Review by Ian Keogh
As the Minotaur Dan Knossos was once a headline wrestler, but when readers meet him that’s long in the past and he’s burning his bridges in Japan just as he has done in the USA. He’s returning home to sort out a few things, and over an engaging opening chapter Joe Keatinge drops hints rather than nailing specifics. Among the hints dropped readers can figure out that Dan is gay, that his former boyfriend Teddy is in trouble, that his blowout with the wrestling franchise was massive, and he’s not one to let anything go.
We’re toured around a few other older wrestlers, only one of them still in the game, and given the downside of professional wrestling. The companies set up the wrestlers’ identities and trademark them along with the names. Cross the company, in this case CMW, and a wrestler is almost back to being an unknown, unable to trade on their public persona. The contrast between the cynical older wrestler and the aspiring newcomer is astutely drawn, and Keatinge goes on to explain exactly what kind of toll wrestling takes on the body in a downbeat return home for Dan.
Ringside is rather a noir gem. Dan’s character transmits as credible from the start, as does the world he left, and Keatinge surrounds him with similarly rounded characters, people whose motivations are easy to understand. Nick Barber conveys their emotional state well, and designs people who can be distinguished. In an ideal world he’d vary his viewpoints from primarily head and shoulders shots with minimal background, and the results of a beating would be drawn with greater finesse, but the storytelling is solid, and the pages keep turning.
Amid the present day tension of Dan looking for ways to help Teddy, Ringside drops back to look at their relationship in younger days, although the flashbacks are designed to illuminate a particular moment rather than present a linear progression. They show the risks Teddy took and who he associated with, both likely reasons for whatever trouble he’s now in. That’s revealed in the final chapter, predictable enough, but it doesn’t need to be anything greatly original as it’s the effect on Dan that’s important.
The volume title, by the way, is the term used in the wrestling industry to signify scripted “reality”, and by the end of this opening volume that seems to be what Dan has in mind, just not in terms of the wrestling ring. Everything about Kayfabe is designed to hook the reader and keep them intrigued, and it’s a job professionally done. How Dan’s plans play out can be seen in Work.
