Comic books and professional wrestling are both long-form media told through complicated continuity, intensely emotional character arcs and, of course, lots of punching. In “Panel Per View,” Charlie Davis and Robert Secundus create recommendation lists for comic fans. They hope that more comic book readers will be able to engage with a new medium telling stories similar to the ones they already know and love.
CD: Lists…the people say they love lists. But tell me Rob, when was the last time anyone said to you âIâd love to read a listicleâ or âthey are so helpful and succinct.â? The way I see it…the whole concept of ranked lists is rotten to its very core. And thatâs what weâre here for. To change the way you think about listicles. To bury the buzzworthy, clickable headline and restore honor and justice back to the humble list.
RS: Now Buzzfeedâs lists are 79% ignorant. And anything that goes viral on facebook is 93% ignorant. Facebook dominates about 67% of the web, and buzzfeed about 11%, so if you add all four of those numbers up youâve got a 250% rate of PURE. UTTER. NONSENSE dominating this here internet. Now you look at Charlie, and you look at me. You know what I like a lot more than ignorant things? KNOWLEDGE. Charlieâs got about 47 billion facts in their good factual information account, and Iâve just installed 7 new bookcases of pure factual knowledge myself. If each bookcase holds a billion facts, thatâs 54 billion facts between us. Now a fact is the inversion of nonsense, so if you take the 250% of the internet, and multiply it by inverse of the 54 billion facts we hold, whatâs left at the end is an internet of just 4.62962963 x 10-9%, thatâs 0.00000000462962963%, nonsense. Thatâs damn near zero % nonsense. A grain of Old Bay weighs more grams than that. Tastes better too. Give a TedX talk about that. The numbers donât lie. They spell âKNOWLEDGEâ for you!
CD: …Thatâs absolutely right, my friend. Knowledge. And we pride ourselves here in the XFWF of spreading knowledge to you, the heaving masses. Which is why Rob and I have decided to collaborate to bring you something youâve all been robbed of. A bridge from one genre to another. We are here to usher in a new era…one where wrestling and comics can be thought of in the same breath. You may not like it at first, this new world order; but remember… It’s always grimdarkest before the dawn.
CD: Alright, alright, alright Iâve been told by upper management that we have to tone it down a little…PG product and all so I suppose that means we have to stick to the usual format. Fine with me. I can color inside the lines. So letâs talk about comics.
AHEM
Youâll have to excuse me Rob, but Iâm not super well versed in Batman anything. Lucky for me, you, and our readers I am well versed in Grant Morrison WEIRD. I think thatâs where we’re going with this one.
RS: Batman is a profoundly interesting character to me because of both the stability of his character and the massive changes that character has gone through over time; Batman of the Golden Age, Batman â66 on television, Frank Millerâs Year One and Dark Knight Returns Batman, Christopher Nolanâs Batman, the goofy cartoon of The Brave and the Bold and the serious gothic/noir of Batman The Animated Series are all pretty wildly different in their characters and in the execution of those characters. The great thing about Grant Morrisonâs run in general is that he recognizes throughout all of his near century of stories on this Earth, heâs all still the same character. Whether heâs grittily mumbling at gangsters in Miller or biff-POWing his way to victory in â66, itâs all Batman. It all counts.
CD: There are obviously only a handful of characters that have the staying power of Batman and even if I think about someone like Captain America or Superman, most of their alternate versions are contentious with fans at best. No one can really agree that âyes this is all the same characterâ, but Batman seems to exist in this universal plane. So even if I’m not familiar with this particular story, I think I’ve got the jist.
RS: Now, what happens in The Return of Bruce Wayne is⌠well, Batman is shot by Darkseid through time, living as different incarnations of the archetype of Batman throughout human history in the lives of his Wayne ancestors. We begin with a Caveman Batman in a Tribe of the Bat, and follow him down through Colonial and even Cowboy times. As he is inflected and re-inflected throughout time, Morrison comments on both who Batman is and what Batman can show us about the history of the fictional city of Gotham as well as the history of our own superhero comics.
CD: Morrison is gonna Morrison, but honestly he excels at this type of thing. Time travel, potential liminal spaces, and examinations of your characters through the lens of all the mistakes they have ever made is definitely ripe for comic book story material, but if watching wrestling has taught me anything–itâs that itâs one of the most undervalued storytelling mediums of all time. Comic books aren’t the only place we can get weird.
RS: Now, to understand our first wrasslinâ story, our readers are going to need to know two characters. One theyâre probably somewhat familiar with, and the other, I believe, is going to be their new fave. Charlie: Who are John Cena and Bray Wyatt?
CD: Well, Rob. John Cena is probably the most recognizable professional wrestler to non wrestling audiences outside of The Rock. You may know him as Ferdinand the bull in the hit Blue Sky studio production or perhaps you know that You Canât See Him.
RS: ?DOO DOO DOO DOOOO?
CD: John Cena for all intents and purposes is a superhero who has a squeaky clean image and a man that Never Gives Up. But to me and wrestling fans everywhere, John Cena was the scum of the earth for a long, long time. He represented the âTop Guyâ. Hand picked to reign at the top of the industry despite little wrestling talent. He was pushed past his means and force fed to audiences as the ultimate good guy. For years Cena was public enemy number one to any wrestling fan that wasn’t a 10 year old kid. Realistically though, Cena is just a product of a bigger industry problem. Fanâs didnât care though, and all the Hustle, Loyalty and Respect in the world wouldnât unpoison the well.
Bray Wyatt on the other hand, while not really the Anti-Cena, is about as far away from the squeaky clean PG Superman as you may be able to get. To put it bluntly, Bray Wyatt emerged in WWE in 2014 as a cult leader. Born in the darkness of the Bayou, he and his family came to sew discord. A man with a lantern, a terrifying laugh–and an unbelievable command of his words on the microphone–he was a fresh injection of life when wrestling sorely needed it. Bray Wyatt and his family terrorized WWE, destroying everything in their path. Bray was charismatic but haunted in a way it’s hard to put your finger on. You may ask yourself why i’m speaking about Bray Wyatt, the eater of worlds, in the past tense. There is a good reason for that.
RS: You see, after a long series of losses, failures, and disappointments, Bray Wyatt went away. What came back was somethingâŚ. Different.
Bray Wyatt, fallen, forsaken, forgotten, wandered the Earth looking for a new path. Somehow, he found himself in The Firefly Funhouse, an infernal childrenâs show reality from which he could broadcast to the WWE. And he wasnât alone there. In addition to the puppets Mercy the Buzzard, Sister Abigail, and Ramblinâ Rabbit, he was joined by the demonic entity known only as The Fiend. Itâs hard to describe the Fiend. His debut entrance will give you an idea of who and what he is:
The Fiend is the Joker and Bane at once, but also Pennywise, and The King in Yellow who sits in dread Carcosa driving all who see his Pallid Face insane, and also Bray Wyatt, the man who thought he was leading a revolution but was betrayed, betrayed again and again by his friends, by his followers, and by an industry that would, no matter what, put monsters like Hulk Hogan or men like John Cena on top over and over again no matter what.
The Fiend came to haunt all those who did Bray Wyatt wrong, and he typically did that by beating people up real bad until he could hold their shoulders down to the matt of a ring until a referee counted to three, at which point the teleporting demon clown from hell would be declared the winner of this sports match. But John Cena wasnât an ordinary opponent; he wasnât just another enemy, just another feud. John Cena represented, again, so many sins of the industry, so many things that each and every fan hated.
CD: John Cena started the first crack in Bray Wyatt. A decisive victory over Bray at Wrestlemania 30 (a match by all accounts Bray should have won) started a downward tumble that Bray never recovered from. If Bray Wyatt had a nemesis, one man who symbolized where it all went wrong, it would be Cena. Maybe Bray couldnât beat Cena in a wrestling match, but he could absolutely break him in other ways. Use methods that only The Fiend could wield, take Cena down from the inside out. Deconstruct him. Break him down into component parts. Now, I’m not on the side of 2020 here, Rob, but I think if life hadnât unraveled in a very real way; we may not have been able to take a trip inside the bowels of the Firefly Funhouse to erase John Cena from existence.
RS: I really donât know either. Usually, folks, wrestling matches are held in front of a live studio audience– but obviously, COVID shut that down, and so for Wrestlemania in 2020, we had a few âscenicâ matches. The Undertaker killed a couple of people in a âBoneyard Match.â And John Cena faced The Fiend in a âFirefly Funhouse Match,â a match which took place in the aforementioned childrenâs tv show hell dimension. And in that Firefly Funhouse Match, John Cena, like Dante before him, was lead through hell to come to terms with the sins of his society, his history, his own life. The Fiend didnât fight John Cena in our spacetime. He fought John Cena through hypertime. Like Batman, John Cena hurtled through his own history, and the history of wrestling before him.
CD: Cena confronts every version of himself in the Funhouse. He emerges as a rookie, full of Ruthless Aggression and as green as he is, heâs unable to even hit Bray in the ring. Itâs his first match playing out all over again, except Bray is in control. Heâs confronting his terrible debut and the fact that he wasnât exactly all he was cracked up to be. Cena was almost fired a year after he debuted, a personal demon of his. A fact he seemed to have forgotten during his rise to the top. Try as he might, he can’t erase this from his past. Itâs woven into the fabric of John Cenaâs DNA. Cena canât erase the nightmare, just like Batman canât really undo his past.
RS: Then, Cena is catapulted back even further, to wrestling in the 80s. He assumes the role of Hulk Hogan as he becomes, ahem, JOHNNY LARGEMEAT. Johnny Largemeat has no real talent; heâs at the top not because heâs earned it, but because heâs got big muscles, and because heâs willing to, behind the scenes, screw over any performer that might rival his success. Thus when John Cena as Largemeat enters the scene, he can only do bicep curls intensely and then flail limply at Bray as Bray demands âwhatcha gonna do brother, when you realize EGOMANIA has been runninâ WILD on YOU?!â This isnât just a story about Cenaâs past, just as The Return of Bruce Wayne isnât just about Batmanâs; we see antecedents to the type of hero Batman would be, and we see antecedents to the type of character and performer John Cena would be.
CD: Iâm just gonna say, this next part is one of my favorites. Before John Cena was Hustle, Loyalty and Respect, he was the Doctor of Thuganomics. Cena literally saved his job after that first horrendous year in the business because he could kind of rap. And by kinda, I mean he could rhyme words together in a silly way. The doctor isnât forgotten by Bray, and Cena slides down to the ring in his old gear, facing Bray in the ring where all he can do is rhyme. Heâs stuck. Bray opens up about how Cena was nothing more than a bully at this point in his career, making stupid raps and using middle school humor that was ultimately sexist and rather homophobic to get one over on his opponents. Bray gives Cena a chance to apologize, to be better going forward. Cena doesnât take it and makes a deez nuts joke in return. The past is inescapable.
RS: They both briefly return to the most important moment of their past– their Wrestlemania match. When John Cena tries to end Bray with a folding chair, theyâre once again catapulted into alt-history, into a different part of Hulk Hoganâs career. John Cena comes out as a member of the villainous nWo; but for the first time in the match Cena seems to regain real control over himself. This is the role he finally canât abide, and he breaks free to savagely beat Bray Wyatt, until the camera reveals heâs been beating up nothing but an empty puppet.
CD: The thing that finally breaks Cena out of his trance is the thing he never became. He never broke bad, never became the heel. He never hit Bray with that chair at WM 30 cementing a giant shift in character. He finally wakes up. John Cena is a construct. Did he ever know who he was? Perhaps not fundamentally. Does Bruce Wayne really even know who he is? Maybe not without Batman.
RS: In the end, the Fiend appears, gets his revenge, and teleports John Cena? Into? Hell? Nonexistence? Itâs unclear. John Cena has not since appeared on WWE programming. He may be, in the canon of the WWE, dead. Bruce Wayne dies at the end of The Return of Bruce Wayne too, but only to be reborn. In both these stories, after travelling through time and hypertime, both central characters are forced to confront the same fact: they have never been alone. For Batman, this is a moment of triumph, as he redefines his own identity by acknowledging this fact. For Cena, this is a moment of tragedy, as it reveals the extent of the harm heâs done. There were always other performers, characters, people around him that deserved a spotlight, and he canât go back and fix anything. The past is, as you said Charlie, inescapable. Permanent.
CD: I hope maybe one day, Batman can rest like John Cena is resting now. He sure seems like he needs it. Honestly though, this match was the first time WWE showed me that it could give us a story this rich in continuity. Like Morrison they dug deep, let Bray take the reins and itâs so obvious heâs been inspired by comics in all the work he does. If you like comic stories with deep dives, wild concepts and continuity soaked moments with steep pay offs…this is well worth your time. I donât think Iâve ever seen WWE pay off something this spectacularly that goes back this far. Maybe this is continuity heavy, but thatâs never stopped comic fans before.
RS: I think that, like a lot of the best comics, as long as you have a decent idea of whoâs on the screen, the continuity wonât be a hurdle, because they do a fantastic job in this match of really evoking the relevant stuff through the visuals and presentation. You donât really need to know the specifics of the nWo to understand why, in that moment, Cena finally snaps. You donât need to have watched their original feud to understand just how deeply John Cena the character and John Cena the performer hurt Bray Wyatt. It also shows just how complex wrestling storytelling can be; a lot of this takes place in a ring, but mostly the battle is psychological rather than physical. And, just like in superhero comics, the actual fight is given such emotional weight due to the years of history that culminate in those final moments, when an immortal demon clown knocks out ? Blockerâs Holywood Superstar John Cena, and then his alternate persona, an infernal childrenâs show host, counts to three, declaring the match over, at which point, again, John Cena is teleported out of his own psychological history and into parts unknown.
CD: Youâve summed it up really beautifully there. Ultimately itâs a story about redemption, facing your fears, realizing your weaknesses and accepting responsibility. If thatâs not compelling, Iâm not sure what is. And you know what the best part is, Rob? Weâve barely scratched the surface of how compelling wrestling stories can be.
RS: Join us next time for a paradigm shift.
If You Want ToWatch…
- This match? You can sign up for a free trial of a WWE Network Subscription at WWE.com and find the match by searching for âFirefly Funhouse Match.â
- This story? Again, Youâll need a WWE Network Subscription. If you search for âBray Wyattâ you should be able to find all relevant segments. This most recent Cena VS Wyatt feud began on the 28 February 2020 episode of Smackdown, and ended with the âFirefly Funhouse Matchâ at Wrestlemania XXXIII.
- This backstory? Available on the WWE Network. The original feud took place throughout 2014, and the original Wrestlemania match referenced in the âFirefly Funhouse Matchâ took place at Wrestlemania XXX. Bray Wyatt returned as the Firefly Funhouse Host on the 24 April 2019 episode of Smackdown, and debuted in-ring as the Fiend at Summerslam in 2019.
- These characters today? John Cena has not appeared in the WWE since the âFirefly Funhouse Match.â Bray Wyatt regularly appears on Smackdown, which airs from 8-10PM EST on Fox. The past two weeks of Smackdown are available to stream on Hulu, and older episodes are available on the WWE Network. Most of Bray Wyattâs âFirefly Funhouseâ segments are also available on YouTube. You can watch the first few in a compilation.
Charlie Davis is the worldâs premier Shatterstarologist, writer and co-host of The Match Club.
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
