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The Comic book story of professional Wrestling
Aubrey Sitterson is the writer of comics including G.I. Joe, street fighter X GI Joe, and Turok. artist Chris Moreno has drawn Motel Hell, toy Story: Mysterious Stranger, secret Wars, Too, and more.Now the two join forces for The Comic book story of professional Wrestling, a wide-ranging introduction of the popular entertainment. Sitterson and Moreno stop by to cut a discount with Westfield’s Roger Ash.
Westfield: how did the idea of presenting the story of professional wrestling as a comic come about?
Aubrey Sitterson: All credit scores for that goes to our editor at ten speed Press, “The Intimidator” Patrick Barb. They’d already done books in the series about beer, video games, baseball, so it was high time that someone covered The One true Sport! Fortunately, Patrick was a fan of both my comics writing work on G.I. Joe as well as my wrestling podcast straight Shoot, and he made the call to see if I was interested.
Chris Moreno: Aubrey and I had previously serviced a graphic novel called worth from Roddenberry enjoyment and really had a terrific time working together. He reached out to me about doing a nonfiction comics history of pro wrestling, and little did he know about my love of nonfiction comics. I was a big fan of the big book of… series from Paradox Press, and me and my brother grew up flipping through my dad’s copies of will Eisner’s P.S. magazine that he had to keep in the motor carry garages when he was in the Marine Corps. Also, pro wrestling! There were too lots of of my favorite things wrapped up in this one project for me to say no.
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Westfield: Throughout the book, you call wrestling “the one true sport.” Why do you feel that way?
Sitterson: The things that make sports exciting to enjoy are the athletic displays and the drama that comes from a heated contest. trouble is, in a lot of sports, while you always get the first, the second tends to come about only by chance. Not so in wrestling, where everything about the medium is created to suck you in with the first bell, and have you screaming your head off by the second. Of the things that sports do well, professional wrestling does them best of all.
Westfield: Do you think people who aren’t fans of wrestling will take pleasure in the book?
Sitterson: I certainly hope so! While Chris loaded the book up with Easter eggs for longtime fans, and there are bound to be details that even the hardest of hardcore fans don’t already know, we worked really hard to keep things accessible. The intent was to create a book that could serve as a kind of “primer” for newer wrestling fans, or even those who’d never enjoyed a match in their life. After reading The Comic book story of professional Wrestling, even a non-wrestling-fan will be able to wrap their brain around why people go so very nuts for this stuff…and hopefully will begin enjoying it themselves!
Moreno: In addition to wrestling Easter eggs, I threw in a few comics and pop culture ones, too. There are so lots of colorful characters that span the history of the One true Sport, and I’m not just talking about the wrestlers. Managers, promoters, politicians, celebrities– pro wrestling has intersected your world in some way, shape, or form. The stories of where all of these things collide are fascinating, and, above all, entertaining.
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Westfield: While the book does an exceptional job of covering wrestling’s history, there are things that didn’t make the book. how did you decide what to cover and what to leave out?
Sitterson: It was really tough to leave certain things on the cutting room floor – Ernie Ladd’s color barrier-breaking role as booker for bill Watts’ Mid-South jumps to mind – but if we covered absolutely everything, the book would have been a twenty volume series!
In any medium, something that often grates me about nonfiction work is that it feels less like a story and a lot more like a list of things that happened. From the very first outline, it was crucial to me to avoid that pitfall by figuring out the narrative through line of wrestling history, and anything that didn’t play into or contribute to that in a meaningful way normally ended up getting cut. (Though we tried to squeeze in, at the very least, cameos from crucial figures that wouldn’t have been covered otherwise.)
Westfield: The book is very well researched, but it is an introduction and you typically can’t go into terrific detail. If readers want to know a lot more about the history of professional wrestling, are there any books you would suggest they read?
Sitterson: The Comic book story of professional Wrestling is something unique, something that’s never existed before in any medium: A complete history of not just one wrestler, promotion, era or country, but the entirety of wrestling history. What that indicates though, is if you want a lot more information about a particular subject, you’ll need to seek out books covering it specifically. A couple of my personal favorites are Tim Hornbaker’s national Wrestling Alliance: The Untold story of the Monopoly That Strangled pro Wrestling and The death of WCW by RD Reynolds & Bryan Alvarez.
But the best recommendations I could give would be to pick a wrestler you dig and seek out their biography or autobiography – I’ve read a lot of wrestler books and I still haven’t found one that wasn’t worth the time I devoted to it. My two favorites are probably Lou Thesz’s Hooker and Dynamite Kid’s Pure Dynamite: The price You pay for Wrestling Stardom.
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Westfield: What can you tell us about your collaboration process?
Moreno: The crucial to any terrific collaboration is communication. and for a book like this, where research and reference are so important, communication is even doubly important. Luckily, Aubrey and I were in constant contact. He’d already supplied a ton of photo ref and video links for me in the script that helped me immensely, but we were frequently updating that reference as we went. I also relied on Aubrey heavily for information like making sure the various wrestling moves were accurate, which version of a wrestler’s look corresponded to the particular era, even the best way to present certain a lot more severe aspects of the book. Aubrey’s got the knowledge and the respect for the art forms of pro wrestling and comics, that it made my job 100 times easier.
Westfield: Do either of you have wrestlers or matches you would point to as favorites?
Sitterson: My all-time top five is regularly changing, but in no particular order, here’s how it’s looking today: Ric Flair, Bruiser Brody, Daniel Bryan, Chris Jericho, Randy Savage. Currently, I’m really enjoying Roderick Strong, AJ Styles, Pentagón Jr., KUSHIDA, the entirety of Los Ingobernables de Japon, and Zack Sabre Jr. favorite matches are Ric flair vs Bruiser Brody at the St. Louis Checkerdome, Shawn Michaels vs Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 21, and, because it’s fresh in my head coming off the G1, Zack Sabre Jr. vs SANADA in this year’s G1 tournament.
Moreno: My all-time favs are a lot of the ones I grew up loving, like Ric Flair, Junkyard Dog, Roddy Piper, Bret Hart, The Rock, Macho Man, Rey Mysterio Jr., Jushin Liger, El Santo y Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, and Eddie Guerrero. Wrestlers I discovered or learned a lot more about through working on the book that are new favorites include: CM Punk, Sheamus, Batista, Shinsuke Nakamura, Bayley, Dynamite Kid, Lou Thesz, and Bull Nakano.
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Westfield: any closing comments?
Sitterson: This is, without a doubt, the most labor-intensive thing I’ve ever written – the amount of research required was unreal, devouring months upon months of my life. but I’m completely fine with it because of how very much I love wrestling and how crucial it was for us to get this thing right. If you’re a diehard wrestling fan, if you used to enjoy wrestling, if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about…this is the book for you. Chris’ artwork captures the dynamism and energy of professional wrestling in a way I’ve never seen before, and it will have you ready to dive in head first to the world of The One true Sport.
Moreno: any project where I get to draw Hulk Hogan, Gilgamesh, Teddy Roosevelt, stone cold Steve Austin, Jay Leno, Robocop, Goldberg, Muhammad Ali, Chucky, Mankind, Rocky Balboa, and Liberace all in the same book, is a occupation highlight and worth checking out.