Zenescope Entertainment will be one of many comic book publishers appearing at Dragon Con this weekend, and it brings with it a Dragon Con exclusive variant of Masumi: Blades of Sin #1! Masumi, a member of the Yamamoto Clan of samurai warriors that I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing some cosplayers bring to life at Dragon Con (despite the fact that she’s more than 200 years old), is trying to start anew in Tokyo while leaving her previous battles in another dimension. But she soon finds herself battling demons summoned by the Yakuza thanks to an ancient artifact from her family’s past. And she has a demon on her shoulder (almost literally) as her swords are possessed by Legion, the evil force responsible for killing the man she loved, who offers warnings and advice as the story develops. It’s an exciting beginning to this four-issues series, and the Dragon Con exclusive features sexy artwork by Jamie Tyndall that features Masumi (quite literally) facing her demon. It’s limited to 500 copies and available at Zenescope’s booth in the Comic & Pop Artist Alley.

Labor Day weekend signifies the unofficial end of summer for most. For the Georgia wrestling scene this holiday weekend means there are a few options for quality wrestling throughout the state. On this week’s Georgia Wrestling Now Wrestling with Pop Culture and Joshua Von Wheeler talk to “The Jailhouse Rocker” Terry Lawler, who celebrates his 25th year of professional wrestling on Aug. 30 at Southern Fried Championship Wrestling’s Terry Lawler Appreciation Event. We also discuss recent and upcoming events in First Class Championship Wrestling, Anarchy Wrestling, Dragon Con Wrestling, Monstrosity Championship Wrestling, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and more. Listen live at www.blogtalkradio.com/psp every Monday at 7 p.m. and call 347-324-5735 for questions or comments.

Georgia’s wrestling scene has many mysterious figures. Definitely one of the strangest and somewhat disturbing wrestlers in Georgia is Azrael, a mainstay at Anarchy Wrestling who also fits right in at Dragon Con Wrestling each year. And for the first time ever, Azrael speaks when he joins Wrestling with Pop Culture, Georgia Wrestling History‘s Larry Goodman and Joshua Von Wheeler on this week’s Georgia Wrestling Now. Azrael reveals why he has chosen to speak after so many years of silence, so it is sure to be an interesting show. As an added bonus, we talk to Dragon Gate USA, Evolve and Combat Zone Wrestling star Rich Swann, who is hosting a wrestling seminar in Georgia on Aug. 23. We also discuss recent and upcoming events in WWE, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, NWA Atlanta, Alternative Pro Wrestling, United Pro Wrestling and more. Listen live at www.blogtalkradio.com/psp every Monday at 7 p.m. and call 347-324-5735 for questions or comments.

Photo by Tim Tronckoe.

With his bodybuilder physique, devilock hairstyle and ghoulish corpse makeup, Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein is perhaps the most imposing member of the legendary horror punk band the Misfits. Because of his onstage presence, Doyle continues to be an underground icon in pop culture with his own action figure, his own brand of hot sauce and an upcoming comic book from IDW Publishing. Though his brother Jerry Only was the one who actually competed in the ring for World Championship Wrestling and Dragon Con Wrestling, Doyle’s connection to the squared circle goes beyond the ring to his short-lived Gorgeous Frankenstein project with then-wife (and former Randy Savage valet) Gorgeous George. After a few tours with Danzig, where Glenn Danzig and Doyle reunited for short Misfits sets, Doyle released his first solo album Abominator last October. As he prepares for the Annihilate America Tour beginning Aug. 15, Doyle talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about wrestling, music and the possibility of a proper Misfits reunion.

First of all, I’m looking forward to seeing you on this tour later this month.

At the Masquerade! The only two venues I know are the Masquerade and the Whiskey [a Go-Go].

Yeah. I’ve seen you perform numerous times at the Masquerade with the Misfits and Gorgeous Frankenstein.

It’s a great place.

I noticed some familiar names and faces in your band for this tour. Who all is in your band and how did they end up in this initial incarnation of the Doyle band?

My singer is from a band called Cancerslug. His name is Alex Story. He attended a tryout eight years ago and he was the only one I actually listened to. All the other ones were horrible. Our bass player’s name is Left Hand Graham and he plays with Graves. And Dr. Chud from the Misfits is on drums.

The Misfits had a brief stint in World Championship Wrestling in 1999 and your brother Jerry Only wrestled at Dragon Con the following year. How did you guys get into the wrestling business? Are you still involved in wrestling in any way?

I’m not involved with it any more. Vampiro wanted to use our intro. I thought we were going to play on the show, that’s what I was told. Next thing I know we’re walking out with the guy and he’s doing a match. They kept having us on for about two months. That was pretty much it. All I can tell you about wrestling is that it’s real. But I’m not really into wrestling.

That’s kind of surprising because you look the part. You’ve definitely maintained an impressive physique over the course of your career.

Yeah. It’s just a matter of taste I guess. I’m just not into it. 

Abominator, your first album under the Doyle moniker, came out last October. How did this album come about and why did you decide to do a solo record?

I was writing for a while and I wrote a bunch of musical compositions, fully finished and arranged songs, recorded, drum programmed, the whole thing from start to finish with no vocals or vocal melodies. After I write the music I have a hard time writing the melody. When I listen to it, all I do is picture my hand playing that song. I thought of who do I know that’s a great writer and a great singer? Who could I work with? Who’d want to write with me? The first person that popped into my head was Alex. So I called him and, ironically enough, he was walking into a Danzig show in Houston. I said, “Do you want to write with me?” He was like, “Fuck yeah!” I said, “I’ve got 12 songs.” He said, “Send them all to me.” I sent him three. One of them was “Mark of the Beast” and he sent it back to me in two days just as it is in the record. It was exactly what I wanted and I couldn’t do it myself. I didn’t change any of his words or anything. I’d throw an idea at him if I heard something, which wasn’t that much. If he liked it he did it, if he didn’t [like it] he didn’t [do it]. I only wrote one word on the record and that was, “Abominator.” But I wrote all of the music – me and, on a couple of songs, a friend of mine named Lucas Banker, who is a record producer in Hollywood.

You’ve done some touring with Danzig performing the Misfits sets within his show. Is that why you’ve waited so long to do the Annihilate America Tour to support Abominator?

We did the Danzig tour, which finished in October. Then we had a tour set up with Gwar and three days before we announced the tour, unfortunately, my good friend Dave Brockie passed and it was canceled.

That would have been a great tour. 

Yeah. It was going to be great. It’s just a shame to lose such a good person like that.

With the Misfits, Danzig and Gorgeous Frankenstein, you’ve always had an energetic live show with a certain amount of theatrics. What do you have planned for this tour? What can people expect from Doyle?

Just to fucking fuck shit up. That’s all I do. I don’t have anything else planned. I never plan anything different. It’s always the same.

So no elaborate stage show or anything? You’re just going out and playing hard?

Stage show? I’m broke, man. We just go out and play. With the Misfits it’s pretty much the same thing, just go out and play.

I recently came across a bottle of Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein’s Made in Hell hot sauce. Is this a recipe you came up with? How did your name and face end up on a bottle of hot sauce?

It’s a recipe from Halloween Hot Sauce. We got together, I put some special stuff I wanted in there, they worked on it for a while and it came out really good. I’m working on a hotter one right now. I just tried a sample the other day and oh, my God, it’s so hot! It’s called Abominator.

Your tour begins Aug. 15 and goes right into Halloween season. What do you have planned for Halloween this year?

Photo by Tim Tronckoe.

We might go to South American or Europe. I’m not sure what’s going on. We’re still figuring that out.

Do you have any plans to tour with Danzig again?

That’s totally up to him. I’m always open to it.

You seem to be caught in the middle of all the Misfits controversy between Danzig and Jerry. Is this stuff blown out of proportion or is there really that much discord between those two?

I would like to do a Misfits tour with Danzig and my brother. That would be great for the fans, it would be great for the three of us and it would be great for music in general. I think it would be really fun and I’m totally in. I’ve just to get those two guys to settle all their differences first and we’ll take it from there.

I can’t think of many other bands where all the most important people are still able to do a full-on reunion of some sort. I think the reaction for that would be enormous. 

Exactly.

Do you try to stay out of all that or are you trying to facilitate making it happen?

No, man. I’m going to try to be the catalyst here to get that shit together. I talk to both of them, so I’ve just got to talk to my brother and talk to Glenn.

www.officialdoyle.com

To evolve one must look outside his usual frame of reference. This week on Georgia Wrestling Now, we look south of Georgia to discuss this weekend’s Evolve events in Florida. Wrestling with Pop Culture, Georgia Wrestling History‘s Larry Goodman and Joshua Von Wheeler talk to World Wrestling Network‘s Trevin Adams about his involvement with these Evolve Internet pay-per-views, as well as his behind-the-scenes role with Dragon Gate USA, Full Impact Pro, Shine Wrestling and more. Later in the show we hear from Monstrosity Championship Wrestling ring announcer and Needless Things‘ Phantom Troublemaker about the numerous Dragon Con panels he will be part of this year. And he promises a surprise or two exclusively for GWN listeners! We also discuss upcoming events in Anarchy Wrestling, Deep Southern Championship Wrestling, NWA Atlanta, Southern Fried Championship Wrestling and more. Listen live at www.blogtalkradio.com/psp every Monday at 7 p.m. and call 347-324-5735 for questions or comments.

Photo by Harold Jay Taylor/Headlocks and Headshots.

Phantom Troublemaker runs a blog called Needless Things that covers wrestling, movies and other aspects of pop culture. He also hosts a Needless Things Podcast (as part of The Earth Station One Network) in which he interviews puppeteers, wrestlers and other interesting people in the entertainment industry. Wrestling fans may recognize him as a member of the DCW Hooligans, a rambunctious group of fans who have found unity in their love of Dragon Con Wrestling, or as the ring announcer for Monstrosity Championship Wrestling, where he’s able to make the otherwise laborious task of raffling off prizes a fun endeavor. Considering my love of DCW and MCW, the fact that I cover many of the same aspects of pop culture with Wrestling with Pop Culture and that I interview wrestlers each week on Georgia Wrestling Now, one might even question if Phantom Troublemaker and I are the same person, especially since we are rarely seen together and he only appears in public while wearing his signature luchador masks. The fact that we both have been avid Dragon Con fans and attendees for a number of years might only strengthen such a claim. But I can assure you we are not the same person and to prove it I’m going to talk to him on the Aug. 4 edition of Georgia Wrestling Now about the numerous Dragon Con panels he will be part of this year (most of which I will also be attending, as further proof that we are just two guys that wear a lot of similar hats, or in his case masks). And with Dragon Con only a few weeks away, I decided to find out more about what the EFF he will be doing this year.

You’ve been attending Dragon Con for many years and have made the transition from attendee to panelist in recent years. But this year marks your first year being officially involved with Dragon Con. Explain this transition from being a fan to being involved with the event.

Ever since I’ve been going I’ve been covering it in one way or another. It started like anybody else, just taking a bunch of pictures and showing them to everybody you know. To an extent, that’s how journalism starts, I think. You just want to share information. That’s what it was for me. I went down there and took a ton of pictures of all the cosplayers, which back then “cosplayers” wasn’t a term. A few years ago, when I started Needless Things and started writing about it, I’d do full recaps afterwards and eventually got to the point where I started doing pre-coverage where I’d write things leading up to Dragon Con. I’d try to interview people involved with the show and, as I got involved with The ESO Network, I started making more connections to the point where I started to know people who actually worked with Dragon Con. Last year I was granted media access and covered it in a professional capacity (I don’t like to use the word professional in relation to myself).

This year, thanks in part to my involvement with MCW, in part to all the work I’ve done on panels for various conventions and in part to people just knowing who I am a little bit more, I’m an attending professional, which is not a guest. I don’t sit in the famous-people room, I don’t necessarily sign things – although if a titty is presented, I will sign it. Or if you want to throw your dong out there, I’ll sign that. I’ve got no standards. Attending professional, which means if somebody says, “Hey, I need a masked dork on my Swamp Thing panel,” I am at their disposal. Currently I’m scheduled for eight panels, including the two late-night specialty panels I’m running.

Before we get to that, when did you first become officially involved with Dragon Con panels?

Photo by Jay Hornsby/Belligerent Monkey.

My first panel was in 2012. I sat in on 1982: Best Movie Year Ever for the American Sci-Fi Classics track. I’d never done anything like it before. I love talking and I love talking about nerd stuff. When I do a good job at something, I’m not shy about saying it. And I did a great job. I blew everybody away. After the panel everybody was like, “Hey. That was fantastic. What else can you do? Come back next year and do more stuff.” Aside from the first real MCW show I did, it’s probably one of the most gratifying things I’ve ever been through in my life.

How did you get to do panels before becoming an attending professional?

This is something a lot of people don’t know. If you go to a panel, the people that are sitting up there talking are also fans. All you have to do is go talk to those guys and be like, “Hey. I love this thing you just talked about. What else are you talking about?” If you go to Dragon Con this year and you see a panel you’d want to speak about, you can go talk to somebody and get on that panel. It happens all the time where they’ll have three or four panelists scheduled and somebody gets too drunk, somebody gets double scheduled on panels, all kinds of things can happen and they may need somebody and that somebody could be you. If you’re a fan and you’re good at talking, you can be on a panel. You just have to have personality and knowledge. You don’t have to have any special connections. Granted, I was with the ESO Network at the time, so I did have kind of an in. But now I know if you’ve got charisma and are at least a little bit entertaining, get in there and ask. Like I say with everything in life, if you don’t ask you don’t know.

You’re doing eight panels this year, one of which can be previewed on Aug. 5 at the Red Light Cafe. What the EFF are you doing this year at Dragon Con?

Until four or five years ago, I was unfamiliar with the concept of erotic fan fiction. Call me naive. I just didn’t know there were such depths to our society. But if you go online you can find stories that fans have written about Wolverine and Jean Grey getting it on – graphic depictions of Wolverine butt sex. But it gets worse than that. There’s stuff out there like Lucius Malfoy skull-fucking his son Draco. There’s a whole spectrum of thoroughly disturbing fiction that fans of different levels of mental sickness have produced on the Internet, usually under false names. I wouldn’t know anything about writing under a false name.

When I first discovered this, I thought it would be really fun to get together at Dragon Con one night with some friends and everybody bring their own selections of fan fiction – whether it was Batman and Robocop having sex or Watson giving Sherlock Holmes an enema – and we read them out loud. It’s challenging to read these without laughing because a lot of the people that write these don’t have the best grammar. They’re not skilled writers, obviously, or they wouldn’t be writing Snorks porn. So I thought it would be fun to just sit around with pals, read these and maybe have an adult beverage or two. After working with the American Sci-Fi Classics track for a couple of years, I pitched the idea to Gary [Mitchel] almost as a joke. “Hey. We should do a game show where people have to read erotic fan fiction.” I figured at best the response would be, “Oh, that’s kind of funny. But we couldn’t do anything like that. That’s gross.” Instead, Gary said, “That’s fucking amazing. Done!” I still kind of didn’t believe it was going to happen. Then Joe [Crowe], who runs the American Sci-Fi Classics track with Gary, said, “Here’s the deal. You want to do your game show. You want to show your movie (I’ll get to that in a moment). Saturday night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. the room is yours. Whatever you want to do.” That blew my mind. They’re putting a tremendous amount of faith in me to draw people in and run the room.

So I’m doing a game show called Whose EFF Is It Anyway?, co-hosted by Miss Lady Flex of Le Sexoflex, the sexiest band in the mother-fucking world, straight out of Buttlanta, Georgia. Please visit www.lesexoflex.com and download everything you can. They are incredible and they are the band that brought you the eponymous Dragon Con theme song “Marriott Cock Squat”. So it’s basically like The Gong Show: we’re going to bring people up out of the audience. We want it to be right, so we’re doing a dry run of the game show Aug. 5 here in Buttlanta at the Red Light Cafe. Doors open at 7:30, the show begins at 8. Myself and Miss Lady Flex will be on stage, we’ll have three judges and we’ll be drawing members of the audience up on stage to read selections of erotic fan fiction. This event is sponsored by Inserection and Stardust, which are adult-themed stores that have tobacco products, dildos and sexy lingerie of many different forms. We’ll have prizes from Stardust and Belligerent Monkey, my friend Jay Hornsby who is fantastic and does a lot of pop culture stuff, but does not paint penises. The art provided by Belligerent Monkey will be family friendly. We’ll have lots of prizes, we’ll have lots of fun and if you come out on Aug. 5 you’ll get to see the formation of something that I think is going to be pretty spectacular.

Before we started this interview, you told me about some wrestling erotic fan fiction you had come across. What else can you tell me about that?

This is something I’ve been peripherally aware of since I discovered erotic fan fiction. There is a community of folks who write fan fiction about wrestling. There’s the standard portion of this community that just does stories about maybe AJ Lee and John Cena having a romantic relationship and their struggles behind the scenes working for WWE and maybe a love triangle develops with Roman Reigns or something along those lines. There are a lot of female writers of that stuff and they’re just really expanding on the soap opera aspect of professional wrestling.

So this is completely different from fantasy booking?

No, it’s not even fantasy booking. This is like fantasy backstage booking. They barely even cover matches. They’re worried about the drama aspect. It almost makes sense that this kind of thing would be out there. Of course, like anything else, there is a seedy underbelly of wrestling fan fiction and that is wrestling slash fiction, which I found out today, nine out of ten wrestling slash fiction stories star Randy Orton. It’s just a thing. I didn’t even look for Randy Orton stories. My big goal is to find something with Mick Foley and The Rock. Although Hulk Hogan would be good, Macho Man would be good, a pairing of the two would be great. But Randy Orton came up time and time again. My favorite story that I found today, and I’m still in the midst of research, is one where John Cena gets Roman Reigns pregnant. It was enlightening, really. The reason I’m looking for wrestling-oriented fan fiction is for a very special surprise that I don’t want to announce here, but I can tell you if you’re a fan of Georgia Wrestling Now you know these guys and you’ll be very excited when they show up Saturday night at Dragon Con. We have surprises planned for the Aug. 5 show as well, but the Dragon Con show is the one where we’re going to blow it the fuck out of the water.

Well, I’ll let you wait until the Aug. 4 edition of Georgia Wrestling Now to reveal some of those secrets. Tell me more about the movie screening that will follow your gameshow.

This is the second portion of my Saturday-night activities at Dragon Con. Honestly I think I’m going to be spent after Whose Eff Is It Anyway?. But I will struggle through in order to share one of my most beloved movies of all time. It’s a Canadian masterpiece called THINGS. No, not The Thing. THINGS: All caps, all red, always. It is a very, very low-budget movie. It’s the most incompetently-produced movie I’ve ever seen in my life. Your life will literally be changed after you see it. I know a lot of movies make that claim. Citizen Kane, supposedly the greatest movie of all time. It will change the way you look a the world; Schindler’s List, enlightening and will show you a whole different side of things; The Passion of the Christ. I will put THINGS up against any of those movies as a life-altering experience. I’ve shown THINGS to people over the last 15 years time and again and I’ve had people leave the room, I’ve had people leave my home, because of watching THINGS. It’s an experience like nothing else and Joe and Gary, sweet, innocent fellows that they are, are letting me expose Dragon Con to THINGS. I’m very excited about the possibility of ruining so many lives in one night. First is going to be the fan fiction, which I guarantee people are going to be upset about that, then THINGS afterwards. I might put myself out of business, quite frankly. It’s going to be interesting to see if Phantom Troublemaker has to make a heel turn after Dragon Con.

Before all that, of course, is Dragon Con Wrestling and the DCW Hooligans.

The DCW Hooligans will be in full effect once again at Dragon Con Wrestling Friday night at 7 o’clock in the Hyatt Centennial Ballroom. We will be representing in our purple T-shirts. You will see all 430 of us now. Something like that.

Are you a founding member of the DCW Hooligans?

This has never been stated before. Technically I am not. While I had been enjoying Dragon Con Wrestling for a couple of years, it wasn’t until I hooked up with my buddies Ryan, Jay and Pete – they had been attending together for a while and I reconnected with those guys. While I am certainly the catalyst for us becoming the group that we are now, those guys were watching DCW as a group for a couple of years before I was around. Then I started writing my recaps of it and we started really making a concerted effort and making the T-shirts and everything. I put the name on it, but those guys were the heart of it. We take up a whole section now. You’ve been there with us the last couple of years, you’ve seen how ridiculous it is. And you’ve seen that the guys that actually run the DCW show fucking love us. It’s a great experience.

When does your official Dragon Con attending professional experience begin?

Saturday is the beginning of my official panel presence. I don’t have my full schedule, but I can tell you right now – and this is the first time that this has been announced – Saturday morning (and this is probably a terrible mistake) I’m going to be part of a panel called D20. What that is is the American Sci-Fi Classics track is creating an enormous pair of 20-sided dice. One die will have topics on it, the other one will have panelists on it. All of the panelists that work with the Dragon Con American Sci-Fi Classics track are going to be in the room, they’re going to roll the dice and pick panelists and topics. Then we’re going to do five-minute speed panels. It’s going to be ridiculous because chances are most of us are going to be hungover and it’s entirely possible that I’m going to get a topic that I don’t know jack shit about and have to talk about it. So this is one of those random chance things and this is what makes the Sci-Fi Classics track so great is that they’re willing to take chances like that. This could be terrible. It may not be entertaining at all. But at the same time it could be an entertaining train wreck. It’s going to be memorable regardless of the quality. These guys are willing to take chances like that and Whose EFF Is It Anyway and they’re letting me show THINGS. They’re willing to do things for the sake of fun and that’s what makes the track so great.

Immediately after that I’m doing a Transformers panel where we’re going to be talking about the 1984 movie and the toy line in general. Then I’m doing a She-Ra panel because this is, in some weird way, the 30th anniversary of She-Ra even though She-Ra didn’t come out until 1985. Mattel is calling this the 30th anniversary. I don’t get it, but Mattel owns her so I guess that’s what they’re going to do. So I’ve got three panels in a row in that room right after my biggest night of drinking. It’s going to be rough. Whose EFF Is It Anyway? is Saturday night in the same room, then we’ll start the showing of THINGS. Sunday morning is my big panel on ’80s toys where I’m going to be discussing how important gimmicks were to toys in the ’80s. I’ll be sponsored by Billy’s Toys and we’ll have a shit ton of toys there not only for display but for sale. So if you’re looking for Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Air Raiders, StarCom, Inhumanoids, we’re going to have all that stuff sitting there on the panel table for you to look at. We’re going to have a great time. Last year it was one of the highest-rated panels at Dragon Con, five out of five stars. It was a really, really great time, so I’m looking forward to this one.

Last year I hosted a panel about Masters of the Universe, the 1987 live-action film and the guys kind of surprised me by having William Stout on the panel, who is a very well-renowned artist who did design on the movie. He was absolutely fantastic, a wonderful talker and had lots of great stories about the movie. You can find the podcast of that and my other panels if you go to www.needlessthingssite.com and search for Dragon Con. William Stout is coming back this year and I get to work with him again on Sunday night. We’re going to be sitting down and talking about Conan the Destroyer, which he worked on in the same capacity as he did on Masters of the Universe as a production designer. Just like Masters of the Universe, lots of people malign Conan the Destroyer as being inferior, but the production design is beautiful. The castles, the sets, everything is just gorgeous. William Stout is a fascinating guy and this is another panel that was a surprise to me. I guess he had a good time last year and wanted to work with me again, which is very rewarding. 

www.needlessthingssite.com

Trever Aeon challenges Phantom for the MCW Championship this Friday. Photo by Harold Jay Taylor/Headlocks and Headshots.

Labor Day is a day off for most people, but Georgia Wrestling Now is still bringing you an hour of wrestling talk from Wrestling with Pop Culture and Johnny Danger. And with this week’s lineup of guests, we’re definitely not taking a holiday. First we talk to the enigmatic Trever Aeon, a trainee of Micah and Tracy Taylor‘s Underground Alliance and a rapidly rising star in Global Championship Wrestling who has earned a shot at the Monstrosity Championship Wrestling Championship on Sept. 6. Then we hear from WWE Hall of Famer “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, who teams up with Nigel Sherrod and Rick Michaels to take on the Exotic Ones at Peachstate Wrestling Alliance on Sept. 7. We also discuss recent and upcoming events in Dragon Con Wrestling, Platinum Championship Wrestling, Universal Independent Wrestling, Rampage Pro Wrestling, Anarchy Wrestling, East Coast Wrestling Entertainment and more. Listen live every Monday at 7 p.m. and call 347-324-5735 for questions or comments.