Howdy, y’all. Professor (seriously) Will Nevin here. When I came on board to Xavier Files, I was coming from a mostly three-man operation at WMQ Comics to a family of 30+ contributors, and I figured it would be neat to get some folkx together on occasion to talk about something we’d all read. You know, like a book club. The wrinkle for Assigned Readings (what I’m calling this here thing), though, is that you all, the beautiful, wonderful content consumers out there, pick what we read.
Our first theme was biographies, and out of four possible picks, Twitter pretty decisively went for “Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven,” a 2016 book written by Brandon M. Easton, drawn by Denis Medri, colored by Davide Caci and published by Lion Forge in conjunction with the Andre Roussimoff estate.
Roussimoff, known around the world as “Andre the Giant,” packed a lot into his 46 years of life, including entertaining millions with his exploits in the ring and becoming a legendary drinker outside of it (both of which are explored in “Closer to Heaven”).
I got four fellow Xavier Files fiends to read “Closer to Heaven.”
Let’s see what they thought about it.
We’ll start with some introductions and a quick, impossibly condensed appraisal of the book: thumbs up or down?
Dan Grote: Hi. Dan Grote. Editor. Taurus. Lapsed wrestling fan (1999-2002). Thumbs up.
Liz Large: I’m Liz Large, and thumbs up from me.
Chris Eddleman: Hi, I’m the Marvel editor for XF, got into wrestling in 2015, love “The Princess Bride.” Gonna give this the thumbs up.
Dan McMahon: Hi, I’m Dan. I am a comics editor for CBR. I wish I had more thumbs to put up than two.
Will Nevin: I’m going to be contrarian: thumbs in the middle.
And as another big, broad question, are you a wrestling fan? How much do you know about the Andre the Giant era of pro graps?
Dan G.: What I know about the Andre era I know through cultural osmosis and the 1985 cartoon “Hulk Hogan’s Rock ’n’ Wrestling.” I know the stuff “around” that era, like Andre in “The Princess Bride” and Capt. Lou Albano in the video for “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show” and Hulk Hogan in “No Holds Barred” and Rick Derringer’s video for “Real American.”
Liz: Until last month, I had never seen any wrestling — but I’ve seen “The Princess Bride” and I’d heard the story about Andre keeping Robin Wright warm (and I knew that Hulk Hogan was an asshole). I had an overall positive impression of him from cultural references, but that was it.
Will: Hulk Hogan? Giant asshole.
Chris: I was mostly not alive during the big Andre the Giant era stuff but have gone back and watched a bit, although my favorite performer of the era is the Macho Man, so I’ve mostly watched a bunch of that. I do, however, of course, know about the [Wrestlemania III] Slam Heard ’Round the World.
Dan M.: I actually do not know much about wrestling. I have always had close friends who are super fans. Honestly, I think I never got into it because of always getting the “Oh are you related to Vince?!” questions. On the other hand though, I was always interested in Andre as a person because he was so different from those around him.
Will: I got in at the tail end of the “Attitude” era and have stuck around, sometimes against my better judgment. But when wrestling is good, it’s great storytelling.
So let’s start with what I think is the real strength of the book: artist Denis Medri and colorist Davide Caci’s work. What were some of the artistic storytelling moments that stuck out to you?
Dan G.: Not to poop on this party, but I actually think I would have preferred a brighter color palette. I understand the temptation to use sepias and muted tones looking back on a life lived, but these are larger-than-life figures. No one’s trying to lionize Andre, obviously, but there are some moments — especially in-ring — that cry out for something bolder.
Liz: I did like the coloring in this. I think the muted, sepia-like tones really made it feel like a memory — and I think some of the stories being told were more composite than an exact depiction of events, so sort of muddying the colors worked for me. Art wise, I really liked the progression of Andre’s face and body. You could really see how even as he got bigger and stronger he was carrying more weight and more pain.
Chris: Yeah, I particularly liked the cartooning style that Denis Medri brought. I like to think of that era of wrestling as pretty sepia-toned, and the figures were only just starting to be the cartoon characters of the Hogan era. The color palette talked of backgrounds and shady dealings, some real behind-the-scenes carny stuff. I also liked the portrayal of the characters as rarely particularly attractive, kinda kept it in reality. I can see Dan’s complaint, though.
Dan M.: Liz beat me to writing my own feelings out. All of this felt like reminiscing over a life lived, looking back at memories as portrayed by the art itself. Andre’s progression and deterioration both physically and mentally were brought to life with the art. Something that stuck out to me was the excess of liquor bottles and beer cans when Andre wasn’t in the ring. As far as set dressing went, it was an extension of Andre’s inability to live in moderation because of the world he was in.
As far as writer Brandon Easton’s work goes, I think there’s a lot to like — the dialogue is good, and there are some real moments with power. But I think there’s something off with the tone and overall pacing, especially in the internal narration in Andre’s voice and the rushed conclusion (respectively). Am I off there?
Liz: I was compelled by the story, and I agree that the dialogue was good. The narration seemed a little heavy on cliches. Like I said earlier, I’m not too familiar with Andre, but it seems a little unlikely that this is how he talked in real life. (And if it was, I think that could have been made clear in the text.)
Will: The use of cliches really dragged the writing down. I counted one page with *four* different ones. Oof.
Chris: Agreed with Liz, but wanted to add that the choice to make Andre the first person narrator meant that all of his actions could be clearly explained or justified (and in some cases not justified), but it painted him particularly sympathetically. I think the choice of doing so led to you feeling for Andre at all times, but it’s impossible to know how he really felt, as this is a biography written years and years after his death. It’s particularly interesting given that it was introduced and authorized by his daughter, who by all rights barely knew him at all. It’s interesting that she approved of him being portrayed this way.
Another thing: Was it me or did the book switch from kayfabe (wrestling storylines) to real life too frequently/without any consistent rules? Did it make sense to you?
Liz: I’ll say that as someone who doesn’t know wrestling, I appreciated the explanations/behind-the-scenes stuff. I liked the scenes that showed how they determined his stage name, his height, how he’d never been taken down before.
Chris: I didn’t have a lot of problems with it but, I have a pretty decent wrestling background. I can’t imagine someone just picking this up, because kayfabe isn’t explained super well, and the fights are often portrayed in a way where they don’t seem predetermined. An odd choice.
Dan M.: As someone with no wrestling background and only knowledge on the man himself, I loved the quick turns from career to life. Personally, I don’t think he had much separation between the two at the height of his career. Other than his trips to his farm, it felt like he was always moving forward as if his career was his life. The book’s structure blurred the lines between the two, which was successful for me.
One hundred pages is a tight space in which to tell a pretty famous figure’s story — what would you add (if anything) and what would you cut?
Liz: I don’t know enough about Andre to tell if anything is missing, but I was a little thrown at the end when it says how his confidant Frenchy Bernard took care of his ranch after Andre died. Who? We got scenes with a lot of friends and two managers, and including even a panel or two of this guy would have made sense. I probably would have changed how the story of Robin (his daughter) was presented — I think the letter was a little cheesy. (I liked the forward from her as an adult, though.)
Dan G.: I, too, did a double-take when they introduced Frenchy Bernard at the end out of nowhere. You know, his confidant, at his ranch, that he has. That said, I don’t know where there’s an organic and compelling place to stick in an extra panel introducing his interest in rural real estate.
Chris: It did seem a little light, and going back to my earlier point, I wonder if it was summarized so lightly to keep it authorized. This is not the only comic book biography of the Eighth Wonder of the World, and the other one [“Andre the Giant: Life and Legend” by Box Brown] is nearly two and half times the length. I would have preferred more stories of his interactions with other wrestlers, as well as his with his daughter and her mother. But for a nice little summary, it was tidy.
Dan M.: There were a few times they mention that he needed special hospital beds built and things like that. In his life, it wasn’t just those special cases that he needed to think about. Finding his space in a world where he just didn’t fit physically was something I would have liked to see more of. The book does show us that with his plane trips, but he had to have special chairs made for him his entire life. The book doesn’t ignore it, but it’s something that has always stuck with me that I would have liked to see more of.
Will: I think we could have done without one or more of the side trips to Japan — they didn’t add enough to the story and disrupted the flow to me. And there had to be a better way to address a seven-year relationship that resulted in a daughter than some exposition and a letter from said daughter.
Final thoughts?
Liz: Overall, I enjoyed this. The story of Andre’s life covers a lot of ground, and this was an easy-to-follow and overall enjoyable book.
Chris: My thumbs up was possibly shaky. While the art and composition was a delight, the scripting was a tad bit underdone. I’m not sure if this was trying to capture a particular tone about the plain-spoken Andre, but it definitely dragged the book down a little. It was satisfying though, if not outstanding.
Will: A perfectly OK book. But “underdone” is also a great way to describe it.
Dan G.: As a wrestling-adjacent person, I learned a lot, especially about how the early days of regional wrestling promotions became the WWF. I also never knew the “Princess Bride” story, so that was a nice moment. I liked that it was informative, and a quick study, with a bittersweet ending, inevitable though it was.
Dan M.: I think the writing was at its best when it was talking about his overindulgence in his vices. Struggling with drinking and such things is a hard topic to put onto paper, but the writing really did capture it. There are so many factors that go into a person and why they are. Understanding the pain of being different but using that to show the world you are special is a theme that was clear through the whole story for me.
I get very emotional over Andre, so this story worked well for me. The pieces that touched me the most are the foreword by his daughter and the inclusion of her letter to him.
Seeing how his career in some ways robbed him of a life outside of it is hard. With the inclusion of those real things, it landed very well.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
Chris Eddleman is a biologist and co-host of Chrises On Infinite Earths.
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
Dan McMahon is a life long hunk. Most of his time is spent writing about things he loves, tweeting about Willem Dafoe, and his podcast GateCrashers.