Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #216 by Drew Barth

The Road to Suplex City is Paved with Bodies

There’s an inherent allure to wrestling. Outside of big meaty men slapping meat, there’s long-running storylines that can span decades and the kind of iconography that’s only rivaled in its cultural ubiquity by superheros. But that’s mostly what happens in the ring. Outside, there’s real people despite any undead sorcerers they’ve been playing for twenty years. And, as they’re real people, there’s the inevitable mess of what happens when egos meet perceived needs. We all want safety, security, and just a bit more money to make sure we’re comfortable. Hell is a Squared Circle by Chris Condon, Francesco Biagini, Mark Englert, and Dave Sharpe brings us into the fold of those

real human needs. 

Ted Walsh is your typical down-on-his-luck, piece-of-shit-adjacent heel jobber who never makes enough for rent or child support, but always has enough for another drink. More than anything, though, he has ambitions. His manager keeps puffing him up, dangling the carrot of fame in his face every night, but he’s never more than fodder for whichever face needs to get over with the crowd. Thinking he deserves more, Ted brings his grievances up with his manager. This, naturally, leads to murder. It’s almost fated—we know how violent Walsh is from the first time we see his face. But he’s smart enough to know that he needs to lay low in Canada long enough for the heat to die down, so he grabs as much cash from his manager’s safe as he can fit into a sack, pounds the face of his last opponent into a pulp, and escapes into the night. Even after nearly twenty years in hiding, he never thought his past would catch up with him. And yet.

The back of this one-shot asks if wrestling noir is a genre or not. While many of the out-of-ring controversies, rumors, and scandals could fit into that category, Hell is a Squared Circle is one of the first comics that captures that same mood as noir. Mood is dominant throughout the story. Even with this larger format—the comic is in that larger prestige format many of DC’s Black Label books also use—it still feels like the panels are closing in more and more as the story goes on. After long enough running through the independent wrestling circuits in Canada, he thinks he’s in the clear. But a PI appears one day before a match. The panels squeeze in on Walsh until his opponent takes off their mask to reveal the past he’d been running from for so long.

Condon, Biagini, Englert, and Sharpe have crafted a wrestling story that feels fresh yet familiar. From all of the rumors we’ve heard about the business over the years, Hell is a Squared Circle doesn’t feel like the most far-fetched tale to rise up from the depths of the territories era, but it’s the kind of exaggeration that fits right into heightened drama of a noir. And in the ring, that kind of drama absolutely thrives. 

Get excited. Get over.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #214 by Drew Barth

It’s the Meatiest

Months ago, I took a look at the first issue of Juni Ba’s Monkey Meat and praised the meta-advertisement narrative it took. I had been, at the time, excited for a series that would explore that kind of narrative further and if it could get away with it without falling into its own meta-hole. Luckily, Ba is a creator that can subvert any expectations that I may have as each subsequent issue took the idea of an anthology and ran with it in ways I’ve never seen before. From the second issue’s shonen commentary to the third’s fairytale critique to its final’s wide-screen superhero riff, Monkey Meat kept its freshness even without refrigeration.

Monkey Meat is an anthology centered on the Monkey Meat Company and their headquarters on Monkey Meat Island. Each issue gives us further insight into the MMC, their practices, and the abject horrors their late-stage capitalism inflicts on their employees and the original residents of Monkey Meat Island. At the center of much of this is Lug, the chief of security for MMC and the one lauded as the tamer of the island despite his own reservations and resentment toward the company for what they turned him into after all these years. But for every moment of humanity that Lug shows in the face of the MMC, there’s an equal measure of existential, profit-driven terror that they use to beat him down over and over. Even in the face of certain oblivion, the Monkey Meat Company finds newer ways to make their world all the worse for a few pennies more.

Sitting down to read Monkey Meat is like having your best childhood friend tell you about the comic they would want to make with all of the style and nuance that comes with getting old enough to actually craft a comic series. It’s frantic, frenetic, and filled to bursting with so much energy and movement that the page feels like it wants to jump out of your hands. Every moment that commentates on the perils of consumerism and colonialist brutality, it is punctuated with an unflinching, blistering satire. And most all of this is thanks to the singular vision that Ba brings to every issue—the world of Monkey Meat is scaffolded in such a way that it’s infinitely variable and always internally consistent. There’s the existential dismay, but then these pockets of serene humanity that keeps the world from crushing your spirit entirely.

These first five issues of Monkey Meat are the first part of the larger anthology Ba is making about this world. If there was ever a thesis statement in the form of a first arc, this would absolutely be it. There’s more than enough connective tissue in each story to dive into more and more and an entire island’s history to explore. Coupled with an immediately recognizable style and aesthetic dripping from Ba’s pen, Monkey Meat is the kind of series I’d put on top of my to-be-read list every month. 

Get excited. Get meaty.

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Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.