Swerve
Written by Jon Judy
Art By Dexter Wee
Cover Art by Chris Seaman
Art Director Sean McArdle
Production & Design by Jace Tschudi
Edited by Amanda Hendrix
Arcana Studios
Release Date: February 15, 2012
Cover Price: $19.95

A funny thing about pro wrestlers – for all their flamboyant showmanship, sometimes it’s their lives outside the ring that makes them really compelling. The family man that puts his life in danger is the premise that made the documentary Beyond The Mat work. The role of Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson – big, loving, flawed – is what almost singlehandedly brought back Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky’s seminal The Wrestler. A random stranger I still think of often: ten years ago, on an overnight Amtrak train, I once struck up a conversation with a retired semi-pro in his late 40s who lamented how he never got comfortable terrorizing little kids asking for autographs just to keep up his villainous persona. He was on his way to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter.

Swerve, a self-contained series from Archaia, is set in a seedy underworld of sex, drugs, and violence. What makes it stand out is that at the heart of the story are these compassionate characters. It’s not a flawless story; the alchemy of mixing the staged violence inside the ring with the very lethal violence outside it maybe doesn’t 100 percent click, but there are passages here that feel sharp and fresh.