If you know me well, no doubt you’ve had to listen to me mention, more than once, just how impressed I was with wrestling-based comic book Ringside, which came out at the tail end of 2015 and ended its run in 2018 with its fifteenth issue.

Though Ringside is set against the backdrop of professional wrestling, the world it portrays is far from the entertaining, silly, pantomime-with-muscles ambience that you’d normally expect.

Ringside, in high concept terms, is Dark Side of the Ring meets Breaking Bad; it’s grim, gritty and feels uncomfortably close to the truth of what we don’t see on screen, or presented to us at live events.

It’s a tale of broken, used up, desperate men and their attempts to escape the cycle of violence that’s haunted their lives for so long.

This first issue mostly focuses on ex-pro wrestler Danny Knossos – known back in his heyday as ‘The Minotaur’, an identity that he’s keen to continually distance himself from.

Despite it being his character, this alias is owned by the wrestling promotion he used to work for; an early indicator of just how much the business demands of its performers, before keeping much of what their stars build for themselves.

Having burned numerous bridges in the industry, Danny is heading back to the US to help out his ex-boyfriend, Teddy – who’s got himself into some serious, unspecified trouble.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take too long before the trouble Teddy’s got himself into comes looking for Danny, with horrific consequences.

Right from the start, Ringside is an engaging, compelling read. The naturalistic dialogue – sometimes peppered with behind-the-curtain wrestling lingo – is brilliantly written by Joe Keatinge and illustrated in an appropriately gritty, fairly understated manner by Nick Barber. The muted colours by Simon Gough further add to the dark, realism-based feel.

It’s a genuinely impressive, gripping, character-based crime drama that – in this first issue – manages to also demonstrate how the wrestling industry uses and discards its talent.

It’s only the beginning, but this first issue does a superb job with characterisation and introduces us to a number of different personalities that we’ll get to know a lot better over the course of its run.

I’m definitely looking forward to re-reading the entire saga, taking me beyond the glitz and glamour of the ring and into the darkness and tragedy beyond the squared circle.

You can read the first issue of Ringside for free online at Image Comics here.