Late in the day (for me, at least), but let’s quickly run down tonight’s PPV before I turn to the comics reviews.  After all, this one’s a bit more time-critical.

TLC, the final PPV of the year, is a themed show and a hangover from the days of a decade past when wrestling was significantly more reckless in terms of the level of damage people were willing to expose themselves to in the name of entertainment.  It stands for “Tables, Ladders and Chairs”, a gimmick match that made a bit more sense in its original context, as part of a three-way feud between the Dudley Boys, the Hardy Boys and Edge & Christian (who were, at that point, associated with tables, ladders and chairs respectively).

Nowadays, it’s just a particularly chaotic version of the ladder match that gets brought out once a year, with the undercard traditionally including one regular ladder match, one tables match (in which you win by, er, throwing your opponent through a plywood table – again, it made sense as part of the Dudleys’ gimmick), and one chairs match (which is just stupid, but they needed to invent such a thing to fit the theme of the show).

Yet again, the card has had to be revamped due to injury.  The original plan was to headline the show with CM Punk defending the WWE Title against Ryback in the TLC match.  That wasn’t the greatest idea in the world, to be honest.  Since we already know the Rock gets a title shot in January, he pretty much has to face an established heel, which meant Punk had to retain – and that Ryback, a rising star, would end up losing to the same heel three months running.

But CM Punk is currently recuperating from minor surgery, and since they need him as champion for January, the title hasn’t been vacated.  That means that, very unusually, we have a show where the WWE Title is not being defended.  Instead, we have this.

1.  TLC Match: Ryback & Team Hell No (Daniel Bryan & Kane) v The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns & Seth Rollins).  As already mentioned, Ryback has already lost to CM Punk twice.  Since he’s supposed to be an unstoppable hero, this has required some energetic efforts to protect his aura.  In match one, he was attacked by referee Brad Maddox.  In match two, he was attacked by three guys in black calling themselves the Shield.

The Shield are wrestlers from the NXT developmental system, and that’s been acknowledged on air even though NXT no longer airs in the USA.  They claim that they have no affiliation with CM Punk and are merely there to thwart vaguely-defined “injustice”.  Obviously, nobody’s supposed to believe that.  The Shield have yet to wrestle a match on TV – they just run in and attack people, or hover menacingly in the crowd.  So with no title on the line, we’re instead getting their debut match, against three of their more prominent victims – Ryback, and the tag team champions.

Oh, and since there isn’t actually a title at stake, victory is by pinfall or submission.  There’s nothing to hang above the ring for the usual ladder match finish.  In fact, there’s nothing much at stake at all, besides the babyfaces getting their revenge, and the Shield needing to maintain their momentum.  But that ought to be enough.

Conventional wisdom is that the Shield pretty much have to win, probably by pinning one of the tag champions in order to protect Ryback to some degree.  Really, this is another match which ideally wouldn’t have been booked in the first place because both sides need the high-profile win to some degree.  But the Shield need it more.

As for match quality, I expect it to be good.  It’s unusual to put three rookies straight into the main event, and Ryback isn’t exactly without his limitations.  But an invasion angle pretty much requires the invaders to be pushed to the top, and limitations can easily be concealed in this sort of match.  Besides which, there’s plenty of ability in here.  Daniel Bryan is excellent, Kane is a veteran, Ryback does okay when he’s used right.  As for the Shield, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose are both talented veterans of the indie circuit.  Reigns… well, yes, he’s a big guy who looks the part but has minimal experience.  His matches on NXT have been, shall we say, basic.  But they can work around him.

Punk and Brad Maddox can also interfere in some way or other if they want to really go to town on preserving Ryback’s credibility.

2.  Money in the Bank Ladder Match: John Cena v Dolph Ziggler.  The obligatory ladder match has Dolph Ziggler’s Money in the Bank title shot – which he still hasn’t cashed in – at stake.  Why is it at stake?  For no particularly good reason.

There were originally two Money in the Bank title shots, one for Raw and the other for Smackdown.  Cena won the Raw title shot but chose to sportingly give his opponent a week’s notice, and lost.  Ziggler has the Smackdown title shot and has been hovering around notionally waiting for an opportunity to ambush the champion for months now.  (In practice, the writers have a nasty tendency of producing sequences where Ziggler logically ought to try his luck if he’s going to – and then forgetting about him.)

Still, Ziggler’s very good, and he’s likely to go out of his way to try and impress on a high-profile match against a top star like this.  Hopefully he wins, because he really needs the credibility; he loses far, far too much for somebody who’s supposed to be in line for a title run.  Cena doesn’t need the title shot.  That said, it is at least possible that some of these matches are going to have strange results, since on paper, the heels seem to be the natural winners in every match.  And that’s not going to happen.

Cena is presently caught up in a wonky romance storyline with AJ Lee which is being rushed more than a little.  One plausible theory is that she turns heel tonight and costs him the match.

3.  World Heavyweight Title – Chairs Match: The Big Show v Sheamus.  Another feud stretching into its third month.  The matches have been okay, but seriously, it’s time to move on – which means Big Show retaining and moving on to face some random new challenger, while Sheamus most likely moves on to trying to win a further title shot in January’s Royal Rumble match.  Admittedly, it’s not obvious who that might be.  If they want to drag this out further (god, no), then a win for Sheamus is not inconceivable, particularly since a babyface has to win somewhere.

4.  Tables Match: Rey Mysterio & Sin Cara v The Rhodes Scholars (Cody Rhodes & Damien Sandow).  With the tag champions occupied in the main event, this match determines their next challenger.  Since the tag champions are babyfaces, it’s a bit of a foregone conclusion that the heel Rhodes Scholars have to win, you’d have thought.  Most likely, the purpose behind this match – assuming the thought process extends beyond “it’ll kill time” – is to have the Scholars win by cheating in such a way that when they finally get the title, Mysterio and Sin Cara will already be set up as challengers.

It doesn’t seem like the best use of Mysterio and Sin Cara’s luchador style – and Sin Cara has never exactly been noted for his adaptability to the WWE style at the best of times.  But it should be an okay match.

5.  WWE Intercontinental Title: Kofi Kingston v Wade Barrett.  We’re now on to the plain old regular matches.  Kingston is the defending babyface champion, Barrett is the returning heel who’s being given a renewed singles push.  Given the way all this has been presented, it seems as though Barrett has to get the title sooner or later, and logic would suggest it ought to happen tonight.  But again, if they’re casting about for a match that the babyface could potentially win, this could be it.

Barrett and Kingston are something of a style clash; Barrett’s supposed to be a bare knuckle fighter, Kingston is more of a flyer.  But that can work if you build the match accordingly, and I think this should probably be decent.

6.  WWE United States Title: Antonio Cesaro v R-Truth.  Cesaro is still the champion and still a smugly superior European; audiences still aren’t quite sure what to make of him, and his methodical style isn’t quite what they’re used to.  But the company appears confident in him (not without justification), so it makes sense to assume that this is mainly a case of feeding him an established babyface who’s gone as far as he’s going to go in his own career.  Cesaro probably retains, though this is the match with the greatest chance of impressing the hardcore fans of technical wrestling while leaving the more casual audience cold.

7.  “Santa’s Little Helpers Battle Royal”: Layla El v Kaitlyn v Alicia Fox v Tamina Snuka v Aksana v Rosa Mendes v Cameron Lynn v Naomi Knight.  Ah.  This is the pre-show match airing on YouTube, and the winner gets a shot at the Divas Title.  Current champion Eve Torres is a heel, so you can pretty much guarantee a babyface win.  The absence of the division’s main babyface, AJ Lee, might support the heel-turn theory.

Two other points to make about this match.  First, it sounds surprisingly like a throwback to the sort of T&A match they stopped doing a few years ago.  It’ll probably be ridiculously tame, but it’s still an odd direction for the company (who long since figured out that this sort of thing was not generally good for licensing revenue, nor did it play especially well with the parents of the kids who love John Cena, their biggest merchandise seller).  Second, it features a rare in-ring appearance from Brodus Clay’s dancers.  With Clay’s star clearly in the descendent, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a storyline start to split them away from him.  Naomi is a perfectly good wrestler, better than most of the women on the main roster, so it wouldn’t be a complete shock for her to win here.

Worth getting?  On paper, it’s a decent card – and a vaguely unpredictable one in the sense that at least some of these matches have to go with an unexpected result to avoid an entire show of heel wins.