Wrestling And Comics/We Are All Too Old

In the course of my searching through the internet I found this post on WFA which likened the recent beating that Tigra took at the hands of The Hood in New Avengers to a "job" in pro wrestling.I have to say that I love the analogy.Pro wrestling and comics are very similar.Both involve impossibly muscular men and unrealistically attractive women in colorful,gaudy costumes with strange names playing out the ages-old fight between good and evil.

I'm not writing this to tear apart the author's argument,but rather to explore the comics-wrestling connection.In wrestling,to "job" is simply to lose.Someone has to do it.A "jobber" is someone who loses consistently.The classic "jobber" is mostly a thing of the past.They have been replaced with those who are informally referred to as "jobbers to the stars",who are people like Al Snow(mentioned in the comments section of the linked post) or Scotty 2 Hotty.They have enough of a name to win some of the time,and even to win the occasional title,but are almost guaranteed to lose against a star of higher caliber.These are the people who used to be called "mid-carders".Tigra is a mid-carder.She has a name.She's been on the Avengers.But she isn't an A-lister or a marquee name by a long shot.That much I think can be agreed.

In wrestling,much like in comics, the bad guy(or "heel")is there to pose as realistic a threat as possible to the good guy(or "babyface/face") before inevitably getting his/her ass handed to them in the end by said face.Heels can come in many forms:cowardly,sneaky,foreign,monster,etc.The Hood is currently being set up as the monster heel,which is arguably the most dangerous kind.

One way to establish your monster heel is to have them decisively beat up some known,capable opponents,like a mid-carder.No one will be impressed when you beat a serial loser.For this you can set up a "squash match",which is just one way of saying "one-sided victory".In this case,the person being beaten is not important.The purpose of a squash is to build up the winner and nothing else.The poor victim on the receiving end is interchangeable.In this case,Tigra is the one who got squashed.

I know many people are upset that it was a female hero on the receiving end of the beating.I understand.I can see that women get the shit end of things in comics way too often,but I think in this case it just happened to be Tigra.She's been in a couple of books recently,so peope know who she is.She's not a pushover,but is also not a heavy hitter.She would have been out of the main scene anyway, as it appeared she was heading to some Midwestern state whose name escapes me at this moment for her Initiative assignment.She was an appropriate candidate for this "job."I know Bendis could have picked another character or even created someone just for The Hood to beat on,but he didn't.It might be a little shitty to see the former Avenger Tigra taken out so easily and brutally,but in this case I don't think this is her story.It's The Hood's.You aren't meant to go"Will Tigra get her revenge?" but rather "What will it take to stop The Hood?"She might get her comeuppance at some point,but I think that's secondary to the story they're trying to tell.They have a monster heel to build up.

Did Bendis and company accomplish this?At least as far as the internet crowd goes,the answer is no.I think part of the reason is that comics' target audience is just too old to completely lose themselves in a story without critical analysis.It's part of getting older and liking the same things you liked when you were 12.Our imagination and sense of wonder gets a bit trampled by the weight of the world.Wrestling has the same problem.It's no longer targeted at very young kids, but rather at teens and young adults.As a wrestling worker,I prefer to see young kids at the shows.They lose themselves in the spectacle and yell,scream, react and just have a great time.It's the older fans who sit back and heckle or make snarky remarks about things like"workrate".The kids will give the heel "heat" for beating up on the face,which is the reaction you hope for.The adults are much more likely to direct their heat towards the booker or the promotion itself for putting together a match in a way that is totally contrary to what they would want.While there's nothing really wrong with that,and some of the talent might even agree with them, it's just not the reaction you want people to have.Sure, the creators have a big hand in what goes on, but they're not supposed to be the focal point. You want the people to be into the story,not the politics.

I don't want people to stop complaining.I enjoy reading the rants regardless of whether I agree with them or not.It's part of fandom.As fans, we can certainly demand a better product.And comics,much like wrestling,are niche products that typically put much more effort than some more mainstream endeavors(like pro sports) into being fan-friendly.I just wonder if when you direct all of your venom at the writers and/or editors if you're really "getting it."Maybe the curtain has been pulled back too much.Maybe too much has been made of writers/artists instead of the story, which is the ultimate end product that we spend our money on.Maybe as we get older our suspension of disbelief and desire to escape fades a little and gets replaced by cynicism and our own projected mistrust of authority.Maybe it has always been there and the internet just brought everyone together in a public place.After all, the stereotype of the snarky"Comic Book Guy" had to come from somewhere.It just seems to me that a lot of the "heat" directed at writers/artists/editors(in this case,Bendis)by the current comics crowd would be directed somewhere else if we were all ten or fifteen years younger.I know I read comics differently now than I did when I was 15.Do you?