Broken Frontier

Superman has been brainwashed. And he's kidnapped the entire White House with the President inside. Soon he will replace the entire supply of milk in the United States with tobacco. In the name of his new master... Skeletor. Can anyone save us??

You better believe Mr. T can, FOOL!

Best known as a 1980s pop-culture phenomenon, Mr. T has a resume that includes a hit movie, a hit TV series, an eponymous cartoon show and a reality series. But the webcomics written in his name (and their animated extensions) may eclipse all his works in long-term influence.

Mr. T appeared in hundreds of rough-hewn webcomics in the 1990s alone, continuing to the present. Nearly all of them begin with "Mr. T Versus," which served as title and plot summary. They pit T against a breathtaking variety of foes, from Boba Fett to James Bond to Dick Cheney to Britney Spears to excessively long titles. Whatever the challenge, Mr. T would prevail.

Like slash fiction or the Tijuana Bible, the "Mr T. Versus" webcomic was a fan-fiction subgenre that seemed to attract dozens of different authors overnight. The consistency between the stories is therefore remarkable, especially since the version of Mr. T that appears in these comics had never been seen before.

Born Laurence Tureaud, Mr. T drifted through a variety of tough-guy jobs in his early career-- football, wrestling, military police, bodyguarding, bouncing-- before acting, and his range was limited at best, but his public persona was already well-developed by the time Sylvester Stallone discovered him at a "World's Toughest Bouncer" competition. Stallone rewrote Rocky III to beef up T's part as Clubber Lang, Rocky's most memorable antagonist. ("I don't hate Balboa. I pity the fool.")

Not long afterward, the creators of The A-Team wrote an even more successful role for him, the toughassed mechanic B.A. Baracus ("I pity the fool who goes out tryin' a' take over da world, then runs home cryin' to his momma!").

The same year, Ruby Spears developed an animated series with a superhuman Mr. T shepherding a multi-ethnic gymnastics team. Like the average "Mr T Versus" strip, the cartoon wouldn't win any awards for quality, but it still inspired fannish love letters twenty years later:

You see, a shark comes right at Mr. T, so he punches the shark. Oh. My. God. That was so amazing that my head might just burst, and I wouldn't even care. Other shows jump the shark, Mr. T coldcocks it! And even better than that? Once he punches it, the shark goes flying through the air. Oh man. Mr. T is now cooler than Jesus...

Then Shark #2 comes swimming up. Oh, sharks, do you not learn? And then it gets even more incredible and unbelievable as Mr. T does his patented Spin A Croc Over My Head maneuver, only this time with a shark in place of the croc. He lets go and the shark goes flying. I mean, what more could you possibly want on a Saturday morning than this? I'll tell you: Nothing. This sequence, which lasted all of about twenty seconds, entirely justifies the crappiness of the rest of the episode. Hell, the rest of the series. Hell, the rest of network TV on at the time.

In his online incarnation, Mr. T is quick to go mano a mano like Lang, has the van of B.A. Baracus and even more mechanical skill, and improves on his cartoon incarnation's already impossible strength. In his wrestling days, the flesh-and-blood T would pick up his opponents and throw them out of the ring. In the webcomics, he'll often throw his opponents right off the planet. As the comics' characters often remind the reader, Mr. T "can throw helluva far," and "is helluva tough." Furthermore, you cannot escape him, because his van is "helluva fast" and can travel through space and time.

The most powerful character in webcomics? He beheaded a planet-sized robot with his bare hands. Has he reached superhero status? Go down the list. Special powers and abilities? Check. Outrageous costume? He has twenty pounds of gold jewelry and a Mohawk. Secret identity? Not really, but Aquaman and the Fantastic Four get by. Strong desire to do good?

Check, and this may be a key to Mr. T's Internet cult status. The appeal of an invincible "real-life" strongman is obvious. So is the appeal of Eighties cartoon nostalgia to the Nineties nerds who made these strips. But unlike Stallone, Hulk Hogan, and other Eighties tough guys with young fans, Mr. T spent much of his time and energy at youth centers, trying to help and inspire those fans directly. Other stars mire themselves in sex scandals, drug abuse, feuds or embezzlement; the least popular thing T ever did was cut down trees on his own property.

A six-year battle with lymphoma has left the real-life T a bit more subdued. His reality series casts him in a Dr. Phil role, trying to use the authority of his celebrity to help others fix their lives. Mr. T is an imperfect role model: his lifestyle is that of an oddball minor celebrity. But his heart seems in the right place.

After Hurricane Katrina, he doffed his trademark gold chains, a gesture of solidarity backed up with donations of clothes and money. "No, T," he said, "you can never wear your gold again. It's an insult to God." Would the real T approve of the godlike powers of his online counterpart? He was unavailable for comment.

The Mr. T strips were no Eisner contenders. But they were among the first instances of the "Internet meme" and helped sow the seeds for what we now know as "user-generated content," which has changed the way we approach our arts and entertainment. And that's pretty heavy stuff. It might be the heaviest Mr. T has ever thrown.

P.S.: Your single best source for Mr. T comics is Mr. T Vs Everything. No, I wasn't named after Mr. T. But after learning about the youth center thing, I admit to feeling a certain pride of "kinship."