Mike Kingston on Headlocked: Tales From the Road 3 and Bridging Wrestling’s Tribes

Fred: Fred Richani of TSC. We have a very special returning guest via Zoom: the author and creator of the “Headlocked” comic, New York’s own, the incredibly talented Michael Kingston, here to talk about his latest Kickstarter campaign and his great work with some of your favorite pro wrestlers. Michael, how’s everything going?

Mike Kingston: It’s going good. We’re in the middle of what I like to call Kickstarter hell, but we’re nearing the home stretch on our latest campaign and just trying to bring it home and stick the landing.

Fred: “Headlocked: Tales From the Road Volume 3” has a few major names involved, to say the least: Adam Cole, Amy Dumas, aka Lita, Andrade, Dirty Dango, aka Fandango, Cassie Lee, Jay White, Powerhouse Hobbs and Trinity, the current Impact Wrestling Knockouts World champion. Tell us about the latest edition.

Mike Kingston: It’s the biggest lineup we’ve had in the moment, considering Adam Cole just main-evented at Wembley Stadium, Trinity is the biggest star in Impact, and Andrade, Hobbs and Jay White are staples on AEW TV. I also think it’s our most entertaining lineup. We have fewer names than we normally have in “Tales From the Road,” so the stories are a little longer, and they’re all really entertaining. They were so much fun to put together, and the people who’ve seen an advance really like them.

Fred: For new viewers, can you give us a brief history of “Headlocked”?

Mike Kingston: I was always a fan of wrestling and comics, and I felt like nobody ever made good wrestling comics. So I came up with the idea for “Headlocked,” an HBO-style drama about a theater major working his way through the wrestling business. I started making the book, and I was summarily laughed at by everybody in comics, so I had to build it on my own, grassroots style. I started selling it out of my backpack at wrestling shows and built up to doing conventions. The cool thing was that a lot of wrestlers who like comics, hardcore guys like The Hurricane, Christopher Daniels, Rob Van Dam and Samoa Joe, met me at conventions they were attending as fans, bought my books and told me how much they liked them. That helped us grow. Getting Jerry “The King” Lawler to do the cover art helped us grow. Once Kickstarter became a viable avenue for publishing indie comics, we hit the next gear, and then we started doing the stories with the wrestlers, which are the “Tales From the Road.” It’s exceeded my wildest expectations. When I started, I just wanted to make a cool wrestling comic, and being able to collaborate with some of my favorite wrestlers has been the coolest thing ever.

Fred: How did this crop of wrestlers come about?

Mike Kingston: I’ve done a lot of shows with Amy, and she always wanted to do something. I’ve done a lot of shows with Adam, and I think his Twitch stream is kind of inspiring. It’s very calming, and he has such a great relationship with his fan base. It’s like a whole different person. I was always a huge fan of Andrade and was able to put something together through an intermediary. Every collaboration is a little different, but one of my favorites is The IInspiration. When they left WWE, they did a podcast where they talked about dealing with dysmorphia because of comments people made on the internet and the lifestyle of being a woman on TV, particularly in wrestling. I pitched them an idea, and it was the first thing they did after leaving WWE. They still say it’s their favorite thing they’ve done post-WWE. We were able to tell an important story in an entertaining way by spinning it through a “Nightmare on Elm Street” kind of scenario. Sometimes people find me, sometimes I find them, and sometimes the universe just puts us in the same place.

Fred: Hiroshi Tanahashi created the Forbidden Door, and Tony Khan created the Forbidden Door pay-per-view, but do you feel like you’re kind of the Forbidden Door outside the ring? You’ve worked with Samoa Joe, The Young Bucks, MVP, Joey Janela, Gangrel, Shane Helms, Dolph Ziggler, Mustafa Ali, Danhausen, Matt Cardona, AJ Styles, The IIconics and now this group. Do you feel you’ve unintentionally bridged the gap between companies amid the tribalism of the fans?

Mike Kingston: I think so. One of the cool things about doing non-branded stuff is that you tend to avoid the more toxic elements of the fan base. I have friends who write comics for Marvel and DC, and I see some of the things that are said about them. One friend sent me a video last night of some guy with three followers on Twitter who made a hate video about why my friend should be fired, because he didn’t like how he was using a particular character. That’s tough. I don’t get that. For the most part, everybody’s been really good to me. Anybody involved in wrestling knows wrestling fans are 50 percent the best people you know and 50 percent the worst, and fortunately, nobody has built their identity around what I do. I mostly get people who are here to read some cool comics and fun collaborations with some of their favorite wrestlers, so I’ve been very lucky.

Fred: Looking beyond this project, I’m sure the dream would be some type of animated or live-action series down the road.

Mike Kingston: If all the stars aligned, I would love that. More than anything, I’d like to do a late-night animated series, because nobody’s doing that right now. When I started “Headlocked,” nobody was making wrestling comics, and lots of people make them now. I consider myself the pioneer of the modern era of wrestling comics. We literally changed our logo to “The King of Wrestling Comics,” because I feel like we were here first. I cleared a lot of rocks from the campground so a lot of people could pitch their tents, and that’s cool. The more the merrier. Nobody’s doing what I’m doing, so I don’t mind.

Fred: Ready for some rapid-fire questions to get to know you better? All-time favorite comic book author?

Mike Kingston: Paul Chadwick. “Concrete” was the book that made me want to write comics.

Fred: All-time favorite superhero?

Mike Kingston: The X-Men got me into comics, but I’ve always liked the everyman superhero, guys like Spider-Man and Daredevil who have real-life problems. I never vibed much with DC, because those guys always felt like gods to me. Maybe Daredevil.

Fred: Besides Jerry “The King” Lawler, because we don’t want you to get piledriven the next time you see him, who’s your all-time favorite wrestler, or who first drew you in?

Mike Kingston: That’s tough, because I’ve been a fan for so long and know so many people personally. But George “The Animal” Steele drew me in. I was flipping channels and saw him on Saturday Night’s Main Event in a match with The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff, and I thought, “What is this?” I couldn’t turn away. He was the craziest thing I’d ever seen, and I’ve probably watched wrestling in some form every day of my life since.

Fred: Who in pro wrestling is closest to a real-life comic book character, somebody who would fit right into a “Headlocked” story?

Mike Kingston: Jade looks like a comic book character. Hobbs looks like a comic book character. Otis is very much a comic book character. I love Otis. And Rey Mysterio is very much a comic book character. There are different types of heroes: the Superman wish-fulfillment hero you wish you could be, and the relatable hero you think you could be. Mysterio is relatable because of his size. You think, “I could do that,” but nobody can do what he’s done. He’s in his late 40s and holding WWE gold, which is unbelievable. I think he’s the greatest wrestler of his era. There might have been a time when people didn’t think that, but he still has incredible matches and still comes up with innovative spots, and obviously he’s been behind what Dominik has done, though Dominik deserves credit too.

Fred: You do pretty much everything. What’s the biggest misconception about your job, and what’s the hardest part of being a comic book creator?

Mike Kingston: The hardest thing is that I’m nobody’s priority. I work on a scale I shouldn’t be working on. I work with superstars and people who are on TV. I got a pull quote today for “Tales From the Road Volume 3” from Billy Zane. I travel in circles I don’t belong in, but I recognize that I’m nobody’s priority. I’m not making anybody rich, including myself. I just want to make cool comics. I’m the person you fit in when you can, and that goes for artists, conventions, everything. So I’m very persistent and super flexible, because you have to be to operate at this scale, and I have to ride the waves of change in wrestling. I had a ton of things lined up, and when Vince got ousted and Triple H brought everybody back, I lost a ton of stuff. I had a conversation with Bray Wyatt about doing something while he was out. I had a conversation with Roddy Piper about doing a story, and he died six days before we were supposed to do it at a convention. I had conversations with the Ultimate Warrior about painting a cover for my book. You’ve got to be flexible, because nobody needs me, and I understand that. There are people who would be doing stuff with me right now if they weren’t under contract, but I’m not going to mess with somebody’s six-figure payday for my independent wrestling comics. That’s the hardest part, being the one who bends to everybody else, but I’ve made it work for 15 years. It’s like the Avengers thing. There are a million ways it could happen, but only one way that it works, and that involves me not sleeping and bouncing around a million miles an hour. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Fred: With the WWE-UFC merger into TKO, are current WWE superstars kind of out of the question for “Headlocked,” or does it change depending on the company and what’s going on business-wise?

Mike Kingston: To a certain extent, they’ve always been out of the question. There was a nebulous time with NXT when guys were allowed to keep their Pro Wrestling Tees stores open, and that’s when I was able to do my story with Mustafa Ali. Dolph Ziggler had the cachet, because he’d been there forever, so they let him do what he wanted. I’ve done a couple of stories with guys under contract. I’m not competing with anybody. I’m kind of under everybody’s radar, so I don’t think anybody really hassles me. I’ve gotten a little hassle here and there, but for the most part, everybody in wrestling has been unbelievably great to me.

Fred: For anybody who isn’t convinced yet, why should people check out “Headlocked”?

Mike Kingston: The stories are all great and super fun, and it’s fun to see a different creative side of somebody. You know what Lita does as a wrestler, but this is a different side of her. And for collectors, we have four Kickstarter-exclusive covers of Adam Cole, Jay White, Trinity and Hobbs that are only available through the Kickstarter. We did something similar with Danhausen for volume two, and you can’t find those anywhere for less than $100 on eBay when they pop up. You can back it for the book, and we also have an a la carte menu: signed art prints by The Undertaker and Sting, what I think is the first thing all four members of The Judgment Day ever signed, Bret Hart, The Hardy Boyz, variant covers, limited-edition items and old “Headlocked” books. You can get a digital book for $10, and I have somebody in the campaign right now for over $1,000 who wants everything, so it’s completely customizable to your interest level and your financial level. We just want people to check out what we’re doing, because I think we’re doing cool stuff.

Fred: You guys are definitely doing cool stuff. Where can we find you next? Any upcoming conventions or wrestling shows this year?

Mike Kingston: This year I’m doing New York Comic Con, Twin Cities Con in Minneapolis and Galaxy Con in Columbus, and I may add one or two more. I have to fulfill this campaign and get the next one ready, so I may try to lay somewhat low, for my level, for the rest of the year and then come out swinging at the beginning of 2024. I’m working on a big 2024, so I hope people come along for the ride. All of our social media is Headlocked Comic, and you can sign up for the newsletter on our Substack.