BOOM! Studios’ WWE Comic Gears Up for WrestleMania & the Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens Rivalry

Plenty of licensed wrestling comics have come and gone throughout the decades, but none have had the success and staying power of BOOM! Studios’ WWE ongoing. The franchise has been going strong for over a year with a monthly title penned by Dennis Hopeless with art from Serg Acuña, Doug Garbark and Jim Campbell, and monthly back-ups from guest creators. Fleshing out BOOM!’s license are annual specials centered around the WWE’s “big four” pay-per-view events, with shorts that follow historic moments and figures in WWE’s history—including a second WrestleMania special, out this week.

Professional wrestling sits in the middle of a weird Venn diagram blending sports and scripted television, where extremely talented athletes find themselves embroiled in storylines with demons and supernatural cult leaders. It’s easy for wrestling media to play to “smarks”—smart marks, fans who pride themselves on insider knowledge of the “real” business of pro wrestling—or to lean so far into the comedic, supernatural elements that it loses the relatable warmth that endears some wrestlers, whose only magic may be their incredible skill, to fans.

The BOOM! Studios WWE team has managed to straddle that fine line in storylines centering around fan-favorite stable The Shield, and currently, the Women’s Revolution; Hopeless, Acuña and Garbark weave wrestling’s wilder elements like the eerie Wyatt Family or the gregarious New Day with extremely heartfelt storylines like Seth Rollins’ recovery from injury or Bayley, Sasha, Charlotte and Becky Lynch’s rise through NXT to become the faces of a major shift in how women’s wrestling is treated in the WWE.

Now BOOM! has announced the fourth arc of the series, starting this June: the story of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, one of the most emotional, longest-running rivalries in modern wrestling history. We talked to BOOM! Editor Eric Harburn and Associate Editor Chris Rosa about their thoughts on this upcoming arc, and Sami and Kevin’s upcoming match at WrestleMania. The arc kicks off in WWE #18, available this June, and this year’s WrestleMania annual special just hit shelves this week.

WWE #18 Cover Art by Dan Mora

Paste: First thing’s first: Sami Zayn versus Kevin Owens at WrestleMania. How are you feeling?
Chris Rosa: Well, now with the Sami/KO match morphing into a tag-team showdown between Sami and KO vs. Shane-O-Mac and THE RETURNING DANIEL BRYAN, all bets are off. The original Sami/KO clash was going to be epic, but now, this rivalry will take its place among the greatest Wrestlemania moments, no matter which team comes out on top. That said, Eric has a deep, deep hatred for ska music, so it’s safe to say he’s Team Yes! all the way..

Paste: What drew you to this rivalry? Is this a story you’ve been itching to tell in the comics?
Eric Harburn: This program has really been an embarrassment of riches—there are just so many epic characters and stories to explore over the 40+ years of WWE history that it’s impossible for us to tackle them all. Sami and KO have been on our list (ahem) since the beginning, and we’re very happy to have the chance to take a deep dive into their stories.