Charlie Davis: Well Rob…we’ve got ourselves something a little bit different this week. Our plan was to continue on with comparing great comics stories with great wrestling stories, but then X-Factor #3 happened. Which, to be clear, is not a bad thing. The beginning of September seemed to collaborate with the forces that be, to render me completely emotionally compromised. Not only did it hail the return of Shatterstar in the X-Books who had been missing since the end of X-Force nearly 1 year and 6 months ago…but The Elite, a wrestling found family consisting of a bi-sexual gamer with a dark passenger, two scheming brothers, an anxious millennial cowboy with a taste for whiskey and a bleach blonde metal gear solid villain seemed to dissolve for the foreseeable future. I’ve been SO compromised that I didn’t even remember my gimmick for the article this time. I hope you can forgive me.
Robert Secundus: Since we’re changing our roles on this one, I think it makes sense for us to begin without cutting a promo. We’re not in the ring; we’ve walked over to the commentary desk. And so it may be right and proper for us to say a few words about those who are in the ring: David Baldeón and Leah Williams.
CD: I think it’s really important to mention right from the start that X-Factor as a book, specifically one in this new DOX era, has maybe one of the strongest concepts out of any of the current X-Books. I promise that not my bias talking, that is how I truly feel. My biggest issue with the status quo has always been what about the people that don’t fit in? It’s bugged me for a while now and I am so glad that Leah Williams is here to tackle that question, even if it’s not directly. X-Factor has always been a book about misfits and I am glad that that tradition is continuing. I won’t step on the toes of our colleagues who are actually writing about this book (go read it, its super good) but that intrinsic weirdness allows us to kinda color outside of the lines here and take us to a place we haven’t seen much of over the last several years: Mojoworld.
The Mojoverse Is The Message
RS: One of my favorite stories of the Classic Simonson-Claremont Era of X-Men is Art Adams’ and Ann Nocenti’s Longshot. The Mojoverse was a perfectly weird way for Nocenti to satirize and criticize American culture and American media with biting precision. Nocenti’s work was often hyperfocused on the culture at the time it was written; Longshot is obviously a Reaganite work. But thanks to the precision, the skill, the insight, even while it is clearly hyper-specific to that past, it still feels relevant today. I think a lot of writers and creators worry about time-stamping their work, without realizing that good work of the past remains relevant to the present precisely because the present is a result of the past. Creators worry about sounding like millennials, worry about sounding too online, even while their favorite works of the 80s sound extremely 80s. What I most enjoy about Williams’ work in general– and X-Factor in particular– is that she gets this. She understands that art made in 2020 can and should sound like it was made in 2020, can and should address the problems of 2020. And as a result, this is the first Mojoverse story since Longshot that I’ve read that (in my eyes) lives up to Nocenti’s.
CD: That was exactly my thought as we waded back into this world. The Mojoverse has needed to evolve for a long while now. The television and movie industries are VASTLY different than they were when the original concepts Nocenti was playing with were conceived. I struggle to use the word relevant, because like you said, the past is always relevant…it’s just that we live in a different world now. The sheer fact that no one had picked up on internet culture, streaming, social media, and commodification of the self until now was mind blowing to me. The Mojoverse is built to be a mirror. It’s meant to be SCARY. Excuse me if I don’t find Mojo sitting in a director’s chair screaming CUT! while we cut to panels of tired TV tropes horrific. What I do find scary though are lots of parts of the world we live in now. I’ve been living on the internet since I was 13 years old, and something about exploring the evolution of all of that and where we are now doesn’t smack of being “too online” it’s just the world we live in.
RS: I’m going to try to articulate a Theory of Media As Presented by X-Factor here; and then maybe you can poke at it/ question it/ see if there’s anything I left out? I think that “commodification of the self” is key, but also a– God, I’m trying to say this without sounding like an ignoramus or like a pretentious asshole, so please bear with me everyone– a destabilization of the self and where the self stands in relation to the media. What I mean is, not only internet media, but also traditional media as both “reality” television has expanded and as traditional media has been infected by internet stuff– all that media now has a much fuzzier boundary between author and audience, between creator and consumer, celebrity and fan than before. Anyone in the audience of our media can become the celebrity, but not everyone can become the celebrity, and so there is a vicious competition to rise to the top.
That competition relies on one’s ability to take one’s own life, one’s own identity, or the pseudo-ficitonal identity that one has created for the public, and turn that stuff into something marketable and palatable and entertaining for some corporation’s algorithm. That process is painful, and it can lead to loss of freedom, to moral compromise, to self-harm, and even death. But it doesn’t only lead to those things for those at the top; the tools that celebrities use to publish content for the rest of us to consume are the same tools that we use to speak to each other. So we end up perpetuating the same awfulness in our daily lives. Personal relationships as well as parasocial relationships are hard, painful, destructive as a result. Our dignity is viciously attacked. That’s what I’m getting from what we see of Shatterstar’s, Wind Dancer’s, and even Adam-X’s fates here.
CD: That’s exactly right. Everyone you mentioned before and even the other top streaming residents are stuck in those modes. It’s a direct reflection of how people who monetize themselves and their personalities become slaves to what are ultimately faceless corporations and an algorithm that is something and nothing all at once. Now, if we leave the bizarre culture of the internet behind, which we shouldn’t do completely, there is something else that makes its way forward, specifically in the case of Shatterstar. Now…where else does reality and fiction blend in a weird way that kind of makes your brain hurt sometimes? Oh yeah, that’s right, Sports Entertainment.
Vincent Kennedy McMojo
RS: I think professional wrestling is, and again, mea maxima culpa for the pretentiousness, the quintessential medium of the 21st century. It’s a place where athletics, theater, longterm shared-universe serialized storytelling, and reality TV all blur; it’s a place where fact and fiction merge, where fictional plots are enacted with extremely real and dangerous actions in the ring, where the private lives of individual actors and athletes become fodder for the fiction on the stage, or where the most important dramatic monologues acknowledge the artiface of the whole endeavor. It’s a place where the real audience shows up to perform a role within the fiction of the story they’re watching, and where they can even change the nature of the story. All of this becomes even more complicated given the characters of individual wrestlers themselves; pro-wrestlers’ characters often are, rather than completely fictional characters, heightened version of the real person.
People say that the gimmick is often the person, but turned up to 11. And now in the age of social media, people look at social media accounts of pro-wrestlers, accounts that sometimes use their legal name, sometimes their character’s name; accounts that sometimes continue the story on the stage, or reveal stories in their lives, or try to continue the former while pretending to reveal the latter. People find those wrestlers portraying themselves or portraying their characters on cameo, on youtube, on twitch. Because of all these blurred lines between fiction and reality, in the realm of pro-wrestling, every single problem of our social media, celebrity culture, and parasocial hells is heightened, particularly for the performers. The stuff that makes the medium so powerful also harms the performers in that medium– especially when the forces of capitalism are wielded by an evil, evil man to keep those performers under his control.
CD: It is utterly bone chilling all of the reality this issue of X-Factor gets right about pro wrestling in general, but it’s the specific timing of this and the fact that no one, not even Vince McMahon, the owner of World Wrestling Federation, and the WWE can hide in the midst of a pandemic that is really telling. Pro wrestling is incredible. You and I can both attest to that and for better and for worse, it’s due to all of the items you listed above. It’s the seamless way reality and fiction blend, it’s the moments built for crowd reaction, it’s the drama. But all of that hinges on stories and more specifically the different players in said stories.
We talked in our last Panel Per View about creative freedom, rebirth and the ability to move forward. About how when performers are not being creatively fulfilled, that wrestling no longer becomes art, but a job and a terribly physical one at that. I say all this to give context, but also to make you understand that Mojo is real. He’s here on earth with us and his name is Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Vince cares not for his performers, he cares about money and ratings. He doesn’t care about putting on a good show or creating a compelling story, he cares about being the sole creative force so any success can be attributed back to him. I always knew that Vince was a bad person, but the pandemic has peeled back layers that I didn’t even know were there. Vince is the worst boss you’ve ever had and then some. I think that that might even be putting it lightly.
RS: The McMahons began quarantine by donating millions of dollars to Florida; immediately after this, the state declared WWE Superstars to be Essential Workers. Then the WWE fired a large number of those essential workers, in the middle of a global pandemic, in a profession where all opportunities to make money rely on live performance. Then the extremely unsafe work environment lead to a number of workers contracting COVID-19. And finally, because none of this was enough, Vince McMahon came for the livelihoods and very identities of the pro-wrestlers who aren’t even his full time employees, but independent contractors.
CD: At this point, I am unconvinced that the evil Mr. McMahon character that Vince so famously portrayed in the late 90’s was even really a character at all. On top of EVERYTHING that you mentioned, due to their being actual viable competition in wrestling in 2020, it’s become increasingly obvious through former WWE wrestlers spilling their guts that the WWE is possibly the least creatively fulfilling job that’s out there. Depending on who you are, you either get a little say in your story lines or none at all. Oftentimes a group of writers that have workshopped stories and promos will have them torn up by Vince hours before TV tapings start. It’s then replaced by whatever he sees fit to give the wrestlers…he’s the last say and if he doesn’t like it, well then it doesn’t happen. If you’re thinking this sounds more than a little unhinged, you’d be correct.
RS: And so what did Vince McMahon do when he realized that many of his wrestlers had, through social media, a voice independent of him, and a revenue stream independent of him? He decided that he didn’t just have control over their promos– no, he had control over their cameos, their twitch streams, and their youtube videos. He argued that he had control over these even if they were not in-character and if they were registered under these performers’ legal names. Part of a contract was revealed in which it appeared that the WWE claimed to some degree own their legal names. That a man could even claim to wield this power over people who aren’t even legally his employees is horrifying.
CD: I hope you are all seeing the bizarre similarities here to Mojo and Mojoworld. Even without all the random news that broke the same week that X-Factor #3 hit, pro wrestling was screaming for a magnifying glass to be placed upon it and it seems like David and Leah were the perfect ones to make that work. I’d seen the similarities for years, but I figured no one would actually shift the Mojoverse into something so contemporary. You don’t even have to squint to see the similarities, Shatterstar is literally fighting an an arena as millions of people across the galaxy look on. Also, let’s not forget that the recently conceived WWE Thunderdome looks like it was ripped right from The Mojoverse.
X-Factor #3
RS: So, the way that X-Factor examines media (social and otherwise) is very relevant to the media of professional wrestling; Vince McMahon, a reactionary capitalist media-mogul who has caused those in his employ to suffer, is very comparable to Mojo; Charlie, let’s talk about the star of the issue, the one, the only, Shatterstar. As the world’s foremost Shatterstarologist, could you give us an idea of how Shatterstar traditionally has worked in the Mojoworld, and how this update, Shatterstar-as-Pro-Wrestler, works for the character?
CD: The very first thing that everyone needs to understand, and this is fundamental stuff here Rob, Shatterstar is NOT Longshot. I’ve placed it in bold, can everyone see it? They share DNA, but it’s very clear that Shatterstar, for lack of a better way to explain, is the logical evolutionary outcome of Longshot. Cloned and then modified. It’s also very important to understand that ‘Star is from a Mojoworld 100 years in the future. It is also not Longshot’s Mojoworld. It works fundamentally different, just like any place that would be affected by 100 years of change.
‘Star as a gladiator in his original continuity is honestly not that different from the ‘Star cast in the light of pro wrestling. The future Mojoworld is based around fights. They are broadcast around the universe for everyone to see and the continued existence if it’s gladiators, are dependent on the skill they possess. I had always thought that pure gladiatorial combat, like you’d see in ancient Rome on Mojoworld didn’t quite fit for how weird of a place it was supposed to be. I could buy society breaking down into something more bloodthirsty as the years went on, but there were just not enough theatrics for it to make sense. A year and some change ago I literally uttered the phrase (“Mojoworld should be like wrestling, but the fighting is real”) and low and behold, that is where we are now. It’s simply that great minds think alike. Uh–sorry Rob I channeled a bit of my own Cleaner persona there for a second.
RS: I think it’s interesting how this evolution of the Mojoverse doesn’t just build something new, but reinvigorates those old stories; we can see what’s happening here as a natural extension of the Mojoverse of the 80s, where Betsy Braddock’s eyes livestreamed the exploits of the X-Men to the dimension, but also as a logical middle ground between the Mojoverse of the present and that of the future. How does the Mojoverse move from television to gladiatorial combat? What’s the middle ground between theatrics and pure bloodshed? Professional Wrestling. And I also love how it reinforces Shatterstar’s character. Now, I haven’t read much with him– I only read the first couple arcs of the investigations era of X-Factor, and I’ve never read classic X-Force. But I adore the Seeley and Villa Shatterstar miniseries, and my impression from that series is that Shatterstar is a person who primarily understands his own life through his performance. He lives the fuzzy line between fiction and reality; the thing that makes pro-wrestling unique is the same thing that makes Shatterstar unique.
Further, it’s the same thing– or at least it’s related to– the aspect of our culture that this iteration of the Mojoverse is critiquing, and that’s why I think it’s so vital that this story centers Shatterstar rather than Longshot. I love Nocenti’s satire, and I love her Mojoverse, but there’s always a natural distance between the reader and the source material that comes with that genre, and Longshot is a product of that distance. He’s often the audience’s viewpoint character, or the character with which the audience is supposed to empathize, and so he’s always alienated from whatever’s around him– be it Earth or Mojoverse– allowing the audience to see that setting as though they were strangers to it. Longshot always feels removed somehow from the Mojoverse, even as he attempts to rebel against it; Shatterstar feels like the natural product of the Mojoverse. It shapes him just as our social media hell shapes us.
CD: And that’s the tragedy of it. Unlike Longshot, ‘Star has successfully escaped the Mojoverse even if it’s in his blood. He knows what it’s like outside that world, so the reality of what is going on with him, is that he’s blatantly stepped back into this roll because he knew he could keep Mojo entertained and his eyes away from everything else. The Mojoverse at large seems like they are obsessed with Krakoa and mutants, he’s keeping his gaze away from earth. ‘Star is a self sacrificing hero who’s caught in a horrible loop because he cares too much about the family he found all that time ago. It’s also important to understand that while ‘Star’s jarring happy go lucky attitude seems to have been installed by Mojo, it’s also the gimmick he keeps in place in his fighting area. Leah has successfully taken the conceit of a pro wrestling gimmick and turned it into a bit of its own satire, using the trappings of Shatterstar’s characterization from Peter David’s X-Factor Investigations and using this lense to skewer it. It’s a brilliant way to use the very specific tools that wrestling gives us to critique something that came before. Now, before we wrap up, we have to talk about something else that’s super evident here. ‘Star’s new outfit sure is familiar, huh?
RS: It looks like ‘Star’s got adrenalin, in his soul/ every fight out of control/ he’s gonna do it all to get them off their feet. (Even if his dad isn’t the type to say “hard times breed better men.”) Cody Rhodes is probably my favorite male wrestler; his match with his older brother, Dustin Rhodes, at AEW Double or Nothing in 2019 might be my favorite match of all time. It told a gut-wrenching story about family, inheritance, expectations, and blood. A lot of blood. Recently, he left Dynamite for a while to recover from a severe beating at the hands of the Dark Order, and we do not know what kind of Cody will return; all we have to go on is this cryptic post, where his family crest is drenched in even more blood:
But that’s the future. Charlie, why do you think Cody’s attire was suitable for Shatterstar? What connection do you see between these two characters?
CD: At first, I didn’t think there was anything more to it other than the fact that Cody happened to be wearing ‘Star’s black and white color scheme back in 2010. It’s the most obvious connection that David Baldeón could have made, but I think i’ve got something a little deeper than that. Currently, Cody Rhodes epitomizes freedom. Not the patriotic kind, the real kind. All Elite Wrestling, Cody’s current wrestling promotion is sort of a beacon of light in the darkness. A refuge. He’s said as much. After spending more than a decade in WWE, despite legacy, money and access to the biggest stage of them all–Cody left. It might sound like a familiar story now, but I assure you this wasn’t the norm at the time. Cody had spent years in the WWE being creatively unfulfilled. He was slotted into the role that Vince McMahon had carved out for him, despite his impressive skill and wrestling pedigree. He was a slave to the system. Despite everything he tried to to please the powers that be, Cody was stuck.
He became disillusioned and in 2015, Cody adopted the persona Stardust. Now I don’t have a lot of time to explain this, but let’s just say that Stardust is an alien, a cosmic being that can only exist in the canon of wrestling. The switch from plain old Cody Rhodes to Stardust was a refresh for a time, a way for Cody to channel his frustration with WWE and his nerdiness all at the same time. Stardust became something akin to a combination of Mr. Sinister and Dr. Doom and when it was good, it was great. The only issue was, when playing Stardust started to cause very real rifts in his family due to the caustic nature of his promos and the character’s disavowing of his family name, Cody wanted out. He wanted to stop being Stardust. Too bad then that Vince simply wouldn’t let him. It’s not just the similarities between Vince and Mojo that are at play here, it’s Cody and Shatterstar himself. Trapped, restless and eager for freedom, ‘Star left Mojoworld in search of something better. So did Cody Rhodes. He returned to the indie wrestling scene and much like ‘Star did all that time ago with the X-Men, he discovered his own found family.
RS: When I think about why I love Cody– it’s not just that he’s an incredible performer, an excellent athlete, a man who has told beautiful stories in and out of the ring– I think it’s that Cody, both the character and the man, gives me hope. As everything in our own hellscape spirals, it can feel like I’m not a person, like I barely exist; like there’s a role I’m being asked to perform, and if I fail, well, it’s not like I’m an individual; there are other piles of guts and bone ready to fill that role. Cody is someone who managed to escape that kind of nightmare. Shatterstar is a character that has in the past and, I think, will again. We’ve talked a lot about how Wrestling exhibits the very worst aspects of our culture and media today, and how evil people in that industry can do so much harm, but I think it goes in the other direction too; it can show us not just critiques of our culture, but it can show us hope. There aren’t just Vince’s out there, but Cody’s too.
Charlie Davis is the world’s premier Shatterstarologist, writer and co-host of The Match Club.
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
