It’s been quite awhile since I last read a good, new pro wrestling comic book or graphic novel. If my own writing and reviews serve me correctly, the last one I read was Joanne Starer’s Total Suplex of the Heart, which I reviewed a little over one year ago, so I was really craving something new when I learned about The Wrestler by Danish artist John Kenn Mortensen.
According to publisher Fantagraphics, “Mortensen’s first English language graphic novel delivers on the promise that his bizarre, crowd pleasing books of illustration have previously made for readers around the world. With his spidery black-ink style, reminiscent of Edward Gorey’s gothic line, we’re taken to a world in which heavy metal meets The Seventh Seal meets Faust, all by the way of AEW.”
This description and the horrifically beautiful cover, which features the snarling, drooling, cauliflower-eared titular “wrestler,” immediately sold me on the book, which I thankfully had free access to on the date of publication, thanks to my local public library, and I read it in one swift sitting.
The Wrestler is a one-off, standalone story, weighing in at 80 pages, and there’s not a lot of text, but it’s the kind of comic I see myself returning to admire again and again.
The story is simple, and brief, as we follow a wrestler named Sledgehammer as he’s led across the river Styx by a Grim Reaper-esque character to engage in one final fight. Sledgehammer has never been beaten, thanks to a deal with the devil, and it’s come time for him to give the devil his due. Like I said, it’s a concise story, and a familiar one at that, but it’s no less entertaining, and it’s really the art that makes The Wrestler stand out from the competition.
The Wrestler is a dark book, in both story and art. Mortenson’s black lines fill the page, so where there’s light, it’s almost resplendently white. It’s also an extremely gory book, full of razor-toothed demons eager to tear a bite of flesh out of Sledgehammer.
One especially gruesome, albeit awesome, detail about The Wrestler is the ring where Sledgehammer is set to due battle in the underworld is constructed from the mutilated bodies of human corpses, with each undead corpse serving as a ring post, and with their intestines utilized as the ring ropes. It’s a truly unforgettable image, like something off the cover of a Cannibal Corpse album.
I won’t reveal the ending to The Wrestler, but it made me think of something written in the foreword by Jakob Stegelman, “If John Kenn Mortensen had lived in the United States in the 1950s, I think that publisher Bill Gaines would have put him on the art staff at EC Comics” (publisher of Tales from the Crypt and other infamous horror books), and if you understand that reference, and if that appeals to you, you need to read this book.
John Kenn Mortensen’s The Wrestler is available now from Fantagraphics.
