Interview With Michael Kingston: Creator Of Headlocked
Kingston talks about his love of the comic and wrestling mediums, and how the process came together.
Michael Kingston is a lifelong comic book and wrestling fan. In the past, various writers have attempted to create comics that mixed the two genres, but failed in spectacular fashion. In Headlocked: The Last Territory, though, Kingston creates a realistic hero in Mike Hartman who we follow on a journey in the unforgiving business. Filled with emotion and a clear passion from its writer, Headlocked is the most realistic portrayal of wrestling in the graphic novel form to date. For his upcoming sequel Headlocked: The Last Territory Vol. 2, we follow the continuation of Hartmans story. Kingston has taken to Kickstarter once more to raise the funds necessary to produce the book. Teaming up with him again is wrestling legend Jerry Lawler who will be providing the cover artwork. Also joining on the project in the role of guest creators are Booker T, Rob Van Dam, A.J. Styles, John Morrison, Tony Atlas, Kazarian and Caylen Croft. Here Kingston talks about his love of the comic and wrestling mediums, and how the process came together. AS (Andrew Soucek): Give me a little bit of your background. Did you go to school for writing? How did this all start? MK (Michael Kingston): *laughs* I have a bio-chemistry degree. But Ive been a wrestling fan and a comic book fan my whole life. Every once in awhile somebody would put out a wrestling comic and I would eagerly rush out to buy it. And then it would always suck. It was just wrestlers doing anything but wrestling. Fighting demons and whatnot. Undertaker fighting demons. Kevin Nash as Mad Max. Ultimate Warrior stripping Santa Claus naked. You know, awful stuff and it never appealed to me. When I first decided to write comics, my first thought was Well, let me do a wrestling comic that I think wrestling fans would like. Thats where I started, and as I got going I got attention from wrestlers who were comic book fans that would pick up my stuff at shows. Thats how I met Shane Helms and Rob Van Dam. Everything spiraled from there, just to what its become. AS: The main character, Mike Hartman, got into wrestling after seeing it as an art form. Is that how you look at it? MK: Yeah, absolutely. I can enjoy it on a couple of different levels. I can watch it to watch it, but sometimes, nowadays, some of the stories they write is a little more for kids. There was a time when I was growing up that I felt like that there was some art that kids and adults could enjoy together. But I think on some level, I think as a society in general weve sort of lost that. Theres the occasional thing like Spongebob or Adventure Time that has a little stuff in there that adults can get on with. As an art form, yeah. I mean, who does acting, all their own stunts, and does it in front of a crowd? No one does that. Its funny, because I think wrestling is an amazing art form and its the same thing with comics. I mean literature, if you take that: thats art. And if you take paintings, and drawings and such: thats art. But when you put them together, somehow its not. Theyre both two mediums that I think have been marginalized by people, and people have very snap judgments about them. Thats kind of why I wanted to do the story in comic book form too. AS: The main characters friends dont like wrestling, they dont get it. Growing up, did you have those friends or maybe still do? MK: Yeah, I think at least 50% of the people you know probably think wrestling is dumb. On some level, wrestling is sort of responsible for its own portrayal too. Sometimes they wallow in it. What frustrates me is when the writers gloss over a logic point, a continuity point. You know in a room somewhere theyre like Its only wrestling. And if you dont take it seriously, your fanbase wont take it seriously. You know, you have someone and theyre gonna give it a look, and its not good. Its Mae Young giving birth to a hand or whatever. And that was your shot. Youll see it in comics too. I mean, its a joke now about characters dying in comics. I mean Marvel is doing it, there's a Wolverine series right now. People dont even care anymore. When they did The Death of Superman, that had some punch to it, people were like Oh my god! But then they brought him back. AS: Jerry Lawler did the artwork on a couple of the covers on Headlocked, how did his involvement come about? MK: Its the dumbest thing. It really is. I emailed him through his website and I forgot I did it. I emailed him and said Hey, I write wrestling comic books, and I know you do art would you be interested in doing a cover? Days go by, I dont even think about it and then I get an email back saying This sounds pretty cool, send me some books and Ill take a look at them. So I sent him some books, and then he called me up and said hed do it. Then he did it and we started doing comic book shows together and it spiraled out from there. We just did New York Comic Con, and Baltimore before that and Miami before that. I see him pretty regularly now and its pretty hard to believe. AS: What about guys like Booker T and Mr. Anderson did they come to you? Did you go to them? MK: Most of them find me. Booker I approached because a couple of guys like Rob Van Dam and Jerry said You know, Rob has got some art skills, you should talk to him." So I did. Ken came to me, he met me at San Diego Comic Con. The first words he ever said to me were "Hey, can I do a cover for you bro? Its been kind of interesting. AS: The stories that A.J. Styles and Kazarian are doing, those arent a part of the main story, but they take place in the same universe right? MK: Right. I tell the story of Mike Hartmans journey. Yeah, they help build a larger universe and then we can steer Mike into some of those characters and some of those places and see what happens. AS: Do you have an ending in mind for his story? Do you know how long it will go on for? MK: The beauty of wrestling to me is that its got such a rich culture and a rich history, and I dont think anyone has really explored all of it. I can tell it as long as people will support it. I can take him to Japan to the UK, Australia. I mean wrestling is different all over the world, its perceived differently all over the world. There's so much you can talk about and that you can see, and explore and discover. I mean, theres comedy wrestling and super ultra serious wrestling and fake UFC fighting! I mean, theres all kinds of stuff as an art form and a culture that I think you can explore. I want to tell it as long as I can tell it. I do have an ending in mind for the character and when people are tired of hearing about it, we can tie it up and put a nice little bow on it. AS: The book deals a lot with protecting kayfabe. Do you feel thats a lost art? Or is it good that weve moved past that? MK: A little of both. I dont like when wrestlers talk about it. I dont like guys on Twitter. I think thats bad. I try to imagine like Dick Murdoch or Stan Hansen on Twitter. Some of it is mystique. When I was a kid, you never had any interaction with them. They would come out, and they were these stars and now, I know what brand of bran muffin some of them had for breakfast and that works for certain characters. Some characters get over by being the every man, but you know, its hard to look at The Undertaker the same now that hes on Instagram in his kitchen with Michelle McCool. Obviously you can still respect him, but from a gimmick standpoint that really hurts his presentation. The Bellas share a Twitter account and I think thats the dumbest thing, like you cant just make an extra Twitter account? You know, have a match about it! Everybody knows that Godzilla isnt real, but you just dont want to see the strings. I dont think that we have to pretend its real, but I dont think we have to shove it in people's faces. AS: In the comic, its been hinted that Mike had an incident where he was heavily bleeding in a match as an untrained rookie. Is that based off the Mass Transit incident in ECW? MK: Its not in general. I started writing this years ago, before Id even heard about that. I think theres a lot of stories about guys who had bad experiences in the ring. AS: When did you first think up this story? MK: A long time ago. You know, part of the problem is I didn't know how to get into comics forever, but I've had this story in my head for years. Maybe when I was a senior in maybe 96, 95. The genesis of the whole book came into my head and how I wanted to do it. When I started to think about it more, I had just read Concrete Think Like a Mountain, but it had a lot to do with the environment. It was not a superhero book at all. It totally blew my mind on what comics could be. And then I thought that's what sort of lead me to do the story the way I wanted to do that story. I've always had it in the back of my mind. It just, trying to break into the business and figuring out how to do that, that took a long time. AS: What current comics are you into? I read Saga, Walking Dead, Fatale, Undertow. I like superhero books, but you have to buy like 100 books to read the story. X-Men is what got me into comics, but now like, there's 40 titles that have an "X" in it, and once a year they do the big multi-cross over thing, and they start bringing people back from the dead. It gets frustrating. AS: As a writer, what are the top things you'd change about the wrestling business? MK: There's so many small guys now, I mean Japan ran a Cruiserweight division for years successfully. I mean they managed to not job out Jushin Liger to heavyweights for decades. There's a pattern there. Rey Mysterio sold a lot of merchandise for WWE. Why does he have to be the Heavyweight Champion? Why don't they build a division and have him be the champion? I think UFC has shown that you can have multiple weight classes. Let guys do what they want, I mean Zack Ryder had a better way to get himself over than anybody else. If you watch Dolph Ziggler when he had that show, he was better on that than anything he's done on TV. He's clearly got charisma and can talk, but then they don't let him in a way that's entertaining. I think sometimes you've just gotta let these guys, let them do it. And if they can't do it then put them with a mouth piece. AS: What would you do with Cena? Honestly, I think Cena was fine before, when he had a little more of an edge to him. That's all that people really want, and he's got to show vulnerability. One of the things is, they say it's so hard for Superman to get over. You have to de-power him. And Cena never really shows any vulnerability. When Hogan would feud with a guy he'd get destroyed for awhile and then they'd turn that into a program. You're not taking the crowd on a journey it's just, he's smug about it and he's got to show some more. When you get to the main event you've got to beat some guys. I mean like Bray Wyatt should've beat Cena at WrestleMania to me, and then they should have made a program out of that. He hasn't really recovered from that yet. Slid right down the card. I mean he's entertaining enough that it won't really matter, but he would have been so much bigger had he beat Cena and it would've given more juice to the story that they're telling. AS: Who are your current favorites in the business right now? MK: I like a little of everybody. I can find value in just about anyone in wrestling. I like Dean Ambrose. I've been a fan since he was Jon Moxley. At some point, they're going to have to show a little bit more than he's crazy all the time. He comes out to motorcycle sounds and acts crazy. There has to be more to that character. But I mean he's definitely getting over good. I like all The Shield guys. I mean starting with Ring of Honor in 2004, I like all those guys that came up because I followed them from the beginning. Samoa Joe I'm a big fan of, I'm obviously a fan of Daniels and Kaz I love their tag team and I'll watch them any time. There's so much good tag team wrestling and unfortunately you can't get any of it on TV. AS: Would you rather write a story based off of the origin of The Bunny or Hornswoggle? MK: Probably Hornswoggle. I could do some stuff with that. It's funny, I tell you this. I was once commissioned to write comics for The Leprechaun movie series and it never made it out. The guy that wrote the arc before me was so awful that the series got cancelled. So that's like legit one of my dream jobs. I love that series. I haven't seen the new one yet. The idea of building an origin of a leprechaun is dumb. It's such an absurd idea that you have to run with the idea that he'll kill you if you steal his gold. You have to accept that, and once you try and add logic to it, I think takes away from what makes it so fun. I had done an arc which was essentially The Leprechaun vs. The Real Housewives of Orange County. It was the poorest rich guy in Orange County stealing The Leprechaun's gold so he could upgrade his life. The Leprechaun comes back and kills all these socialites. It was super, super fun and probably one of the best things I've ever written. I'm probably one of the only people in the world who would say their dream job is to write Leprechaun. I really wish that had seen the light of day. AS: What's the worst comic wrestling moment so far? MK: WCW Slam Force. It was a one issue thing back in the late 90s. They were a team of covert ops. Chris Benoit had claws, and Sting had wings and I don't know why, like if someone thought he looked like The Crow and Kevin Nash had this guitar thing and Goldberg was like the big Hulk thing character, Bret Hart was like Hawkeye because he's the hit man. He had a bow and arrow. It's like the perfect example of the things that made me want to do Headlocked. To me all these other wrestling comics were just licensed out when wrestling was hot and somebody's just trying to make a buck off of it and you can tell they don't like wrestling or know anything about it. It's like "Hey, this guy is called The Hitman we'll make him a sharpshooter." It just feels like you're being sold to and I think that's the difference between what we do and what they do. Everybody in my book is passionate about wrestling, passionate about comics. All the wrestlers involved like comics, and all the artists around like wrestling. Ut's got a different feel I think. I'm not making any money off of this. I don't care if I make any money to be honest with you. I have a job that pays my bills. I just want to do this story as long as I can. I think that comes through in our work. To see more of Michael's work, check out the Kickstarter for Headlocked: The Last Territory Volume 2 at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/180977151/headlocked-the-last-territory-vol-2