Hello there! My name is Todd Black, and I’m the guy behind a certain comic you might have seen spreading across Twitter (yes, I still call it that) a few times called AEW Origins. Many people have asked me what I’m hoping to do with this, and KO News gave me the chance to talk about my ideas for it (most of them, anyway, can’t spill all the beans!), so I’ll happy break it down for you!
First and foremost, I’m a writer. I’ve been making comics and novels for almost ten years, and I’m always coming up with new stories. I’ve been a fan of AEW since day one, and I wanted to make a comic for them from day one. My first idea was just a comic about the company, and like with AEW Origins, I worked with my good friend and artist Alex Garcia to get the fan comic made. It got a lot of positive feedback, but nothing came of it.
Then, earlier this year, I realized I needed to EXPAND the idea. So, I came up with AEW Origins, which isn’t so much about the company but the wrestlers within it. As my comic says at the end, “Every Wrestler Has An Origin Story,” and that would be the crux of the series.
Each comic would be about a wrestler and talk about their “origins” before arriving in AEW. Some will easily touch upon their time in AEW or how they’ve grown through AEW. The point will be to help fans understand more about the wrestlers that grace their TVs every week.
You might be thinking, “Would fans want to read that?” The answer is yes. Between my first AEW Comic idea, the response to AEW Origins so far, and more, I know this could work. Just as important, I worked with Thunder Rosa just before she signed with AEW to make a biographical comic about her life. She loved it, her fans loved it, and when I sell it at comic cons, wrestling fans are always shocked that she had a comic made about her life.
So apply that to the entire AEW roster, and you get some fun potential. I first posted some of the pages on Twitter in October, and my inbox got FLOODED with messages, retweets, likes, quotes, etc. 99% of them were not only impressed by what Alex and I did but that they wanted to read this comic series. I’m not the most active person on Twitter, but by the end of its “run,” my thread with these pages had over 200K views, thousands of likes, and plenty of retweets and messages to AEW to get this made.
Then, on my birthday in November, I made ANOTHER message to AEW and Tony Khan about the comic, and it got over 113k views and almost 2K likes, and even MORE people messaged me about wanting this comic.
The demand is there, and I’ve devised a full business plan to make this work. I truly believe in this, and nothing like this has been done to this scale in the past.
I think the biggest thing that the AEW Origins comic can do is help bring more fans into the fold. Not to mention help certain fans like other wrestlers once they get to know them better. I’ll never forget one day on AEW Dynamite when Excalibur said, “AEW tickets are a great holiday gift!” But that’s not true, now is it?
But a comic book? Something that you can pass from person to person to see what they think? That’s a good gift. So, if someone were to say, “Who does AEW have that I should pay attention to?” you can give them the comic, and they’ll be able to understand the wrestler before they even see a match. Plus, now the response won’t be, “Go watch this match on YouTube!” which people don’t always want to do. But reading a comic that’ll take a couple of minutes? That’s more manageable.
Plus, the “comic team” for this series would work with the various AEW wrestlers to not only ensure their stories are told properly but have a fun “styling” to them. For example, imagine an Orange Cassidy comic where he very nonchalantly talks about his history in a few words per page. That’d be hilarious! Or how about Julia Hart? We could talk about her morphing from the “cheerleader” to the “Princess of the Black Throne” and have the visuals of the comic highlight her corruptions with each page turn. Again, the potential is there.
I really do believe in AEW Origins, and I think, if given the chance, this could be something special. That’s why I will keep promoting it, and I hope that Mr. Tony Khan or someone in AEW will give me the chance to pitch it one day.
If YOU like this idea! Spread the word, and use #AEWOrigins on Twitter or Instagram to talk about it!
The Story of AEW Origins really is outstanding.
