Some exciting releases here and on the way from Crowbar Press. The highlight is a new reprint of Fall Guys by Marcus Griffin, a 1930s expose behind the scenes of the pre-war machinations and doublecrosses. While the book is excellent, some of its claims are questionable or exaggerated, with a strong theory that Toots Mondt was a key, but unreliable, source. That’s addressed in this new edition which includes detailed annotations from publisher Scott Teal and historian Steve Yohe, correcting and challenging the content. It’s an approach that worked well with a previous reprint of Lou Thesz’s autobiography Hooker. Meanwhile Pro Wrestling Books reader Jason Presley kindly passed on the “coming attractions” schedule for Crowbar Press. Highlights for 2019 include a series of books on “The Great Wrestling Venues” in both Japan and the US territories. There’s also “Bowdren The Booker”, which was the title of a popular series in the Wrestling Observer newsletter where Bowdren produced an alternative timeline for WCW.
Last year I reviewed the initial instalment of a planned graphic novel series Invasion From Planet Wrestletopia. (I’ve copied the recovered text from that review below.) The publishers have now announced the series has been picked up by Starburns Industries Press. There’ll be six monthly issues in digital format, which will then be gathered together as a paperback. Here’s the blurb: INVASION FROM PLANET WRESTLETOPIA Script: Ed Kuehnel & Matt Entin (Lumberjack Man) Art: Dan Schkade (The Spirit), Kendall Goode (WWE) Color: Marissa Louise (Hex Wives) Letters: A Larger World (Ninja•K) Creators Ed Kuehnel and Matt Entin bring their cult classic to SBI Press, where the story will be completed for the first time! “Boy Scout” Bob Schultz! Cousin Orville! Mini Macho! Kodiak Jack! Spanish Rose! Don Fong Wong! These are the megastars of 1984’s AWF. “Rock ’n’ Roll” Rory Landell isn’t getting the respect he thinks he deserves, so one crazy night he ups the game, declaring himself the Galactic Champion of the Universe. But it turns out AWF fans aren’t the only ones listening, and the denizens of planet Wrestletopia aren’t going to take a challenge like that sitting down! Soon the Earth is enclosed in a…
I recently moved this blog to a new web host and it would be an understatement to say it went badly. In short, the site (and backups) was pretty much destroyed and I’ve had to rebuild it from scratch. The good news is that although the actual post archive was irretrievably corrupted, I was able to extract the text of the reviews. With that in mind: Starting next week I’ll resume posting the weekly release schedules for wrestling books on Amazon. News posts and new reviews will go up as and when they are available. I’ll repost an old review roughly once a day until everything’s back up. Apologies for long-term readers for the duplication. Hopefully, as the reviews date back four years, they’ll be of interest to most readers. Aside from a few design changes (which I may be tweaking for a few days), the site/blog should otherwise work as normal. There’ll now be a single Amazon affiliate link at the top of the review (as an image link, which may be blocked by Adblockers) and at the bottom of the review (as a text link, which shouldn’t be blocked.) In both cases it should default to the relevant…