I started reading Marvel and DC comics in the original English when I was about twelve years old. There was a bookstore in downtown Brasília called Sodiler that used to sell American comics, and mom started bringing me some. Over time, I started going there on my own and spend part of my allowance in comics if something caught my eye. It was during one of those trips that I bought “Super Boxers” solely because of Bill Sienkiewicz’s stunning movie-poster-style cover.
“Super Boxers” was part of Marvel’s newly launched line of graphic novels, which had already spawned several stories that are now considered classics—“The Death of Captain Marvel,” “Dreadstar,” “X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills,” among others. In addition to producing stories featuring the company’s own characters, the creators had freedom to explore their own original projects. It is in this context that “Super Boxers” emerged, conceived by artist Ron Wilson with the help of John Byrne on the script, Armando Gil on inks, and a constellation of Marvel’s staff colorists.
Ron Wilson was a talented superhero comic book artist in the 1980s, most notably as penciller of the character The Thing in the magazines “Marvel Two-In-One” and “The Thing”, with beautifully crafted pages that followed Jack Kirby’s style of depicting action scenes. I believe his version of The Thing to be second only to Kirby’s and, perhaps, Byrne’s. In “Super Boxers”, Wilson creates a near future that we are beginning to experience—a world controlled by megacorporations, where everything is within reach of those who follow the corporate order, while a marginalized class, excluded from all rights and privileges, struggles to survive in the filth of the underworld. Engaged in perpetual business wars, the corporations use super-charged boxing matches as a means of resolving major business deals and hostile takeovers.
For a comic that, on the surface, seems to merely show boxers battling each other in gloves, boots, and cybernetic armors, “Super Boxers” dares to suggest some socio-political commentary between the lines. There is the age-old class struggle represented by the clash between Max, a humble fighter forged on the streets of the underworld, and Roman, a star boxer backed by major corporations—both gladiators in a power game in which they are merely pawns. There is a warning against artificial forms of human enhancement and the allusions to eugenics, as the corporate fighters are genetically engineered from conception to be the perfect fighters—violent and devoid of critical thinking. There is a critique of money’s total domination of sports and—in a frighteningly prescient way—the seductive power of bets. The entire story revolves around a massive gamble, with ownership of a big corporate being decided based on the outcome of an arena fight. Finally, misogyny still reigns supreme in this dystopian future (or is it the present?). It is no coincidence that, in this still deeply patriarchal society, it falls to a woman—CEO Marylin Hart—to embody subversion, revolution, and hope. As the only woman on corporate boards composed entirely of men, she is the opponent to be defeated, and—though the story does not make this explicit—being a woman may be one of the reasons, or the reason, why they are trying to bring her down.
Wilson’s art blends futuristic elements with a 1930s aesthetic. For my taste, the fight scenes don’t quite have the same impact as his work on The Thing. An amateur boxer himself, Wilson seems to strive for a more realistic and raw depiction of the fights, but in some panels, the artist behind The Thing reveals himself, and, as a reader, that’s when I feel the pain of the blows more keenly. Drawing on the same imaginative world of films like “Rocky” and “Rollerball”, but without replicating them, writer John Byrne also seems to venture into techniques outside his comfort zone, choosing to narrate the story in the third person, sometimes speaking directly to the reader.
Even though it was modeled after the conventions of an ’80s action movie, “Super Boxers” wasn’t as successful as Marvel’s other graphic novels, and today it’s largely forgotten. Still, in our current world—where big tech companies wield real political power over our lives—its tale of a working-class hero resisting corporate oppression deserves a chance. Place your bets!
