Comic review: Ring of Fire (2024)

This comic is propaganda. Pure and simple. Not that there's anything wrong with that in and of itself. But it's the worst kind of propaganda – modern propaganda.

If you're like me and you enjoy comic books, you'll probably end up reading all sorts of great and terrible comics from the world over in search of something interesting. In the internet age there's been a lot of digital public diplomacy and, somewhat surprisingly, comics have made part of that strategy. Reading this short retelling of The Big Fight immediately reminded me of two other comic lines I've seen recently: Russian government comics about the Russo-Ukrainian war and American government comics about disinformation.

The three comics have some things in common. They're all sponsored by governments, they all have a specific message they wish to push/highlight, and they're all pretty bad.

I don't think this Ring of Fire comic was intentionally made to be as bad as the other more pointed propaganda. But it most likely ran into the same production problems of being made independently of people who draw, write, and edit comic books for a living. It's unreasonable to expect the average person (who has little to no interaction with comics) to think of the medium as anything other than just slapping text on some images. It's that blindspot which leads to art that immediately stands out as inferior compared to the average product on the market. It leads to panels being overwhelmed with text or devoid of visual narrative.

The fight begins on page 14 and Usyk is sat in his corner at the start of page 15. On pages 17-18, the story jumps from Fury showboating at the end of round 1 to Fury being knocked down the end of round 9 in the space of four panels. The bell to end the fight rings on page 21. Most of the panels are just recreations of photographs. There are minor grammatical errors and lots of missing commas. And page 27 concludes it all with the usual "TO BE CONTINUED" since this is comic is a promo for the rematch, billed as Reignited 2. Why Reignited 2 when the first fight was called Ring of Fire? We can guess but we'll never know for sure.

Overall, it doesn't succeed in making the first fight exciting or the upcoming rematch hype. In the immortal words of Confucius, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened. And they must not have looked very hard if this is the best artist they could find. At least it's not a long and bad comic, like Cerebus or One Piece.

Final Review Scores
In a word: Soylent
In a quote: Who made this ish?
In a number: 3.6
In an emoji: 🧄
In a type of wrestler: Kane from WWE (unmasked)

'Ring of Fire' (the comic book)
Written by ???
Art by ???
Available for free on ringoffirebook.com
Published November 2024

BONUS! - Petty nitpicks and pontifications

• Despite being harsh about it, I do welcome and like the attempt at branching out into other media. When they make good stuff you can expect me to be singing its praises.
• Fury's post-fight shout of "happy new year!" didn't make the cut despite it not being mentioned that the fight took place in May. His claim to have won the fight was more embarrassing.
• The entire .pdf is 32 pages long, Riyadh Season branding appears on almost every single one.
• I was tempted to do a side-by-side of the drawings and their original photographs but that would've involved almost every single panel.
• I've not read many comics this year, but the hero shot page of Turki Alalshikh flanked by Anthony Joshua and Cristiano Ronaldo has my vote for page of the year.
• In my article about the first fight, I neglected to mention the Jacob & Co. 'Ring of Fire' timepiece that was commissioned to commemorate the fight. Mostly because I do not care for the tacky bling by Jacob Arabo (AKA 'Jacob the Jeweler', you might've heard him get shouted out in numerous rap songs). Each fighter received their own and a third was auctioned by Sotheby's with the money raised going to Make-A-Wish International. I figured that it would never come up again but it's prominently displayed in this comic because Fury wore his during fight week.
  • If you're wondering who bought the third one, it was none other than Frank Warren.

A New Era of Ring Magazine

First came the unsubtle tweet telling people to "stay tuned!", then came the confirmation that Turki AlAlshikh has acquired 100% of Ring Magazine from its previous owner, Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions. In between the two there was scoop by Brunch Boxing covering some behind-the-scenes details plus giving a quick history lesson on The Ring. It's one of the few written records (outside of Twitter) to address the elephant in the room that is Michael Montero.

Montero is, as the bio on his own website says, "Never afraid to ruffle feathers, Montero is both loved and hated for his infamous rants on issues in the world of boxing". At the risk of sounding 'woke', whatever that may mean to you, I'll add that he has a fair share of people who have criticised him over the years for enjoying the comedic potential of what some would describe as racism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and misogyny.

In current year, we're all well aware that there is no such thing as cancel culture. People can, and do, say and do most anything they feel like entirely free from consequence. Nevertheless, my hope is that Ring Magazine will not remain the old boys club that has hemorrhaged credibility and respectability over the years. It will not be a new era unless the old guard are dismissed.

That said, at we'll at least be able to sate ourselves with the classic era as Mr. Alalshikh announced that they "intend to digitalize the entire archive". I said in my previous piece about The Saudi Vision for Boxing that it would be nice if the entire cultural mark of the sport would be preserved and this is as good a first step as any. Might the Captain Video Boxing archive be next?