T3

 

The Tag Team Terror, T3, were a wrestling duo who fought for Los Invencibles promotion in Mexico. They were heels, the bad guys of wrestling, but during the 1990’s, they were briefly more popular than the good guys like Rey Rayo, Martina Morelli’s luchador uncle. Their false-brutality struck a cord with the zeitgeist of the 90’s, which had an insatiable appetite for anti-heroes. But fate would see T3 turn from fake villains into true heroes, and today they are heroes in the ring, villains outside the ring.

 

From Combat Entertainment To Superheroics

 

After the Worlds War of the 1940’s, the concept of superpowered combat entertainment, the concept of superhumans staging fights with their respective powers to entertain the masses, entered the culture. But when new systems of martial arts started to be developed for superhumans in the 1970’s, people began to look on combat entertainment as little more than play fighting. Superhuman martial artists were devising systems that allowed superhumans with diverse powersets to spar safely, and crowds came to prefer watching real fights to fake fights. The exception would be in Latin America, especially Mexico, owing to the efforts of legendary superhero Frey Invencible. Frey Invencible was a real superhero who faced real danger, but he loved combat entertainment, and he created Los Invencibles to further combat entertainment in Latin America. Frey Invencible gave combat entertainment legitimacy, and today there are many promotions.

 

Combat entertainment has always had an audience, even in places where it was dismissed as “playfighting,” but it enjoyed a surge in popularity during the 90’s when T3 turned the classic formula of “good guy beats bad guy” on its head. Their characters were rude, crude, and above all, cool, and audiences couldn’t get enough of them. Such was their popularity that they took the belt from classic hero Rey Rayo, not once, but twice.

 

Being real superheroes was the furthest thing from their minds, but that’s exactly what T3 ended up being. Sometimes, men seek out being a superhero. Some men train their whole lives to be superheroes. But sometimes, fate forces a man to step up, as it did for T3. When the Monster Maniacs, a team of superpowered serial killer cannibals led by the infamous Sharp Hand Joe, kidnapped a bus full of civilians including T3, the wrestlers found that they were the only ones with even a chance of preventing the Monster Maniacs from slaughtering them all in a blood sacrifice ritual that would reveal the location of a lost artifact of great and terrible power.

 

Frankensteiner

 

 

“Frankensteiner is no one’s puppet!”

 

Mike Washington was born with an incredible power, the power to generate and control electricity. That would normally be something to celebrate…but Mike Washington had a problem. Mike Washington was Black.

 

There is a certain hyperstasis-linked gene that when expressed in White populations grants fire powers and when expressed in Black populations grants electricity powers. This is why so many White superheroes have fire powers–the Man Torch, Wildblaze, Stormfire, Firenova, Daughter of Magma, etc. This is why so many Black superheroes have electricity powers–Black Static, Black Current, Black Ball Lightning (he was trying very hard not to take a name already claimed), Captain Crackle, Thunderfall, etc.

 

Because of the commonness of Black superheroes with electricity powers, it is considered somewhat embarrassing for Black superhuman to admit to having them. They try to hide their power and pass it off as something else. For instance, a sizable portion of the Black superhero community are robot armor users, and a sizeable portion of this portion secretly have electricity powers which they use to power and operate their armor. Academics have crafted several psychological theories to explain why so many Black superheroes are robot armor users, chalking it up to “the subconscious need to hide black skin and black faces,” but the truth is that being the living engine of a suit of robot armor makes it easy to hide electricity powers and allows one to push a suit well beyond its specifications.

 

Mike Washington was inspired to go into combat entertainment when as a young boy he brainstormed ways to get around the embarrassment of his power. “I first thought about getting a suit of robot armor, but even as a kid I knew it was dead end.” he once said in an interview for Black Superheroes magazine. “It seemed like there were more brothers with robot armor walking around than zappers, and zappers were supposed to be common, so they said! So somehow, the image of Frankenstein, the one from the old movies, came to me. I thought, man, that would be fun. I could walk around, scare people, knock things over…and then I thought, hold on, that would make me a supervillain! I can’t be that! But I sure would have liked to be one. So when I found out Los Invencibles wanted supervillains to beat up in the ring, I figured my ship had finally come in! I just needed some green face paint and some bolts to stick to my neck and I was good to go!”

 

His ring persona, Green Frankie, (Mike was so new to wrestling when he started that he had no idea what a frankensteiner was) was based on the fictional artificial depicted in the classic Jimmy Whales film Frankenstein, which was created by a fictional relative of the real-life Victor Frankenstein named Henry Frankenstein. The film has always been controversial. Though many saw it as a poignant story of the consequences of creating artificials without a care for their wellbeing, many others disliked that the artificial was depicted as a brute with low intelligence, albeit a sympathetic brute. Several Hyperboreans, descendants of Albion, the first creation of the real-life Victory Frankenstein, protested the film, claiming that it associated their race with a “shambling, idiotic corpse.” Jimmy Whales responded to their protests by stating that they should have identified with the rioting villagers.

Mike, in depicting the fictional artificial, courted controversy, and it helped elevate him from a simple entry-level heel to a name that was on everyone’s lips. He played up the sympathetic brute angle of his character. Frankensteiner was a minion used by smarter heels, who would then betray him. Frankensteiner would then fight back against his “masters” as the crowd cheered him on. It was a predictable formula, but it was a formula that packed stadiums.

 

Little by little, Mike became an accomplished combat entertainer. He became skilled in wielding a “thunder flail,” a ball and chain adorned with lights that pulsed and flickered as Mike sent electricity flowing through it. It was, essentially, a giant light bulb on a string, but Mike’s showmanship made it a weapon as grandiose as Thor’s own hammer. He would dim the lights when he was losing, make them glow brighter when he was winning, and make them flicker when he entered “rage mode.” The crowd ate it up. Every time he swung his thunder flail, it was like watching someone dodge a comet.

 

Following the Monster Maniacs incident, Mike became a reserve member of the Mexican superteam Caballeros de la Justicia and started training in the combat arts for real. He figured that one day, Sharp Hand Joe would come back for him, and he wanted to be ready. He was also granted honorary membership in the Monster League, the largest and most prestigious superteam of “misfits and monsters” in the world, though Zeus, a prideful Hyperborean, opposed his membership. He continues to entertain the multitudes in the ring and is considering reinventing himself as “Boss Frankie,” a mastermind heel who would later “return to his roots” after his own minions turned against him.

 

The Ultimate Wolf Warrior

 

 

“Bow to your Alpha!”

 

The shapeshifters of Occitania are the oldest genetically-bonded hyperstatic legacy in the world, tracing their bloodline back to none other than the Prince of Dawn, the world’s earliest superhuman, whose winged and horned skeleton is proudly displayed at the Joyous Harbor Statesmen Center. They have historically been a secretive group owing to several conflicts with basic humanity, most notably the Albigensian crusade, which indirectly targeted them, as Catharism found wide appeal among their number. But adventurous shapeshifters have broken away from the close-knit system of clans to interact with humanity throughout history, either to the honor or dishonor of their race. The infamous Beast of Gevaudan brought dishonor. The famous Bisclavret, wolf knight of Richard the Lionhearted, brought honor, as did his descendent Heloise Bisclavret, who joined the Monster League all the way back in the 1940’s.

 

And then there are those whose contribution to the reputation of shapeshifters remains a matter of controversy–case in point, Patric Raspall, who first went by the ring name Midnight Wolf before leaning into the arrogance of his character and becoming the Ultimate Wolf Warrior.

Like Frankensteiner, Patric Raspall courted controversy with his character. Many shapeshifters found that he perpetuated negative stereotypes by portraying himself as an arrogant, animalistic foreigner who spoke broken Spanish when in fact, Patric had a degree in linguistics and spoke five languages. He was known for being tricky to pin. Whenever someone had him down, he would shapeshift into a wolf and escape. He had a power that felt unfair in the context of wrestling, and it played into his heel persona.

 

It was only natural that  Los Invencibles would pair off their most controversial draws to maximize the reason people talked about them in the first place. While Frankensteiner started as a minion of the Ultimate Wolf Warrior who rebelled against him when he got tired of the Ultimate Wolf Warrior taking credit for his wins, he befriended him after rescuing him from an ambush by the Dastardly Duo, and they formed T3, because “they might as well have a third person for how strong they were!”

 

During the Maniac Monsters incident, Patric used a sword that had been in his family for generations together with techniques taught to him by his swordmaster father when he was young to defeat Backstabber Blade. Shapeshifters developed “l’art,” a form of swordfighting that uses the natural mass diplacement power of a shapeshifter to make a sword blink in and out of existence. As Backstabber Blade lived up to his name and tried to slip a knife between Patric’s shoulders, he made his own sword warp around him, cutting Backstabber Blade in two.

 

Following the Maniac Monsters incident, Patric returned to Occitania to clear his head. He had never taken a life before, and the experience shocked him. That no one would shed tears for the passing of a serial killer that called himself Backstabber Blade didn’t matter, he had killed and it greatly troubled him. He had long rejected the Catharism of his ancestors and how it envisioned the physical world as inherently corrupt, redeemable only by spiritual awakening, but now he found it comforting. His trauma was tied to the physical world, and so he liked the idea that he could move beyond the physical. While in Occitania, he met Heloise Bisclavret herself, who taught him how to get the most out of his ancestral sword so that if Sharp Hand Joe ever came back to take revenge, he would be ready to face him.

 

Recently, he returned to the ring and partnered once again with his old friend Mike Washington. T3 was reborn, and though more driven by nostalgia than novelty in the current age, they still have their fans.

 

(Behind The Scenes Inspiration)

 

 

Buckle in, because we’re about to talk about Mannix, a hyper-obscure UK based manufacturer of bootleg action figures. They were active throughout the 90’s, but seem to have gone kaput around Y2K, which is a shame, because they were both shameless in their knock-offs and insane in what original mutations they added to their toys. They produced some fun figures, and the timeline where they survived to knock-off action lines during the Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon led anime boom is surely a better timeline than our own. Imagine a world where people discuss who made Miniskirt Planet Girls and Chinese Monkey Space Fighter. Truly, that would be a kinder, more loving world.

 

It’s hard to find information on Mannix online, and I know, I say that about every toy maker, but if Sungold is The Evil Dead, then Mannix is Equinox.

 

Figurerealm.com has a list of Mannix lines, but it’s woefully incomplete. The best information on Mannix comes from a thread on actionfiguresca.proboards. That should give you a good idea how obscure Mannix lines are.

 

The first thing we should address is the name of the line. It’s technically not Monster Maniacs, though that’s the name I gave to the figures I picked out to be bad guys in Capeworld. It’s Monsters Maniacs. Though an English manufacturer, Mannix produced their toys overseas, and apparently didn’t have anyone check behind Chang and Wu’s grammar. If you think Monsters Maniacs hits a sour note, Mannix also produced Heroes of Empire, Dinosaurs Warriors, and The Last Frighter, which could have been forgiven if it was a horror themed line like Monsters Maniacs, but it was a generic fantasy themed line.

 

Now, what makes Monsters Maniacs so interesting is that it represents a pop culture nexus. The year is 1998. Stone Cold Steve Austin is taking the WWE to new heights by spearheading the “attitude era” of wrestling and would fight Undertaker for the title before the year is out. McFarlane toys releases the first wave of Movie Maniacs figures with Jason, Leatherface, Freddy, and uh…Eve and Patrick from Species II…hey man, Freddy alone probably took half the budget to wrangle the rights for, New Line isn’t cheap.

 

But anyway, wrestling is big, horror films are big, and Mannix has a lot of wrestler body parts from it’s various wrestler lines. Someone probably thought “Hey…wrestling monsters!”

 

And then someone else thought “Hey, why not pack in swords and machine guns?”

 

If the line is supposed to be “wrestling monsters” themed, then someone left the Smash item switch on.

 

I’m not sure exactly where the strange, ill-fitting weapons came from. Rumors say they came from a line of Spawn action figures, but for the life of me I can’t find what they bootlegged, though I do admit the weapons do have a certain Spawn vibe to them, especially Chainsaw Tex’s machine gun. They may not have come from anything. Mannix might have made them all by themselves and they show up in other Mannix lines.

 

Here’s an interesting question–is the line supposed to be wrestling themed, or is it just using wrestler bodies to be cheap and hoping you don’t notice? The package doesn’t communicate wrestling. Instead of the tagline being something like “Legends of horror fight for supremacy in the ring!” you have “Get them before they get you!” But the wolfman knockoff is named the Ultimate Wolf Warrior and is clearly a riff on the Ultimate Warrior. He even sort of looks like him. And Frankensteiner is clearly a reference to the frankensteiner move. On the other hand, none of the other figures have wrestling related names. There’s nothing wrestling themed about Nightmare Freddy, Chainsaw Tex, Crystal Lake Killer, and Backstabber Blade–though the last one could sort of work for a very blatant heel. “Look out! Backstabber Blade is about to polish hammer his partner in the back so he can grab the belt for himself!”

 

Originally, I wanted to put all the characters into the same crazy cannibal cult, but the clear divide between characters with clear wrestling-inspired names was too good to pass up incorporating, even if it did mean making another data file. Plus, as synchronicity would have it, the teams ended up being the classic sympathetic monsters of Universal Pictures against modern slashers.

 

Yeah, the cards show the Ultimate Wolf Warrior with a mouth full of blood, but how do you do know that isn’t his blood? Maybe he just ate a frankensteiner from Frankensteiner? Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, of a wolfman by residual blood evidence. It’s like the Court of the Crimson King album cover–you cover he mouth and it reveals an expression of sadness.

 

Now, let’s move on to the bad guys, who I put into the setting here.

 

 

First up is Chainsaw Tex, my favorite of the entire set, probably because he looks the least like what he’s supposed to be. I’ve seen this bad boy go for 60 dollars on Ebay. I just might have to give in to the temptation.

 

If you didn’t know he was part of a line of knock-off horror movie characters, you probably wouldn’t guess that he’s supposed to be Leatherface. The blue hair, the plaster mask, and the wifebeater combined with the machine gun and and wrestler boots gives him a very distinct look. For everyone else, with just a glance you know immediately they’re the wolfman guy, Frankenstein guy, or Freddy Krueger, but not so for Chainsaw Tex. He’s like if someone tried to make Leatherface within a video game using a very limited character creator. “Let’s see…the white mask kind of looks like a skin mask…and if I make the polka dots red on the white tank top, it kind of looks like a bloody butcher smock…”

 

I had a lot of fun envisioning the weird machine gun as a transforming fire-and-blades hell-weapon. How is that not already a thing? That feels like it should already be a thing for some character in some story.

 

 

Next up, it’s the Crystal Lake Killer, and wow, Mannix was cutting it real close with the copyright there. The white hair is certainly very un-Jason, but you can put a hockey mask on anyone and people will think Jason. To this day people look at Casey Jones and think “skinny Jason.”

 

Check out his Magneto costume. It doesn’t look that bad, actually. I bet the M stands for Mom. Jason always was a momma’s boy.

 

And next we have Nightmare Freddy, joining the ranks of bootleg Freddy Kruegers along with Sharp Hand Joe (who WILL get his own database entry) and Nightmare Feddy.

They got the glove wrong! It’s supposed to go on his right hand…and it’s supposed to have blades. I guess that’s why they packaged in the big sword. If you can’t have four small blades, why not have one big blade?

 

Check out his watermelon colored “sweater.” It just doesn’t pop like the red and green one, does it?

 

 

And to finish up the bad guys and the toy line we got Backstabber Blade, who likely perplexed quite a few that weren’t well-versed in B-movies. You might think he’s supposed to be Michael Myers, because of the white mask and hair, or you might think he’s Jack the Ripper because of the little hat, but if you know your horror schlock, even a little bit, you instantly know who he’s supposed to be–Blade from Puppet Master.

 

Yeah. The little Klaus Kinski guy.

 

 

He’s got the hair, the white face, the black eyes, the hat, the black clothes, and he’s called Blade. While it may seem odd to put a little puppet head on top of a big wrestler body, bootleggers are capable of making remarkable leaps of imagination, as Amicable Herculean shows. Further evidence comes from the fact that Puppet Master had a toy line in the 90’s. Five will get you ten that a Blade figure made it across the desk of a bootlegger.