Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Another wrestler gets their name stolen? What are the odds of that?

Sadly, that's not all she loses here. From 1986, The Thing #33, "Battle of the Sexes!" Written by Michael Carlin, breakdowns by Ron Wilson, finishes by Kim DeMulder. 

Up-and-coming Unlimited Class Wrestling's Battleaxe defeats the old champion, Titania: not the new one from Secret Wars, but the Grappler who had been giving the Thing trouble since 1979's Marvel Two-in-One #54. Despite her long career as a female wrestler and supervillain thug, she seems to lose to the similarly super-strong Battleaxe fair and square; but tries to keep the fight going after the match is called. Ben considered her a bad egg, and breaks it up, which seems to draw Battleax's interest. (Ben's watching the match with his pal and future D-Man, Dennis Dunphy! Who clams up a bit when Ben wonders where all the super-strong types have been coming from...)
Although she had gone straight, Titania and her teammates were still looked down upon for their criminal records, and she was losing whatever support she had. Hitting the showers, Titania is then gunned down by "Golddigger," who may have been the "Scourge of the Underworld," or a Scourge. The disguise-wearing shooters had killed a number of (low-end) super-villains, and this might've been the first clue there was more than one of them. Offhand, I forget how many of the Scourge victims were actually committing or wanted for crimes at the time of their executions; but Titania had served her time. Unless she had perhaps committed crimes she had never been charged for, but that might be giving Scourge (and that storyline) too much credit; and she was pretty much getting killed off to make way for the new version anyway.
"Golddigger" makes her escape, past Ben, claiming a man had shot Titania and run off. Battleaxe and the other lady wrestlers turn on Ben when he tries to leave and they try to keep him there; and Sharon Ventura tries to leap into the dogpile to help him, despite the fact that she did not have super-strength--yet. The Grappler's agent, Auntie Freeze, notices her moxie, and thinks she might be able to use her. She gives Sharon a card...that looks like a bumper sticker...with a number to the "Power Broker."

Meanwhile, Battleax takes her case to the UCWF president: she wanted to wrestle the Thing. Ben considers it "sensationalism," and doesn't wanna; but Battleaxe wants to keep working on him. Later at dinner, Sharon thinks Ben should do it, but he says "nobody liked that pipsqueak from 'Taxi' after he stared wrestlin' chicks on TV," a reference to Andy Kaufman, who had died two years prior. Ben comes across as a bit sexist, or at least dated here; as he says he might've had to hit some women bad guys over the years, but hated it. He also forbids her to go see the Power Broker, which goes over as well as you'd expect: Sharon tells Ben she's not interested in him the way he was in her, and she had already called the Power Broker. Steamed, Ben refrains from smashing up the restaurant, but does make a call and agrees to the match with Battleaxe.
Ben's heart isn't in the match, though: he's watching the crowd, looking for Sharon, giving Battleaxe the opportunity to walk all over him. But, Ben realizes she was mad over Titania's death, not really at him. With few other options to get out of it, Ben throws the match; although Battleaxe catches on pretty quickly. But was this going to look bad for him later? And what was the Power Broker's game...and what of Sharon? I feel like there should be soap opera music at the end of this one. And, like a lot of Scourge's victims, the former Titania, Davida DeVito, was brought back by the Hood. But she took a new name: Lascivious. It's not great; but the new Titania was at least forty times stronger, so I could her keeping the name.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Golddigger huh, interesting. Never heard of that version of Scourge. As far as I know, and I could be wrong, we all know the Scourge was just a shorthand means to an end, with Gruenwald later trying to give the whole concept a backstory. Aside from that, I don't think it got too deep in mythology.

Makes we wonder, with this Unlimited Class Wrestling thing, if Carlin or whoever initially convicted this was a huge wrestling fan or a causal one, but smart enough to see how popular wrestling was/is & decided, hey why not bring that into the Marvel Universe as well. I do like that this UCW had both men & women wrestlers, so that was cool.
News to me that Carlin or editorial at the time, wanted Titania dead, but then hindsight is 20/20, because we've all seen how well the original version has done since then. Crazy to think they'd have killed her off.