by Kambole Campbell

As someone who fairly recently fell in love with professional wrestling again – after a Cape Town childhood of staying up to watch WWE Raw followed by years of being a little embarrassed about it – one thing that's remained undeniable is the allure of its campy melodrama, which often feels too large to even be contained by the hulking Olympian figures of its participants. So, on some level, it makes sense for wrestling to even go beyond the boundaries of the human body and into animation: even without a perhaps lofty read on it, it also makes sense because wrestlers are often nerds who frequently take inspiration from animation (particularly anime) into the presentation of their high wire acts. (My go-to example: Kenny Omega and Konosuke Takeshita effectively cosplaying Hajime No Ippo). 

All of this is to say that I'm someone very much being pandered to by Tales From The Top Rope, a series of animated shorts made in collaboration between All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and Adult Swim. On one hand, it's a clever bit of brand synergy. AEW broadcast on the Turner Network, and have taken advantage of this in myriad ways already: one Golden Age Hollywood-themed wrestler named "Timeless" Toni Storm was featured on a charming crossover with TCM, host Ben Mankiewicz introducing Toni Storm as though she really was a contemporary to Joan Crawford or Orson Welles. (She's one of the best, by the way – I've written about her All About Eve-esque story before).

It's not even the first instance of the wrestlers having their likenesses turned into illustration: with DC Comics having put out some (surreal) crossover comics featuring the roster hanging out with the Justice League. It's all good business, but the sincerity with which the involved artists have leapt into these collabs have kept it from feeling like a slide on a marketing presentation, especially when you have artists like Daniel Warren Johnson, who constantly likens wrestlers to superheroes by having them share moves (Absolute Batman recently hit Kenny Omega's 'One Winged Angel', before that his takes on Beta Ray Bill and Optimus Prime were throwing "Rainmaker" ripcord lariats). 

Anyway, the first of these animated shorts, directed by Mike Carlo (an animator on Ha Ha You Clowns), produced and written by Nic Collins, went up yesterday. It's focused on some myth-making around the backstory of the wrestler Darby Allin. 

Allin is perhaps one of the most notable representatives of what stands out about AEW as an alternative American wrestling promotion. My note about how big and muscular these wrestlers are was in part to emphasize the difference here: he's small and lithe, a relatively pint-sized wrestler who paints himself like a skeleton before his matches. That contrast is a classic one: there are plenty of 'David & Goliath' matches out there, usually entertaining for seeing how the little guy is gonna get out of this one. Even in the same company there's the idiosyncratic Orange Cassidy, another wrestler of slim build who gained a reputation for Road Runner style antics, outfoxing opponents by frustrating them first. 

The key to Allin is that he's simply kinda insane: notorious for daredevil moves to compensate for that disadvantage. He hurls himself at his opponents in a do-or-die strategy that often has the morbid appeal of watching a car wreck. I mean, just look at this.  

It makes for spectacular television, seeing this mascot for 00s goths abandon all caution and hurl himself from the top rope, miss, and bounce off a ring apron like a rubber ball, only to get back up anyway and try again. The antics are tied into his extracurriculars: Darby is a skateboarder and lover of extreme sports (I'm pretty sure he's associated with the guys behind Jackass), and when not climbing Mount Everest (!) he can often be found jumping ATVs off of dirt ramps or something similar. 

The commentators often underline that he's "resilient," that he can't be killed despite all the punishment he takes in his matches. So Tales From The Top Rope takes this ball and runs with it, spinning it into something supernatural. It's immediately, winsomely goofy – with Collins (who sounds uncannily like Jon Hamm) narrating a Twilight Zone-style opening with grave seriousness about the strange world behind the curtain of wrestling as broken chairs and tables float through the cosmos. "Darby Allin has cheated death all his life," the narrator continues as the wrestler skates through darkened streets with his hood up, with a reflection of the Grim Reaper looking back at him through the reflections in shop windows. Later, Darby is offered a bargain by Death: jump a skateboard over this giant ravine and gain power. Death tries to cheat him, Darby beats him anyway. It's a funny way to get to the heart of his appeal, one which turns a hardcore deathmatch in a local gymnasium into a conduit between earth and the planes of hell.

In doing so, the animation appears a little 'crude', for lack of a better term, like a Flash video that you might see on Newgrounds. But this feels right – not just like an extension of a young artist filling in the blanks of their favorite wrestlers, but also from the same internet forum lineage from which AEW is essentially birthed (its owner Tony Khan famously got involved on wrestling forums, for one). There's still some delightful, absurd imagery at play – like Darby popping an ollie off a grotesque demon. 

Even if the stylings of director Mark Carlo maybe paint Darby as much more stout and beefy than he appears in real life, which feels at odds with why the character is so compelling — a shame given how important it is to him as a wrestling figure: his resilience isn't through Herculean stature, it's all heart (and a bit of stolen power from the embodiment of Death). Regardless, it's a fun way of literalizing the kinds of stories wrestlers evoke through their presentation and their own bodies (and occasionally, a camera trick). It's not a project that's gonna blow minds through density of illustration or number of drawings, but it's a smart way to create more room for characters that feel larger than life: now they literally can be.