Broken Frontier

Coming soon from Visionary Studios, Headlocked: The Tryout is the miniseries follow-up to last year's Headlocked: Work of Art one-shot - the story of a theater student's quest to make it big in the colorful world of professional wrestling. The book, published by AAM/Markosia and listed in the August Edition of Previews (Diamond Order Code: AUG083662) is written by Mike Kingston with art from Randy Valiente and Jessika Gravel. Boken Frontier got into the ring with Visionary's Creative Director and Headlocked editor C. Edward Sellner to find out more...

BROKEN FRONTIER: The basic premise of Headlocked – a theater student striving to become a professional wrestler because he feels wrestling is the ultimate expression of performance art – is certainly an unusual one. What can you tell us about the genesis of the concept?

C. EDWARD SELLNER: Simple...Mike Kingston's obsession! LOL Seriously, Mike is a lifelong fan of pro-wrestling and he's called this his love letter to the art and sport of wrestling and that's a pretty apt description. It's a look behind the curtain of the industry, but one with a tremendous amount of respect for the people that make it happen and the sheer athleticism and dedication these guys have. This is especially true of the ones on the local and regional levels where it's like the indy comic creator, doing it out of pure passion for the sport / art, maybe with the hope of making the big time some day and actually making a living off it.

From something of an outsider's view, I have to admit, my first response was a big "Not Interested" as I am not a wrestling fan, but I'm glad I got talked out of that by some wiser heads than mine. Because while Headlocked is set in the industry of wrestling, its really a powerful, dramatic coming-of-age story that wrestles with concepts of identity and purpose, dreams, goals and learning life lessons. Hartmann is this crazy kid who becomes obsessed with one thing and literally drops everything else in life to pursue it, and haven't we all had that kind of dream? For some of us that elusive dream is comic books, for some it's music, for others sports. We've all had that thing we wanted to run off and be or do and this is a guy doing just that and learning some hard lessons in the process.

BF: What’s the status quo of the book’s leading character Mike Hartmann after the events of the Headlocked: Work of Art one-shot and prior to the events of Headlocked: The Tryout?

CES: Work of Art really introduced us to Hartmann and showed his transition from skinny theater major to aspiring pro-wrestler. It chronicled the year he spent from the time he made his decision, bulking up, learning what he could and finding his 'in' into the industry. He's given a card, his literal ticket, from a wrestler named Killer Creegan that will get him a tryout with Leo "The Legbreaker" London and his wrestling school.

Tryout picks up right after that as Hartmann arrives in Philadelphia (the Hollywood of Pro-Wrestling) and shows up with his $500 to pay for his tryout. Do you smell a con?

So, WOA focused on Hartmann making his decision, leaving school and turning his back on everything to pursue this dream, Tryout is where he starts trying to live that dream and finds it may not be so easy as he thought. Actually, its going to be anything but easy!

BF: From reading the first Headlocked one-shot there’s a feel of a whole universe of characters, fictional history and subplots waiting to be explored. How expansively have the creative team mapped out the world of Headlocked?

CES: Kingston has created a whole rich world of wrestling for this series that is truly amazing to behold. He's taken the 'archetypes' of wrestling, boiled them down and created his own versions that have the ring of truth that wrestling fans will recognize. The fun thing has been seeing folks try to guess who inspired certain characters in the book, and I'm sure those specific folks inspired Mike some. But these are uniquely his characters and he does some neat things with them.

This is important to the series, because this is the 'world' Hartmann is entering and having it well defined gives us the rich playground for stories we need. Not to mention there are all these other storylines that will be weaving around Hartmann and hopefully sucking readers in, like whatever happened to the Ultimate Soldier? Comic fans like well-defined worlds and Headlocked has one!

BF: Will there still be supplemental material included in each issue of the new mini-series that gives further insights into events and characters?

CES: We're really focusing on the main story itself in this mini-series because the story really demanded the pages. We wanted to really let it unfold. However, never fear because there will be additional material coming in other outlets as well. Mike is very eager to expand the world of Headlocked, so we've talked about more short stories for our Wowio anthology, Digital Visions, more internet material, as a way of drawing in fans and building buzz, especially between series. All the additional stuff will be collected in the trade when it comes, but we want to get it out in a variety of ways before hand.

BF: The book certainly seems to have a great degree of crossover appeal. Wrestling fans should enjoy the subject matter but it also has a quite traditional storytelling approach that should hook established comics fans. How important was it to the team to find the right balance between the two?

CES: Well, that's the beauty of the Visionary approach. Mike Kingston is all wrestling, he knows the industry inside and out and this story was his passion! When he first brought the story to us, we then worked with him on making it a great comic, that was still structured and told like a comic book story in a way that mainstream comics fans would find appealing.

After all, we know we're going to succeed in selling this book to wrestling fans. They can't get enough of it! Our goal is to get the wrestling fans into the comic stores to support the local retailers, so Mike has been traveling, hitting local and regional wrestling shows and selling tons of copies of the Preview Book and WOA, and we tell all those folks OVER and OVER to find future issues at their local comic book retailer. So, we're hoping this means retailers will be seeing more and more new people come in.

But we also wanted the book to appeal to those folks who just enjoy comics, but like something different. After all, how many people can claim they have a book full of big muscled guys in tights, trying to beat other up...but without super-powers?

BF: Who are the art team on the miniseries and what are they bringing to Headlocked?

CES: Randy Valiente is providing the line-art and Jessika Gravel is providing the color art and they bring a lot to the look and feel of Headlocked! It's a tough book to draw! After all, you've got this over-the-top wrestling with colorful characters, spotlights and big action sequences. But, you've got to draw these moves and holds right or else it will look stupid to the die-hard wrestling fan!

However, on the flip side, you've got this high drama going on that is the story of Mike Hartmann's life, so you've got to capture those moments. There was this one page in WOA where Mike Hartmann realizes his own mother won't come to the phone to talk to him because of his decision to drop-out of school. The mood, lighting and framing of that entire sequence just hits you hard and you feel his isolation, his pain and sorrow there.

Randy's art can be over the top and SLAM BANG in the best tradition, but also quiet and moody. Jess' colors can make the jump to, capturing the look of being under the spotlight, but also creating a dramatic shot that just grabs your heart. We're proud of them!

BF: And Visionary Studios is offering retailers a win-win incentive with a money-back guarantee on the first issue of Headlocked: The Tryout isn’t it....? That shows some real faith in the quality of the book.

CES: Yep, on up to five issues. We do have faith in this comic. WOA got universally good reviews. We've snagged interest and support going all the way up to Lawler with the book on the wrestling end of things, we're getting notice from folks here on the West Coast! Even got a supreme compliment from a producer out here who said its one of the best laid out comics he's seen.

Wrestling fans love this book! Comic fans who've read it have been pleasantly surprised and we've gotten good reviews from them as well! Heck, we've even had people who are not wrestling or comic fans who have read the book and liked it because of the dramatic story its telling! It's like watching an episode of a top drama from Showtime or HBO, is the comparison we've heard.

So, we know people like it. But in this day and age, with the choke-hold the big boys have on the market, you've got to do something bold to stand out as the little guy and we figured this was the way to do it! The biggest hurdle is getting retailers to order books because they have to budget what they're going to spend, knowing a percentage is going to end up in books never sold and can't be returned. That's tough. So, if we want their support, we need to give them our support, this was the best way to do it.

We also promise those retailers who take us up on the challenge, that we will be doing our best to drive customers into your stores over the next couple months, so when this book hits, they will come.

BF: Finally Chuck are there any other projects from the Visionary Studios stable in the pipeline that you’d like to tell us about?

CES: Shon C. Bury's Nox is the next project with Visionary out of the gate. This is a great urban fantasy series crafted by Shon C. Bury and featuring great artwork from the team of Goldman and Waysek III. The first two issues are now up on Wowio under Visionary, and the rest of the mini-series will be coming out soon. Fans can pre-order the print trade collecting everything in one volume at www.shoncburysnox.com so get your copy! We expect that to hit stands by the end of 2008, we're still finalizing dates on its print release.

Also, we've announced our first foray into the illustrated prose world! We have a bi-monthly prose anthology that will be debuting by early 2009 from Strider-Nolan, called the Chronicles, featuring all stories set in the Visionary Universe, so we're going to be focusing on that big time this Fall and building the pre-buzz for it.

We've got two finished projects in negotiations to be published, a potential big time partnership we hope to be announcing soon, and some stuff happening on the West Coast, all of which is too early to give more details on, but Visionary is definitely growing and we couldn't be more thrilled.

Thanks for giving me the time to share!

To catch up with your Headlocked reading check out the Preview book and Work of Art on  Wowio. Headlocked: The Tryout is listed in the August Previews (Diamond Order Code: AUG083662) published by AAM/Markosia priced $3.50.