Suzan Colon's Wrasslin' Centaurs

Suzan Colón was a student of mine at SAW (Sequential Artists Workshop) last year, and she hit on an ingenious concept that she's working to bring to a longer form in her series Wrasslin' Centaurs. (Full disclosure, she listed me as an editor of this comic.) The concept is, on the surface, a silly one: a world where mythological creatures like centaurs and cyclopes are real and living in the modern day. This is a possible setting for a high-fantasy narrative; instead, the titular centaurs are struggling pro wrestlers in an independent league. The in-ring narrative does provide a lot of action, but this comic is really a romance narrative above all else. Colón has a strong ear for dialogue, but it's her visual eye for detail that makes this a fun comic. 

Her figures are cartoony and appealing, drawing from a Dan DeCarlo Archie tradition. However, Colón is something of a maximalist, often layering lots of extra gags and details beneath the clear action of the character narrative. That extends to the details on the cover, easter eggs about the extended world they live in, and decorative/humorous details on the inside and back covers. What's most important is that Colón  quickly establishes the set-up and the character motivations, though one of the three centaurs is not named until the very last page. Various romantic configurations are also established, and they are all filtered through a fantastical lens (they are creatures) in a manner that reflects everyday concerns (concern over dating a centaur because he doesn't have a stable job). Within that fantastical lens, Colón draws in a mostly naturalistic style, leaning into exaggeration to enhance humor or action. Upon reading this short comic, one immediately wants to know more about the characters. 

Tanya Dorph-Mankey's Count The Lights #2

The second chapter of Tanya Dorph-Mankey's queer wrestling epic, Count The Lights, ratchets up the tension between the intense heel wrestler Alan Jacobs and his infuriatingly casual rival Ryan Roberts. The story is told from a kayfabe perspective; that is, that the matches and stories behind them are real. Dorph-Mankey works big: big pages, big panels, big fights, big emotions. Wrestling here serves a function not unlike the songs in a musical: when the emotion of a situation is so overwhelming that mere speech no longer suffices to express it. As such, the actual wrestling moves all feel authentically drawn, and Dorph-Mankey is careful to pay a lot of attention to detail in how the men move in the ring. Jacobs is ambitious and clearly has a lot to prove in returning to the East Coast, and he can't stand how Roberts treats things like he's indulging in a punchline only he understands. 

The attraction that one would normally be subsumed in this kind of narrative is made plain and then demystified by the other members of his wrestling faction. The ridiculously bearded brothers Max & Jeremy are simultaneously his friends, his supporters, and also his enablers. The cruel leader of the faction, Caelum, tells Alan to fuck Roberts and get it over with. Roberts starts getting in his head and in his dreams. In one sequence, it's difficult to tell what's an actual match and what is the dream that he wakes up from. It's obvious that the lack of clarity is part of the point, but it felt a bit like cheating to advance their flirtation that far with so little warning, only to negate it. That thread is picked up again more effectively later, even as Jacobs continues to deny not just attraction, but his deeper feelings for Roberts as well. There are also signs of jealousy, as the easy friendship of Roberts' faction is very different than the survival-of-the-fittest quality he has with Caelum. The chapter ends with Jacobs once again trying to sublimate these feelings in the ring and challenge the champion, the mysterious masked wrestler Orion. There's a classic wrestling face-off, as Dorph-Mankey blends wrestling conventions with comics storytelling conventions in a way that feels both bombastic and organic.