Yesterday, CM Punk got the internet talking - as he is wont to do - when he Tweeted out this picture of himself and Dave Bautista:
"I will be a Bond villain someday, Punk" "Sure, Dave, and I'll write Drax for Marvel." @DaveBautista #DreamChasers pic.twitter.com/7kDbsGEvFx
— Coach (@CMPunk) November 4, 2015
Though he mentions his old rival for the World Heavyweight championship's new movie role, Punk is really hyping a big opening for his own post-WWE ambitions, the release of Marvel Comics' Drax, a new series co-written by The Best in the World, starring the character Bautista plays on film in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Here's the description of the series from the Mighty Marvel Marketing Machine:
UFC FIGHTER CM PUNK MAKES HIS MIGHTY MARVEL DEBUT!
Drax the Destroyer is the muscle for the Guardians of the Galaxy, but what does he do when he's not adventuring through space with the Guardians? He lets his bloodthirsty quest for revenge take the pilot seat, of course! Determined to find and kill Thanos once and for all, Drax is ready to take on the universe. But when you're tooling around the universe in a ship aptly named "The Space Sucker", an unwavering desire for bloodshed isn't enough to keep a mission from derailing. Drax crash lands into his wildest adventures ever, encountering foes no one will ever expect! The depths of space may not be big enough to contain this much grit, vengeance and all-out action!
Being a mark for...just about everyone involved in the creation of this book and everything represented in it...I picked up a copy when it was released yesterday. And I'm here to tell you, it's pretty good.
Not sure it's fair to describe this first issue as set-up. It's more like set-up for the set-up.
We open on a scene of Drax taking care of business with the latest version of the Guardians line-up, and if you're expecting the movie crew...well, you will find Rocket and Groot. But other than that, you'll probably be wondering why those two and Drax are with Fantastic Four's Thing, a dude that kind of looks like Spider-Man but actually isn't the same guy who looked like that and fought the web-slinger in Spider-Man 3 and a woman carrying all of Chris Pratt's gear but who is the character Ellen Page plays in the X-Men movies (comics, everybody!) and fighting alien religious extremists.
Punk and co-author Cullen Bunn don't spend any time explaining it either. If you read Marvel Comics on the regular, you'll have some understanding of what's going on in this post-Secret Wars universe, and if you don't, they're breaking Drax off for solo adventures movie fans will understand (he really, really wants to kill Thanos) in short-order.
As he did in the short story he scripted for the Thor annual earlier this year, Punk stays in a comedy-action mode that fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his wrestling work and/or pro graps in general will enjoy. Some of it could be a little more original (we get both a talking-about-the-monster-while-he-rises-up-behind-you and covered-in-exploding-goo gags from Rocket in the first few pages), but Scott Hepburn and the rest of the art team make it worthwhile with kinetic visuals that have just the right amount of cartoon-y to them.
Nobody wants to hang with Drax when they split up to do non-Guardians business, but Rocket takes pity on him and loans him a hooptie he calls The Space Sucker. Some jokes about how much of a junker it is and how much the Destroyer wants to destroy stuff (especially Thanos), followed by a scene of them falling out of the sky, land our anti-hero on a Mos Eisley-looking planet where he runs into another famous cosmic hoss and...
That's the issue. My biggest beef with the book has nothing to do with Punk or any member of the creative team, but with comics' current business model of charging $4-5 for 20ish pages of story.
Though there's no mention of an UFC-style tournament that was hinted at when the series was announced on the convention circuit, it does look like this is going to be a fight comic. And that's one of two ways you can go with Drax, a character who's family was killed so he now f****s $#!+ up in the name of justice.
I'd eventually love to see Punk write a darker story, either for this character or another...something that taps into the part of his creative mind that gave us his Ring of Honor feud with Raven, or the Straight Edge Society program with Rey Mysterio in WWE.
But for now, this looks like its gonna be a lot of fun to read. It definitely feels like Punk is having a ton of fun writing it. Love him or hate him, like his Tweet to the guy who plays the character he's getting a chance to craft adventures for says, you have to tip your hat to him for chasing his dreams.
Images courtesy of Marvel Comics via Comic Book Resources.
Find a comic shop in your area by clicking here, or order a digital copy of Drax #1 on ComiXology.