This diversion through the anxiety, foibles, financial woes and mental health of the GWA members is probably more entertaining than watching an actual GWA match. It somehow tackles serious themes while never taking itself too seriously. The characters themselves are surreal—Great Carp, who has a head like a carp, or Gravy Train, whose body is literally a gravy-filled vessel—but I still found myself drawn into their internal hopes and dreams. My personal favorite was Death Machine’s eloquent but frustrated side career in wrestling-inspired poetry. I would absolutely buy his books.

For parents looking for comics for their kids, the colorful style may make it appear younger than its content. I would hesitate to give this to my middle-school kids (who love and even create comics that look like this one); the target audience is clearly more for teens and young adults. In addition to the fact that my kids aren’t yet in the identity-crisis phases that would relate to some of these characters, there are also more mature themes of drug abuse, suicidal ideation, etc. They probably also wouldn’t understand why the CEO’s father, Lovett Sr., is in an iron lung…but I suppose that’s incidental to the plot.

Even so, it certainly captures some of the current teen/YA zeitgeist of “what’s really the point?” while still leaving us with a useful path forward from the major character arcs. It's not a game-changer or ground-breaker in a lot of ways; superhero comics do at least as much soul-searching, though they sometimes take themselves too seriously. However, for anyone who is already a fan of pro wrestling as a concept, or is interested in the lives of those in show business, or just wants to watch someone else’s identity crisis instead of their own for a while, you’ll definitely find something to relate to. If Great Carp and Socrates alike can advise us to “know thyself,” we’ll very much find ourselves somewhere in the ring or behind the scenes in this iteration of the GWA.

-J.G.