I love professional wrestling. I can’t remember a time in my life where I wasn’t watching pro wrestling in some capacity. I remember the height of the Monday Night Wars. I remember when DX was cool. I remember when The Rock was the biggest wrestler in the world and not the guy we know from a slew of very similar action movies. While my tastes have evolved past the WWE (wrestling is really good right now), I always come back here. The WWE was my first love and I’ll never totally quit it. In 2016, BOOM! Studios announced that they had acquired the license to make WWE comic books. WWE has not always been successful in making comic books but BOOM! Studios has had a long history in making very good comics based on the licenses they have. Instead of putting their characters in absurd situations, “WWE” has taken specific storylines and gone deeper into them, adding context that television just can’t do. While the first year has mostly been taken up by The Shield, the specials have given us glimpses into storylines of the past, including the origins of Finn Balor and The Undertaker. “WWE” has become one of my favorite comic books because of this and there are so many storylines that would make for a great comic book. Here are ten that should be adapted by “WWE.”
1. Batista Leaves Evolution
Evolution is one of the best factions the WWE has ever seen. Comprising of the past (Ric Flair), the present (Triple H) and the future (Randy Orton and Batista), they owned the WWE from 2003-2005. They were pretty unstoppable so what would bring their downfall? Themselves. In 2004, Randy Orton won the World Heavyweight Championship and he was very quickly kicked out of Evolution, leaving just three in the group. After a while, fans became a bit bored by the whole thing and Triple H was starting to wear out his welcome. The group had very much been about his ego and it was really starting to show. Everything changed when Batista won the Royal Rumble and was faced with a choice – go to Smackdown to challenge JBL or stay on RAW and challenge his stablemate Triple H. The decision looked really simple for Batista but after he heard Triple H talk badly about him, the decision was made and the now iconic thumbs down moment happened. This is when Batista truly became a star. The entire lead up to Wrestlemania was really about Batista stepping out of the shadow of Triple H and it worked so well. The crowd was behind him completely and it ended up being an amazing storyline. I became and still am a huge fan of Batista and that all stemmed from here.
Doing this in comic book form would be really easy because you could shift the perspective completely on Batista. The series has done such a good job with this and made all these larger than life characters feel so easy to relate to. This is the story of someone who didn’t start out as someone you could see becoming a star. He’s a guy that was meant to fill the role of “the muscle” and he became a star just as big as the guy who was keeping him down.
2. Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth’s Reunion
At my core, I am a big old softie and a hopeless romantic. I want BOOM! to do a full special for Valentine’s Day focusing on the best couples in WWE history but I’d settle for this. When we think of great wrestling couples, you cannot find one that was easier to root for than Miss Elizabeth and Macho Man Randy Savage. The Mega Powers was a tag team made up of Hulk Hogan and Macho Man. In the ’80s, you couldn’t put together a bigger dream team. Tensions between the two started to rise and Macho Man became jealous of how much attention Hogan was giving Miss Elizabeth. She would accompany him to the ring and he was very doting and sweet towards her and Macho Man became angrier and more bitter about this. This all culminated in 1989. Macho Man accidentally threw Akeem onto her and when she was down, Hogan was worried about her but Macho Man was just pissed at Hogan and they fell out. At Wrestlemania V, the two of them had a match with Elizabeth being neutral. Hogan won and this began Macho Man’s heel turn as the Macho King and he began to be accompanied by Sensational Sherri. Miss Elizabeth wasn’t on TV so much after this. She teamed up with Dusty Rhodes and Sapphire but it wasn’t until Wrestlemania VII that the reunion happened. Macho Man was in a retirement match against Ultimate Warrior and he lost. When he lost, Sherri started to beat up on Macho Man and Elizabeth stopped it and put a beating down on Sherri. When it was all said and done, Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth reunited and they later got married, in what is the biggest wedding televised professional wrestling has ever seen.
Continued belowThus far, “WWE” has saved older storylines for special issues but this would be the best thing to do for a Valentine’s Day issue or even a Wrestlemania issue. It’s romantic and if you tell it from the perspective of either person, you’ll guarantee tears. Macho Man was at his lowest point and he was somehow still able to get the girl of his dreams back. Miss Elizabeth had to watch the love of her life become a villain and she fought her way back to him. It’s cute and despite all the stuff that would happen in real life later, these moments at this time make for some of the best storytelling the WWE ever did.
3. Stone Cold Steve Austin Does What We All Wish We Could Do
The first stunner, cage match, beer truck, hospital beat down. Honestly, pick your poison. The story of Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon is the most famous one of the Attitude Era and even people who don’t watch wrestling know about this. It was really something that went past professional wrestling and it was the first kind of storyline like this. The boss versus talent thing has been done to death in the WWE but because there was some actual bad blood between these two at times, it was incredibly good and entertaining. Stone Cold also got to do the thing that many of us probably wish we could do when we’ve worked for the worst kind of people. Their feud lasted for years and Vince even got a stunner as recently as the 25th anniversary of RAW just a couple of weeks ago.
Tackling this for a comic book would be pretty easy. You could take the early days of the feud and put us in the headspace of Stone Cold Steve Austin before everything changed and he hit Vince with that first stunner. You could go into the later days before Stone Cold walked out. You can even focus in on very specific moments like the beer truck. It’s flexible but it’d be fun to see in any special issue.
4. Canadian Best Friends
Kevin Owens is my favorite wrestler. If you’ve ever seen me live tweet any WWE show or event, I am completely ridiculous in my love for KO. He’s everything I love in a wrestler and the fact that he doesn’t look like your typical WWE guy but can do all the things those guys can do makes me love him more. I told myself that I’d only pick one single Kevin Owens feud and I settled on one. It was the longstanding friendship/feud between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. I wrote a whole thing about it and then begged for it to happen. BOOM! must have heard me subconsciously or something because that’s happening and I’m getting an entire arc, not a backup story. However, I make the rules here and I must still have a Kevin Owens story on here. I’m also greedy and want more Kevin Owens in my comics. Recently we had a backup story about Chris Jericho planning the now infamous Festival of Friendship but what if we dived deeper into that entire friendship and told that story? We could see the genesis of the list, KO’s rise to the Universal Championship and to make it even more interesting, tell it from KO’s perspective. We know that he was “the bad guy” (he’s never actually done anything wrong ever) so there’s a ton of possibility here. Why was he friends with him to start with? Was it ever real? Why choose then to turn on him? Lots of parts of this could be looked at and would make for a great four-to-five issue story.
5. The Debut of Kane
2018 Kane is probably not your favorite wrestler and he definitely didn’t add very much to the triple threat match between he, Braun Strowman and Brock Lesnar. However, Kane was very much a big deal when he first debuted as he was completely tied to the complicated backstory of The Undertaker. The Undertaker and Paul Bearer spent a lot of time in the late 90’s being mad at each other. They had a big falling out and so Paul wanted to hurt his former protege. After The Undertaker threw a fireball in Bearer’s face (yes, really), Bearer returned and teased something about The Undertaker’s deepest secret and that it involved fire. What was that secret? Kane, his secret half brother. This gets very complicated and throughout the years has been tweaked a bit but the story goes like this. Paul Bearer is Kane’s dad and had an affair with The Undertaker’s mom. The Undertaker found out as a kid and he burned down the funeral home they all lived in and killed his parents and scarred his half brother’s face. Kane was kept in a mental institution until Bearer decided to bring him into the WWE during this falling out with The Undertaker. You can see why this makes an excellent comic book story.
Continued belowAs a comic book arc, this is the one that you could get really weird and experimental with. The aura surrounding The Undertaker and Kane is one that would be fun to mess around with because you could get into magic and evil darkness being real. We’ve already seen it in specials and we saw it with the Finn Balor backup story.
6. Ember Moon and Asuka
Asuka has spent almost 2 full years completely undefeated. She burst into NXT like a bat out of hell and hasn’t let up once even now that she’s on the main roster. Asuka’s streak, for much of the time, has felt completely untouchable. Asuka faced everyone in NXT. She even faced Mickie James in Canada because she really could take on anyone. Enter Ember Moon, an actual werewolf goddess. We all knew that Asuka couldn’t stay in NXT forever because she’s just too good and too money for the WWE but would anyone beat Asuka before that happened? We now know that no one would. She gave up her title due to injury but of all the people that Asuka faced, no feud meant more or felt as big as the one she had with Ember Moon. Ember Moon presented Asuka with something she hadn’t seen before. She wasn’t sneaky like Peyton Royce or reckless like Nikki Cross. Ember Moon was a pure wrestler with a devastating finisher (the Eclipse is the best finisher in the WWE) and could match Asuka tit for tat in all the ways that mattered. No one got as close to making you believe that she could beat Asuka as Ember Moon did and I still believe that Ember Moon should be the one who eventually does it. This was a NXT feud, so it didn’t get the eyes that the other women’s feud on this list did but for my money, it’s the best one the WWE has seen in years.
The comic book version of this should entirely focus on Ember Moon and her headspace in dealing with someone as unstoppable as Asuka. I want to see her training, her injury setback and that NXT Takeover Brooklyn match that had me on the edge of my seat – literally. I was actually there.
7. Eddie Wins The Big One
We all love an underdog story and while he wasn’t the biggest underdog of them all, he had a ton to overcome and was never thought of as the top guy in any company. When Eddie Guerrero (my personal all time favorite) came up, he was not the guy you would put your top title on and you definitely didn’t book him to beat someone like Brock Lesnar. For a long time, Eddie was solid in the midcard as a cruiserweight. His own personal issues constantly got in the way and he seemed to sabotage himself more than anyone else. For all the talent the guy had, watching this was rough. In 2002, Eddie came back to the WWE after another lapse with drugs, he adopted the Lie, Cheat and Steal gimmick on top of his already established Latino Heat character. While the criticisms against this are still fair (a lot of stereotyping), he hit a nerve with fans and became a top star. He was proving to everyone that when he got his act together, he was a star and he was worth putting your full faith in. All this culminated when he won the WWE Championship at No Way Out and it felt like nothing could stop him.
This one is a little tougher to try and adapt without making me cry. I was almost in tears writing this because I feel so emotionally attached to what he did in these later years. I would love to read this story from his perspective where we get in his head and see that hunger to get to the top mixed with the playfulness that character was known for. Even just the night he wins the title would make for an excellent feature in a special issue.
8. The Big Dog Versus Big Match John
If you hate Roman Reigns, you absolutely need to read the “WWE” arc that follows him after The Shield breaks up. It does more for the Roman Reigns character than TV has ever done and that’s exactly why this feud needs to be adapted by the comic book. John Cena versus Roman Reigns for some people is a dream match up. It’s easy to see why. John Cena is a once in a lifetime star. He’s very similar to Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and Stone Cold for this reason. You just don’t see someone do what he’s done very often. Roman Reigns is clearly the guy that the WWE wants to see succeed that so to have them go against each other makes a ton of sense. Don’t listen to the haters – this feud was actually really good. The incredibly personal promos had me yelling each week and I’ll never, ever boo Roman Reigns after the “ask Alex Riley” remark. Their match that ended this was actually really well executed and people who hate it honestly just want to hate these two guys no matter what.
This is really easy to adapt and honestly I’d like Dennis Hopeless to write this one in the main series. He did such an amazing job writing Roman Reigns in his arc. I think reading a hungrier Reigns with something to prove would make for a great read.
9. The Usos Heel Turn
Heel turns are a tricky thing because it’s very hard to come back from being a bad guy. If it doesn’t work, you’re booed for all the wrong reasons but if it goes well, you’re immortal. The Usos had hit a wall. They were the cute, face painted guys that celebrated their Samoan heritage in such a positive way. However, they were boring. It’s hard to be a pure babyface in today’s wrestling. It either happens or it doesn’t and The Usos felt like they were only catering to kids but they weren’t big enough an act to make that work for them. They were starting to get booed the moment their music hit and frankly, they were stale, despite being incredibly talented. Then they went bad and they got new looks, new music and a new attitude. They were rewarded with titles and they are as mean as mean can get. I love them. I love these new Usos and their heel turn is one of the very best in a long time.
This would be such a unique story to tell because it would put us in the shoes of a team that decided to go bad. We already saw a little bit of this when “WWE” covered Seth Rollins climb to the top but with this story that would take it further. We could see all that goes into a decision like this when your dad is Rikishi and he was known for mostly being a hero. We could get a dramatic moment of them wiping off the paint and putting on their new gear. It’d be such a great story that only got touched upon in a surface level on TV.
10. The Queen and The Legit Boss Fight For Legacy
Very soon, “WWE” will cover the so called “women’s evolution” that launched a new era for women in the WWE. That movement was led by Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks and Bayley. They set a new standard for what women can do in the WWE and for a little bit, not much happened with this movement. It wasn’t until Diva’s Championship was rechristened as the Women’s Championship that things really started to change. In 2016 there was no feud bigger than that between Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks. Charlotte played the heel and Sasha was the babyface we were supposed to cheer for. The feud went on longer than we probably needed it to but it gave us the first Hell In A Cell match between women in the WWE. It was also ruthless and it was treated as something very big so it’s forever special.
Doing this as a comic book arc separate from the “women’s evolution” would be amazing because it’d be way more personal than trying to tackle so many characters at once. The women should be written like the men have been, which has been very strong so far. Taking a specific feud and magnifying it the way Seth’s injury was or Roman’s rise to the top would make for such a great sports story. They fought for a legacy and the fought to set the stage for what future women’s feuds should strive to be.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. So many stories would make for excellent retellings in comic book form. What would you be into reading? Let me know in the comments below!
