southern Championship Wrestling), WWF/WWE (World Wrestling All-Stars), Don Jon-Jon (Hulk Hogan),
and Vince McMahon (Bruce McMaverick). This comic is extremely crude - unironically, Vince would probably actually love it. The backstage shenanigans are presented in an over the top fashion during this era of excess. The art is extremely cartoony and sketchy, but fits the tone of the book.
I am disappointed that this by a complete story and I don’t see any additional issues released since 2019, so if you are going to read this, go in knowing that you may not ever get a finished story.
August 17, 2019
I've been a fan of professional wrestling for about as long as I can remember. This isn't something that's going to come up in my Goodreads reviews too often Even when wrestling was actually relevant among readers, with Mick Foley hitting the bestseller lists at the height of the "Attitude Era," I didn't start reading the resultant wave of books until later (and have yet to read Foley's books except a later one, at which point he was just recapping recent events, which is what Chris Jericho was doing until recently, and I have read most of Jericho's). The lesson being, while for most people "professional wrestling" and "books" are somewhat mutually exclusive concepts, they really aren't.
And this, by the way, is a comic book. Comic books are still held in much the same regard by the traditional literary community as they've ever been. The only way around it is if there's a graphic novel that's basically what you might've expected from a traditional book, or the culture at large has embraced one at sufficient levels of ubiquity (such as Watchmen) as to make it relevant to mention, even if you're Time magazine (which famously dubbed Watchmen among the hundred best books of the 20th century).
But this is a comic book about professional wrestling as if translated directly from within the skull of "Nature Boy" Ric Flair, circa his '80s heyday. Flair has long been considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, not only because he could get it done in the ring but because he could talk circles around anyone. It's hard to think of many wrestlers who so fully committed themselves to the profession as Flair. I mean, at this point everyone knows that strictly speaking, professional wrestling is "fake." Flair won sixteen world championships because he was a great figure to tell stories around, for decades, not because he "won" matches. I mean, he lost the given title sixteen times, too, right?
To Be The Man takes its title from one of Flair's catchphrases: "To be the man, you have to beat the man, which he used right up to his final match with WWE ("My game plan? To be the man! Wooo!") The character of Frank Hazard is fairly obviously patterned, physically at the very least, on Flair. The rest of it isn't strictly taken from actual wrestling lore (though Flair did eventually take, willingly, the big gold belt to WWE), but it's similar enough for fans to recognize. The events of the comic, gonzo as they are, are exactly how you'd imagine Flair to be experiencing it, if he really did commit as fully to his character as he seemed to.
And it's kind of funny and appropriate for the art to evoke Rob Guillory, best known for another gonzo comic, Chew. I smell invasion!
And this, by the way, is a comic book. Comic books are still held in much the same regard by the traditional literary community as they've ever been. The only way around it is if there's a graphic novel that's basically what you might've expected from a traditional book, or the culture at large has embraced one at sufficient levels of ubiquity (such as Watchmen) as to make it relevant to mention, even if you're Time magazine (which famously dubbed Watchmen among the hundred best books of the 20th century).
But this is a comic book about professional wrestling as if translated directly from within the skull of "Nature Boy" Ric Flair, circa his '80s heyday. Flair has long been considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, not only because he could get it done in the ring but because he could talk circles around anyone. It's hard to think of many wrestlers who so fully committed themselves to the profession as Flair. I mean, at this point everyone knows that strictly speaking, professional wrestling is "fake." Flair won sixteen world championships because he was a great figure to tell stories around, for decades, not because he "won" matches. I mean, he lost the given title sixteen times, too, right?
To Be The Man takes its title from one of Flair's catchphrases: "To be the man, you have to beat the man, which he used right up to his final match with WWE ("My game plan? To be the man! Wooo!") The character of Frank Hazard is fairly obviously patterned, physically at the very least, on Flair. The rest of it isn't strictly taken from actual wrestling lore (though Flair did eventually take, willingly, the big gold belt to WWE), but it's similar enough for fans to recognize. The events of the comic, gonzo as they are, are exactly how you'd imagine Flair to be experiencing it, if he really did commit as fully to his character as he seemed to.
And it's kind of funny and appropriate for the art to evoke Rob Guillory, best known for another gonzo comic, Chew. I smell invasion!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews