First Fight
Now here’s something you don’t see every day in the world of small press comics: the story of the author’s first mixed martial arts fight. Take that, everybody who holds the stereotype of artists as awkward nerds! Bryan had always been a fan of fighting, due to the influence of some early fighting movies and the fact that boxing was the only sport he would watch with his father as a child. He had a stable life as an artist with a family, but decided that he wanted to go and do things that he had always wanted to do, so he decided to train for a MMA fight. After training for a few weeks (and appearing to be only so-so at it), his coach told him about a tournament that had a Novices division (people with less than 9 months of training). Bryan had three months to train so he really pushed himself, lost 30 pounds to qualify for a weight division and seemed to improve his skills greatly. So the day of the tournament finally rolls around, and Bryan gets there only to discover that his coach has dropped out unexpectedly at the last minute. He wavers, but decides to stick with it, going out for his fight alone, and if I mention any more I’m going to spoil the ending. I for one didn’t know that there was a class of MMA where striking wasn’t permitted, where the only way to win a fight was through submission holds. That can still be dangerous, obviously, but it sounds a whole lot less brutal than pummeling a novice repeatedly. The man seems to be a professional artist, so it’s no surprise that this book looks as nice as it does, but he really does a tremendous job of illustrating the fight. Every hold and counter looked like actual holds and counters, something that is crucial in a book like this but would have been easy to get wrong. Bryan hopes to go on to more fights, and here’s hoping if he does that he keeps making comics about it, because reading about the whole process here (all the training, advice, how he heard the other coach give his guy advice during the fight) all really flesh out the MMA world and make it clear that it’s not a simple, brainless thing, an impression people could easily get if they’ve just seen a match or two on Spike TV. As for you, gentle reader, if you hate violence there is no blood in this book, so at least there’s that. For anybody who is curious about this world and wants to see what it’s like, this is a great introduction. I’m not seeing a price, but $5 makes sense to me…
