Created, Written, and Illustrated by Daniel Warren Johnson
Colors by Mike Spicer
Lettered by Rus Wooton
Published as a seven issue series June to December 2022 and as a collected trade paperback in March 2023 by Image Comics.
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"They think they know how we do things on Earth? We're gonna show them just how real we can get."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
It used to be that everyone said,"Pro wrastling is fake, and all its fans are marks!"
Time passed.
Now it's like,"Pro wrastling is a form of theater-a physically demanding performance art. Its fans are not marks; rather they are sophisticated connoisseurs of gesture, theatricality, and presence."
Basically, no one quite believes that pro wrastling is real in the way that baseball or football are real. Here, the reality test consists in whether or not an outcome is predetermined and pre-scripted as opposed to a clash of skill where the game must be played moment-to-moment in order to determine the true winner. Pre-scripted equals failing the reality test. And yet the gladiatorial soap opera of pro wrastling absorbs its fan base into an alternate reality similar to comic book superheroes. Pro wrastling could be said to have less reality than a true sport like football, but more reality than comic book superheroes by virtue of it involving actual humans experiencing actual exertion and pain as opposed to stories told with mere ink and paper.
Which brings me to Do A Powerbomb!, which is a comic book that starts with a tragic accident in the scripted world of pro wrastling, and then dives into another dimension where pro wrastling theatrics are not scripted. To put it briefly, an extra dimensional necromancer spent too much time watching pro wrastling from our reality and thought that it was all absolutely real. This necromancer then established his own gladiatorial spectacular and proceeded to recruit warriors from across the multiversal planes of existence: humans, monsters, robots, cyborgs, uplifted talking animals, wizards, dragons, deities, lizard people, other necromancers, presumably. The prize for victory is the resurrection of a dead person, presumably a loved one, but, in theory, you could bring back anyone who has died: George Washington, Alexander the Great, Jack Kirby, Richard Nixon, Marie Curie, Fred Astaire, Robert Oppenheimer, Ronald Reagan, Malcolm X, Isaac Newton, Benito Mussolini-you get what I'm saying. In the world of Do A Powerbomb! uncomfortable ideological issues are mostly sidestepped in favor of personal melodrama grappling with loss and grief. The combatants in the necromancer's fights are all willing to battle to the death for the prize of bringing a dead loved one back to life. Storm and stress ensue.
You can read the book yourself to see how it plays out in detail. What I liked about Do A Powerbomb! was its look, the color and ferocity of its images, and the rugged'n'raggedy costumes of its hard bitten fighters. Creator Daniel Warren Johnson's affection for his characters comes through in the detail and exuberance of his illustrations. I was less taken with the writing. This is one of those stories with a cosmic premise that collapses down into the dimensions of a high concept B-movie-think Star Wars or Masters of the Universe, as opposed to The Seventh Seal or 2001: A Space Odyssey. I enjoyed it well enough, but it did not totally satisfy me. I do believe that Daniel Warren Johnson created exactly the book that he wanted to make, so the issue for me comes down to a matter of taste as opposed to a failing within the work itself. My mileage did, indeed, vary.
You know, Do A Powerbomb! is the kind of comic book that could exist as it does now, as a seven issue series with a clear cut beginning, middle, and end; or it could go on for many more issues, thousands of more pages. I kept imagining an action-sports-fantasy manga version serialized for a few decades. I think that's the version I want, and so I keep resisting what's actually in my hands. There's just no pleasing me sometimes. It's tragic.
