If there is one complaint I keep reading about in regards to clueless WWE fans chanting for CM Punk, it's that it's doing a disservice to his wife, Divas champion AJ Lee. The average ringside fan either doesn't have internet access and follows along with the rest of the sheep, or does, knows Punk's chosen to retire, and keeps quiet.
Then, with AJ in England on the WWE's fall tour of Europe comes news that should, for now anyway, put an end to those chants.
You see, Punk (Phil Brooks), like a number of other wrestlers, AJ included, is also a comics fan, and come next year, will transition to becoming a comics writer. On Monday, Marvel Comics announced that the former WWE & Ring of Honor champion would pen a short story for their 2015 Thor Annual. The real Thor, not the female version recently introduced in a stupid publicity stunt put on by the publisher just for the sake of mass media headlines.
Punk is not the first wrestler to write for Marvel. That honor went to Raven, who, under his given name of Scott Levy, wrote a story for "Spider-Man's Tangled Web" 12 years ago about a forgotten character named Crusher Hogan. The story was timed to tie into the first of the Sam Raimi Spider-trilogy of movies. It was a great story, but it's the only one that Levy wrote that saw publication as of this writing.
Punk's departure from WWE at the end of January torpedoed the company's Superstars book from Papercutz, a New York based independent publisher, and forced WWE & Papercutz to go back to square one, since Punk was a part of the storyline. Now, he's the one with the pen. Hall of Famer Mick Foley wrote the Superstars book, and it was a decent story. It's just too bad it didn't reach its conclusion. I think Mick is working on something else for WWE & Papercutz as of now, when not doing stand-up comedy. Anyway, since Punk decided to hang up his tights & boots before becoming another spotlight-needy old timer, there's a future for him writing comics. There's also the Headlocked series of independent books, which relies on Kickstarter to fund its continuance, and has WWE commentator Jerry Lawler on their payroll as an artist. ROH's Christopher Daniels contributed a story to the latest volume. If Marvel doesn't sign Punk to a contract, I'd say he'd join Team Headlocked in a heartbeat.
They say that if you like doing something worthwhile, it may be worth making a career out of it. Phil Brooks may not want to be CM Punk anymore, but getting his name out there as a writer will open new doors for him. Maybe he can figure out what's wrong with some of these books that are out there now.......
