There is a time in a boys life where he loves wrestling and fans out over his favorite wrestlers. Until one day some know it all in the playground tells him “wrestlings fake, that stuffs for kids”. Sewing disbelief in one of his favorite pass times. Then when he becomes an adult that same kid can grow to again appreciate the athleticism, storytelling and the all around showmanship of wrestling.
Then comes something like HEEL TURN, a hyper violent wrestling comic reminiscent of the attitude era of the 90’s and early 2000’s . Heel Turn portrays hard core wrestling as if it were real with actual high stakes and at times even leading to death.
Hollywood-Babylone
Mike Ha, artist, writer and soul creator of Heel Turn.
Mike Ha
thank you for talking with me.
Hollywood-Babylone
First of all, I really love your work , you kind of got me back interested in modern comics, as I haven’t been interested in anything new in years.There’s like a resurgence going on with wrestling right now. And you’re bringing that kind of vibe to it. Can you explain what is Heel turn?
Mike Ha
Heel Turn is. How do I explain it? The premise of it is about a washed up old school wrestler who’s still in the game, but he ain’t going out quietly. He’s just still full of piss and vinegar, and he’s still kicking. With Heel Turn it’s hard to kind of encapsulate it as one thing or another. I mean, it’s a lot of different ideas I brought together. It’s kind of my ode to, pro wrestling from the 90s, ECW, Monday night wars, you know, all that hardcore shit. And not just the wrestling, just a lot of that kind of entertainment from that period. It’s something that I kind of had brewing for a while. I think around 2020, it was something I was like, alright now it’s time to make something like this.
Hollywood-Babylone
Is this your fist series? Your first time delving into creating comics?
Mike Ha
It’s my first comic book for sure. But right before that, I did a couple pages for Image. Grand disaster , I mean I don’t even know if that was an official Image Comics thing. It might have been kind of a bootleg thing that people were putting together. Kind of in the same vein as, like, Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg, like grand design type stuff.
Hollywood-Babylone
Rest in peace
Mike Ha
yeah, rest in peace to Ed, you know I actually had a chance to meet those guys, too. They were really cool. But you know that was the first thing I did was Image, Grand Disaster. Then after that I was getting to work on Heel Turn.
Hollywood-Babylone
explain some of the other inspirations behind Heel Turn. Like what comics?
Mike Ha
As far as from the comic book side of it, I was inspired by Brat Pack by Rick Veitch. Brat Pack is like this comic book that was kind of a parody/satire. It was done in black and white, it had that kind of outlaw, underground feel to it. Rick Veitch is a guy that was like a Joe Kubert school alumni. I believe he worked on stuff like Swamp Thing and Miracle Man in the 80s. But Brat Pack had a really grimy kind of look at superheroes and superhero sidekicks. And it was super raw.
Hollywood-Babylone
It was kind of like The Boys right?
Mike Ha
I was about to say it was kind of like the Boys before the Boys even existed. So that was a big inspiration. I was reading stuff like that. I was reading a lot of heavy metal magazine stuff, Big fan of heavy metal magazine from that 90s period. And I was also looking at a lot of manga titles like Shamo and SunKen Rock. It’s funny, because there was, like, Japanese comic books that were kind of not necessarily doing the same thing I was doing, but they had more, like adult themed, or mature theme kind of wrestling or fight comics. Have you heard of Baki?
Hollywood-Babylone
yeah
Mike Ha
There’s also one called Tough and then there’s another one called Lock Up. Looking at some of that stuff, and I was just wondering why there wasn’t more American comic books that were in the same vein of being more adult oriented, or mature themed kind of stuff when it came to pro wrestling. I was a big fan of Preacher. Garth Ennis’s Preacher, loved Preacher back in the day.
Hollywood-Babylone
Yeah, I was a huge fan of that comic. I can see that style in your work. Another thing I like about Heel Turn too. You’re doing it in Kayfabe. As if wrestling is real, they’re really wrestling, and they’re really like, killing each other in the comic.
Mike Ha
Yeah, because I remember when I made the comic, that first issue people were trying to compare it to the Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler. And I like that movie, and I’ve watched that movie quite a few times, but I never necessarily wanted to copy something like that. I didn’t want to do the same thing that the wrestler did as a comic. To me that just wouldn’t be interesting, you know. For example, when you look at something like Grappler Baki. It’s a fight comic and theres wrestlers in that comic and they’re wrestling for real. And that’s kind of how I wanted to treat it. I grew up playing games, like Street Fighter and Tekken and I kind of wanted to have that feel. I wanted to treat it like a fight comic, not a pro wrestling comic. I have a lot of inspirations from that stuff.
Mike Ha
It’s actually kind of funny, because I had the idea back in like, 2018 and actually, I was in South Korea when I was really starting to put together something seriously for it. But at the time, I was in South Korea because my dad was dying of kidney disease.
Hollywood-Babylone
i’m sorry to hear that.
Mike Ha
I appreciate that. I mean, it’s all good now, because I ended up giving him one of my kidneys. So I had to spend some time in the hospital and so while I was in the hospital, I was drawing in a sketchbook. I was also fucking around, making beats on my computer, stuff like that. Just doing stuff just to kill time. I had the idea before, but I kind of just didn’t do anything with it. I didn’t take it seriously but then after the whole stuff with the kidney, I left South Korea, I went back to California, and then when I was in Cali, I basically became homeless for a while. And while I was sleeping in the airport and shit like that, I was still sketching stuff out, you know, writing down notes for this thing. And that’s when things actually really started changing.
I was also around that time getting into watching shoot interviews from pro wrestlers. So that’s when I was like, oh shit there’s a whole bunch of stuff that happened. Because I grew up watching wrestling, so obviously that in itself, is a big inspiration. But then learning about the stories that these guys would tell and being frank about the business.
Mike Ha
They would talk about, what really happened backstage between wrestlers, the type of relationships they had with each other, interactions they had with each other, and a lot of the drama that would happen that you didn’t really necessarily see on TV.
I was aware of, like, some of the pro wrestling comics that were already out there in the US, and I was just noticing none of them ever really addressed what was going on behind the scenes or, like, in the in the lives of the wrestlers like outside of the ring. Some of the wrestlers would be talking about doing drugs and shit partying and getting with ring rats and shit like that. To me that was interesting. That’s kind of how the whole Jack character kind of came together.
And I was also watching, Eastbound and Down. You ever watched that show?
Hollywood-Babylone
Yeah Kenny powers.
Mike Ha
Yeah, it’s just hella funny. I would be watching shoot interviews, I’d be watching documentaries, like beyond the mat. But then I was watching Eastbound and Down. And I was like, what if Kenny Powers was a wrestler instead of a baseball player? So, I mean, it’s just like a lot of different things that came together. That’s pretty much how a lot of that came about.
Hollywood-Babylone
can you explain what outlaw comics are?
Mike Ha
Well to me outlaw comics are comic books that are done, I don’t even think they necessarily even have to be completely independent, but it’s just comic books that are like, raw, you know? They have the that feeling where it’s like, uncensored, you know what I mean? it’s like a feeling of it gives you that vibe where it’s almost like, should I even be looking at this?you know, like, that sort of thing,
Hollywood-Babylone
Yeah it feels like a dirty magazine. I didn’t get into outlaw comics until like, way later, like, past the time. Because when they were out in the 90’s and early 2000’s I was a kid, and I used to look at that and go ew disgusting. Razor used to scare me back then, like, the girl with the blades and shit. It used to creep me out back in the day, but now as an adult I kind of get the whole seedy vibe.
Mike Ha
Well, I mean, I remember back in the 90s the mainstream comic books were more raw just in general. One of my favorite comic books is the Saber Tooth mini series that. Mark Texeira did.
Hollywood-Babylone
The guy who drew the Ghost Rider?
Mike Ha
Yeah. So that’s that Sabretooth comic (Death Hunt) I had when I was a kid. And I just remember that was raw shit, like it was fire, and it was coming out of Marvel around that time. It was about Sabretooth who was this crazy villain, and he’s, like, bloodthirsty, ruthless. He’s basically a mercenary. And the way it was drawn, everything about it was, I mean, to me, that was like an outlaw comic.
Mike Ha
And even though it was Marvel, which is about as mainstream you can get when it comes to comic books. But I I think that was just the general vibe back then, the overall feeling of a lot of comics were kind of just in that vein. But then I would get into stuff like, Preacher and Preacher is definitely outlaw shit, you know.
Hollywood-Babylone
Yeah, I never thought about it that way. But, yeah I guess it is.
Mike Ha
it is, I mean, I remember reading Preacher, and I was like, Yo, this is nuts. Like, this is everything I never knew comics could be then when I got into college, that’s when I started getting hold of Heavy Metal Magazine. That was definitely some outlaw shit right there. They had everything from crazy neo noir type of stories, high fantasy. They had porn in there and shit like that. I guess that’s really how I would explain what outlaw comic books are. To me, it’s stuff that’s just raw.
Hollywood-Babylone
It’s a spirit, It’s an energy. It doesn’t necessarily have to be independent It’s just the energy and the look.
Mike Ha
Yeah, it’s just like you could tell the person making it they weren’t holding back, you know what I mean?
Hollywood-Babylone
Yeah, and you definitely don’t hold back and you’ve even mixed some different genres because it feels like it gets a little cyber punky too.
Mike Ha
There’s definitely stuff I threw in there because, I was an X-Men fan when I grew up, and a GI Joe fan. And then I’m also a fan of Tekken and Mortal Kombat and all this other shit. And when I was doing the second issue, especially in that second half of the second issue, because it’s such a fucking giant sized issue. At the time I was smoking a lot of weed, I was hopped up on coffee all the time. And I was constantly looking at X-Men shit and GI Joe shit. Like, getting back into that stuff. And I don’t know, I was just like, that would be cool if Pantera had that kind of team.
Hollywood-Babylone
How do you feel about modern comics, just the landscape in general?
Mike Ha
I’ll be honest, I haven’t really picked up too much modern comic books. And I almost kind of purposely do that. I mean a lot of the mainstream stuff seems pretty corny to me like, cornier than it used to be when I was a kid. I don’t know if that’s just me.
Hollywood-Babylone
But the kids today would say our comics were corny because our shit was, like, in the edgy era.
Mike Ha
I guess. I mean, I also feel like it’s coming back around to that sort of stuff. I kind of look at things when it comes to that, like the cultural shift. It’s kind of almost like a pendulum that swings back and forth. It’s a cycle. I’m a huge movie buff and when you look at American cinema in the 60s to the 70s is different. You have 60s stuff which is more psychedelic and you could even say it was more politically correct. And then the 70s stuff is, like, dark and grimy. And then the 80s, it swings back to being more commercial. And then the 90s, it’s like, you know, it just kind of keeps going like that. But there’s a lot of great indie comic books out there. There’s a lot of creators that I’m in touch with that are making some pretty cool shit, you know. But I also do feel like a lot of people because of the cultural and political landscape of the United States, you know, where it’s been at the last 10 years. I think a lot of people do kind of bite their tongue a little bit, and they are kind of hesitant to kind of go all the way. They restrain themselves a little bit. And I can understand that. But there are other creators that just don’t give a shit, which is pretty cool. You know, they do their thing.
Mike Ha
I just try to do my thing. I don’t really try to pay attention to too much of what the standards are, I guess.
Hollywood-Babylone
that’s a good thing. You shouldn’t do that when you’re an artist.
Mike Ha
I have people in my family that are like “why don’t you make something that’s nice, something a little bit more family friendly”, or something like that. I was just talking to this wrestling promoter. I was trying to give him some free comic books of mine. He was like “I love your work, but I don’t know if I could really put this out to my audience. We have more of a family friendly audience.”
Mike Ha
And I’m just like well, that’s cool. That’s fine. I don’t really hold it against people, I know what I’m making. So it’s like, I know it’s not going to be for everybody.
Hollywood-Babylone
That’s probably a good thing
Mike Ha
I think about Quentin Tarantino, something he said is he makes movies that are for him. Movies that he wanted to see. That’s how I approached Heel Turn, whereas alright well nobody else is making this type of comic book that I want, I’m going to make it.
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