Squid Works: Steel Pulse


Title: Steel Pulse, pro-wrestling adventures Issue Number: 1 (C) 1986 T. Motley Intended Audience: General Format: Full color cover, 32 pg b&w magazine. Retail Price: Sold as 4-issue set, $8.00 #0125 Also features "Sherlock Jones, wrestling detective." (C) 1986 Dennis Pimple and Richard Florence	Title: Steel Pulse, pro-wrestling adventures Issue Number: 2 (C) 1987 T. Motley Intended Audience: General Format: Full color cover, 32 pg b&w magazine. Also features "All Star Bar." (C) 1987 Dennis Pimple and Norm Dwyer	Title: Steel Pulse, pro-wrestling adventures Issue Number: 3 (C) 1987 T. Motley Intended Audience: General Format: Full color cover, 32 pg b&w magazine. Also features "Blood Thick" (C) 1987 Dennis Pimple and Phil Normand	Title: Steel Pulse, pro-wrestling adventures Issue Number: 4 (C) 1989 T. Motley Intended Audience: General Format: Full color cover, 56 pg b&w magazine. Also features "Megiddo Mosquito in Wrestler's Rhapsody" (C) 1989 Dennis Pimple, T. Motley, and Johnson!

(Back Cover)	(Steel Pulse)	(Steel Pulse goes to rescue his friends)	(Antagonist, Sardonicus)

"STEEL PULSE is still one of those beautiful high points of the comic book '80's"

"I still take it out every so often... to remind myself that alternative comics were better in those days, and [that] comics almost 'made it.' God's a 'Steel Pulse' fan... [it's] better after all these years." "STEEL PULSE is and was the ONLY comic to catch the drift of pro wrestling. No others even came close." "STEEL PULSE was one beauty of a comic. It still will make my top ten list of favorites, easily."

"One of the most inspiringly inane projects ever to mutate from the cesspool of American trash culture"

What can one think about a comic book of "pro wrestling adventures" whose first two issues have started off with quotes from "The World of Wrestling" by Roland Barthes? Steel Pulse, the self-published comic from Denver, has got to be one of the most inspiringly inane projects ever to mutate from the cesspool of American trash culture. A visionary masterpiece of idiot-savant folk-literature, the projected four-part series will surely rank among the lost treasures of low-brow lyricism. How can anything so normal be so weird? How can the self-depreciating, naive and unassuming tone of the author, T. Motley, be so unaccountably impressive? These magazines work because of their ambivalence. Precisely how conscious and contrived the childish awe and goofiness is, is hard to guess. Steel Pulse takes its pace from the ritualistic overstatement of wrestling itself, collapsing the macho super-hero formula (of comic book and sports showmanship) into a frail tenuous tale of kid's make believe and caricaturized spectacle that prances about as some undignifiable epic. Issue number two cites Barthes: "In wrestling, nothing exists except the absolute, there is no symbol, no allusion, everything is presented exhaustively." Steel Pulse never eases up on its overkill until its simulated drama obliterates the line between parody and pageant. Wrestle this monster for yourself.

Please note that all images are (C) Copyrighted by creators. Use of images without permission is strictly prohibited except for review purposes, where partial reproduction is allowed. If you DO review any of the books seen here, please let us know, because it could mean FREE merchandise for you from Squid Works!!! Find out more by clicking on "reviews."