Over the Top

Las Vegas once more hosted the Grandest Stage of Them All this past weekend; World Wrestling Entertainment’s flagship event, the Showcase of the Immortals, a seven-and-a-half-hour event celebrating the biggest names in sports entertainment. Frankly, Wrestlemania 42 disappointed. Day Two was solid overall, Day One mostly a waste of time, but when it came down to it, only two and a half of those hours had actual wrestling in them. That’s not a great ratio. That’s like when you open a bag of chips and find mostly air – except in this case, the air was filled with ads for Saudi Arabia and online casinos. It felt like the current management of the WWE, TKO, doesn’t know its audience. As I’ve been learning as I go through the exacting process of putting together the Kickstarter campaign for WAYPOINT, you need to know your audience – and give them what they want.

It seems insane to say this, but apparently real-life supervillain and total scumbag Vince McMahon knew what he was doing when he ran the company. He made lots of terrible decisions – business, creative, personal, criminal – in that time, sure. McMahon also understood two key factors of running an entertainment empire: you need to get butts in seats, and you need those butts to leave satisfied (weird analogy but I’m gonna roll with it). Wrestlemania 42 failed to varying degrees at both those things.

Professional wrestling has traditionally been a working class entertainment. Not exclusively, certainly, but a big part of its appeal was its draw for blue collar workers, especially once theater got co-opted by the hoi polloi. It didn’t speak down to them or try to be highbrow art. The shows just deliver displays of physical prowess and easy-to-follow dramatic storylines for relatively cheap. A lot of people used WrestleMania weekend as their splurge vacation for the year, an opportunity to travel to cities they’d never been to and feel like a part of the biggest night in their favorite hobby. When I went to Wrestlemania 39 a couple years ago, I paid $250 a night for decent mezzanine seats. Even though that wasn’t exactly cheap, I didn’t feel ripped off.

This year’s ticket prices were so exorbitant it priced a lot of the fans out. Nosebleed seats were at least $500, floor seats were four or five figures. It got so bad that some wrestlers even gave speeches about it on the weekly WWE shows, so somebody in corporate was aware of the issue. They fell at least 20,000 fans short of filling the arena each night. That’s a real problem for a company that prides itself on breaking attendance records at stadiums (even if the numbers are frequently inflated and it also makes it easier to sell more tickets than a football game when you can put seats on the field itself). That meant that their dedicated fanbase no longer felt it worthy of their hard-earned dollars to attend the show in person.

It wasn’t just a matter of cost, though. As previously mentioned, the wrestling show didn’t have that much wrestling in it. Wrestlemania always had padding, but often feltworth it when you get to the actual matches and they delivered the spectacle and epic scope you want from a grand event. This year’s program fell short on that account. Like I said, night two had some really strong matches, but even then, there weren’t that many of them and some were very short. You have to give your audience what they want – and wrestling audiences want wrestling. If you, a wrestling company, don’t give them enough of that, they’re gonna be pissed. Wrestling fans? Notoriously unopinionated.

That’s why, with WAYPOINT, I’m determined to give my backers an experience that matches their expectations. So first of all, who’s my audience? Well, if you’re reading this, hopefully you! But also anyone who digs fun mysteries and science fiction stories, emphasis on fun. It’s not a Hollywood “four quadrant” story – there are definitely adult situations in there. Folks who dig comics like Saga or Stumptown will have a great time reading it. Basically, adults with great taste. Like I said: you!

I’m aware that I’ll need to charge more for the book than your average Image or Dark Horse trade. Everything with WAYPOINT comes out of my pocket. I’m not a comics publisher. I don’t have a cushion of other books and I’m not working at a big enough scale to minimize printing costs. The overhead is significant (especially with the unpredictability of shipping and printing costs these days) and I need to make money back so I can create more comics for you folks. I’m not a consortium of millionaires trying to squeeze your hard-earned money out of you. I promise I’m pricing as fairly as I possibly can (while still acknowledging that we live in a capitalist society and my cat needs to eat).

That said, I respect my readers. I want you to receive a quality product in exchange for your contribution. When you hold the finished book in your hand, you’ll be holding a book you can treasure. All my money has gone towards hiring a fantastic artist and letterer to bring my vision to life, a professional graphic designer to put the book together, and an experienced Kickstarter campaign management company to make sure everything runs smoothly. As somebody who’s backed a lot of Kickstarter campaigns, I’m aware that it’s not just the quality of the book (which is great) but also how the backers get treated that informs the experience.

I intend for WAYPOINT to be a total knockout.

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