"...The higher self knows only to guard the self from the damage weapons of emotion can sometimes cause. Survival by its protection, my destiny has been to be who I am — WARRIOR!"
— Excerpt from the intro to the comic, and also the most legible part.
Warrior is a short-lived comic by Team Warrior (conceived and written by WWE wrestler Ultimate Warrior, with Jonathan D. Smith, James Callahan and The Sharp Boys on the art department). It depicts the adventures of the Warrior, his quest to master the philosophy of "Destrucity" and journey through the Terrain of Testament to set right what was wronged. On the surface, it sounds like a simple story, but deep down it is a horribly mangled combination of Michael Moorcock-inspired fantasy, Sun Tzu-styled ramblings, bad artwork à la Rob Liefeld and a convoluted plot that makes the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion look simple in comparison.
Not related to the 2011 film Warrior or the British comic anthology magazine of the same name.
Warrior provides examples of:
- Author Filibuster: The comic is meant to elucidate the reader on Warrior's bizarre mystical-reactionary Clap Your Hands If You Believe philosophy.
- Art Shift: Happens in Issue #4 due to James Callahan being replaced by the Sharp Boys.
- Ax-Crazy: Warrior.
- *Bleep*-dammit!: Warrior yells F-F-U-U-C— at one point of the story.
- Chewing the Scenery: The comic does its best to emulate Warrior's acting.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The comic basically boils down to this: reality is at least partly subjective, and stuff we think and believe has as much power over reality as what we do. Except he phrased it in a much more baffling manner, with made up words. In other words, his personal philosophy is this trope.
- Color-Coded Speech: There are three colored narration boxes on the Terrain of Testament: one for Warrior's aggressive side, one for his philosophical side, and one for his inner monologue. To make things even more confusing, the aggressive and philosophical colors were inverted in the first issue they appear. Rather than
go with the colors as already established Warrior put a Note from Ed. in his introduction in the next issue explaining the mix-up. - Cut Short: The comic only lasted for four issues, not counting the Christmas special.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When Warrior returns from the hospital, his butler gives him his wheelchair in order to help him relax. Warrior flips out at this and tosses the wheelchair into the stratosphere.
- Eldritch Location: The Terrain of Testament.
- Fauxlosophic Narration: The comics filled with the Warrior's very own "philosophy", that is completely nonsensical.
- Filling the Silence: A comic example. Every page is loaded with paragraphs and paragraphs of text. There is no panel that doesn't contain at least two huge text boxes. The page with the least amount text is the first "real" page.
- Grand Theft Me: An evil version of Warrior from the Terrain of Testament takes over the Warrior's body in the real world.... we think.
- The Grinch: Exaggerated far too much in the form of the Warrior doing murderous, violent, and sexual things to Santa, his reindeer, his elves, and his property.
- Invincible Hero: Warrior.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: Maybe. Depending on the nature of the Terrain of Testament.
- Meaningless Meaningful Words: Complete with unnecessary ellipses, Precision F Strikes and made-up phrases.
- Mind Screw: Not only is it not clear what exactly the overall story is supposed to be about, the artwork makes the transition from panel to panel very awkward.
- Narrating the Obvious: Whenever the narration does makes sense, it's this.
- Negative Continuity: The story between the different issues is only barely connected, with unexplained changes between settings and characters.
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: Destrucity, Foke* , Jet-Jack* .
- Portmanteau: Destrucity is the truce between destiny and reality; in other words, staying true to what you are right now while striving for your ultimate destiny.
- Purple Prose: The writing style is excessively ornate in an attempt to sound profound.
- Pyromaniac: The Warrior burns down Santa's home.
- Random Events Plot: What little plot there is in this series is either completely random or symbolic to the point of being incomprehensible. It doesn't help that the recaps, which might provide some insight, are printed in unreadable font and page style combinations.
- Rated M for Manly: Practically the premise of the comic is Warrior fighting everything that breathes with bare hands while shirtless and showing off his ridiculously muscular body while ranting on about what makes a warrior.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Warrior's quest is to, among other things, take revenge on the demons who beat him up at the beginning of the story. Unfortunately, we never find out who these demons are or why they are attacking Warrior in the first place
- Take That!:
- In issue #4 Warrior beats up an entire truckstop full of people, starting by beating and humiliating a guy who looked exactly like Hulk Hogan in the bathroom.
- After the end of that same issue, Warrior goes on a long rant against one of the artists from the earlier issues.
- Wall of Text:
- Virtually every panel has several text-filled boxes of indecipherable narration, in three different styles. One of them is for the Warrior's aggressive side, one for his philosophical side and one for his thoughts.
- The most prominent examples are the inside front and back covers of every issue. The misuse of background colors often makes those pages hard to read.
- Textplosion: The entire comic, by The Ultimate Warrior. There's enough text to make your eyes hurt.
- Word Salad Philosophy: The comic book was essentially a long promotional tract for his philosophical ideas. "Destrucity" is the "truce between one's destiny and one's reality".... and that's about it in terms of this philosophy making any sense.
