In a room just off to the side of the Direct Energy Centre during Toronto Comic Con, Anthony Darko struts confidently into the ring. He is tall and thin, with a muscular stomach, and naked except for a yellow leotard with “Darko” printed across the backside. In this match between Darko and fellow Canadian wrestler Rip Impact, it’s clear who the real star is. Darko may be a wrestler, but from the way he feeds off being onstage, he’s more like a vaudevillian.
I am one of five people in the audience. This does not go unnoticed.
“Hey!” he yells at the few people lingering at the door. “Don’t watch out there! Come in here! I’m the women’s champ!”
Desperate times calls for desperate measures, so Darko and Impact amp up the act. Darko throws Impact out of the ring and the two begin punching each other around the room. Darko repeatedly slams Impact’s head against the garbage bin in the corner, and Impact finally falls to the floor, though the illusion of pain is shattered somewhat when Impact cushions his fall.
This showmanship fails to entice the crowd, and most of the people at the door have returned to the main convention hall. “Come on people, I need fans!” The referee arbitrarily declares the match for Impact, and Darko protests exaggeratedly. “And all the girls are gone, too!” he notes.
This will not do. Darko jumps from the ring and runs into the main convention hall. If this convention won’t liven up on its own, then he’ll rev up the defibrillator himself.
• • •
Wizard World’s Toronto Comic Con presumably draws its inspiration from San Diego Comic Con, which has become the de facto Cannes Film Festival of disreputable pop culture, where A-listers, D-listers, and anyone else with a superhero or a spaceman costume peddle their wares. Toronto Comic Con is a much lower-key affair, suffering perhaps from its close proximity to August’s more heavily-hyped Fan Expo.
TV and sports personalities sign autographs at their booths. Bobby Clark, the guy who played Gorn on Star Trek is here, as is Luciano Carro of Battlestar Galactica, Christopher Knight from The Brady Bunch, Michael Mahonen from Star Trek: Voyager, and a whole lot of professional wrestlers. How strange to see “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase in the real world, still with his jet-black sideburns and diamond-studded red-white-and-blue shirtsleeves.
“How often do you get asked about Ghostbusters 3?” I ask Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson, who is wearing a “Winston Rules!” T-shirt.
“Yeah, I know that’s all over the Internet. I get asked a lot…I don’t know a whole lot more than anyone else does. I saw Ivan Reitman and he says if they get a script, they might start shooting in the fall, so there’s a good chance it could happen, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.”
“I read that Ivan Reitman might be getting kicked off the project,” I say.
“Yeah…I read that too.”
The raison d’etreof the Comic Con is merchandise, and the Comic Con does indeed boast many, many stacks of comic books in its no-frills, near-identical booths. I am more intrigued by Choice Collectibles, who are here selling high-end visual art: an original drawing from Disney’s Pinocchio; the cover of Detective Comics 27 (Batman’s first appearance) rendered as an oil painting; a cell of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd hand-painted and signed by Chuck Jones; and, with an elegant framed photo of the Great Man himself, Walt Disney’s autograph. Price: $2,995.
I am especially taken by several paintings by Alex Ross, an artist famous for his photo-realistic portraits of the Justice League. They always feature Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the gang gathered together with their chins held high and chests puffed up. His work is like Norman Rockwell in the earnest way he mythologizes the heroes, but the perfection of his subjects’ physical forms— the skintight spandex over Superman’s massive pectorals, the crevices of Batman’s abs, the way Wonder Woman’s star-spangled panties barely conceal her private area—is charged with eroticism.
I pass a woman dressed in a tight, two-piece leather bikini with waist-high boots—fire-engine red, to match her hair. One passerby suggests she resembles Daredevil’s girlfriend Elektra, but no, this costume is an original creation. Her lipstick is eye-stingingly red, her bra reveals most of her breasts, her bottoms are so tight they appear to suffocate her bulging buttocks. Part of me wants to look down my nose at such exhibitionism, but truth be told, I find it kinda hot.
• • •
Looking through a discount bin, I find the first comic book that ever really disturbed me: Batman Comics #499 from September 1993. I was four years old at the time, in the midst of a Batman obsession that lasted most of my early childhood, and DC Comics was mounting one of its most ambitious efforts ever. “Knightfall,” a story that ran in every Batman publication from 1993 to 1994, followed a physically and emotionally exhausted Batman after an unprecedented jailbreak, with the Dark Knight trying to fight and capture every villain in Gotham City. While he is weary and weak, the evil Bane breaks Batman’s back, and Bruce Wayne is forced to give up the guise. He hires young, angry Jean-Paul Valley as his replacement.
By issue #499, Bruce was realizing he had made a mistake. Increasingly violent and uncooperative, Jean-Paul nearly strangles Robin and kills the villainous Abattoir. The cover art features Jean-Paul as Batman leaping menacingly towards a helpless Bruce, confined to a wheelchair. Batman’s 1960s television show drew a clear line between “the good guys” and “the bad guys,” but this cover image shows that the man wearing the Bat-suit is clearly a menace. Batman a menace? At age four, that was too much to take.
The notion of Batman as a morally ambivalent protagonist has inspired the best interpretations of the character, including the graphic novels of Frank Miller and the films of Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan. Why does it strike such a nerve among comic fans? Maybe because in Batman’s pre-1980s incarnations—Bob Kane’s original comics, the TV series, the movie serials—established him as a force of absolute good, and absolute good and evil as a part of fan culture’s appeal. Any disruption of this black-and-white morality goes against what makes these idealized characters so comforting. Perhaps this accounts for the success of Watchmen, which became a fanboy classic for suggesting—gasp!—costumed heroes might be as fucked up as the rest of us.
• • •
Anthony Darko has decided to take promotional matters into his own hands. Grabbing a megaphone, he begins wandering up and down the convention hall, still shirtless in his yellow wrestling tights. “You know what’s better than comic books? Professional wrestling!”
“It’s a packed house!” he says of the wrestling room. “It’s got, like, 14 people!”
He is briefly interested by the booth for Universal Design, a company that specializes in life-sized reproductions of superhero costumes. “Yo, can we borrow the Batman costume?” he asks the booth attendants through the megaphone. He makes his way to ‘Former WWE Diva’ Jackie Haas’s booth: “C’mon! I won the women’s title last night! I’ll defend it!”
“Uh… no thank you. Ask Dawn,” she says, pointing to wrestler Dawn Marie.
Going into the Comic Con, I wondered what wrestling had to do with comics, but maybe comics and professional wrestling, with their idealized masculinity and morally simplistic storylines, have more in common than I thought. For either a wrestler or a superhero to appear vulnerable seems oxymoronic. These are our modern gods.
