Steve Orlando (Author Of DC x AEW Comic Crossover): I Think The Storytelling Tropes Of Wrestling And Superhero Comics Are Actually Very Similar

Steve Orlando (the author of DC and AEW’s upcoming comic crossover event) comments on the similarities between wrestling and superhero comics.

Storytelling in pro wrestling and superhero comic media are similar in many ways but at the root of both pieces of media is a story of good battling evil. For AEW, they will look to have an upcoming crossover event with DC Comics that will showcase the two industries similarities.

While speaking to Bearded Comic Bro in a new interview, Steve Orlando, the author of the upcoming crossover, thinks that the tropes are ‘very similar.’

“I think the storytelling tropes are actually very similar. Your wrestling is larger than life. Comics are larger than life. At the end of the day, wrestling- especially in the classical sense, our stories of good and evil, face versus heel. The Strident, forthright champion or belt chaser going up against the dastardly villainous heel who’ll do anything to win. It is, from our perspective on the other side of the page, it’s a very similar thing. The kind of stories we tell, the way we tell them, how we keep comic book villains vital and a threat is not dissimilar from how you’ll hear people book wrestling heels so that they still feel like a threat, so they still feel strong, right? So a lot of the storytelling process is the same, and then on the front of the page, yeah, you have these larger than life characters going through these cataclysmic battles, especially these days as wrestling has become, you know, more and more- I don’t want to say more athletic. These are always athletes, but what has sort of the Overton window of what goes on in that ring has definitely increased. If you compare, I mean, look at a Will Ospreay and look at a Bruno Sammartino. Obviously the gulf of style is vast. I would never say the gulf of talent is vast because Bruno was a mainstream cultural hero, especially for Italian folks. But what we do in the ring, I’d say what performers do in the ring, workers in the ring has vastly expanded. So the bridge towards the kind of stuff you see in comics has gotten even stronger. Of course, like a lot of wrestlers are inspired by- if not comics, similar types of things. Will Osprey is The Aerial Assassin because he loves Assassin’s Creed among many other things. So the worlds are getting closer all the time, and it made it, I think, the perfect time to do something like DC vs. AEW. Plus, hell, they’ve already got the Forbidden Door, and that already sounds like a comic book concept.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Steve teased a major swerve in the upcoming crossover event. You can read more about that here.

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