GLOW No. 1: A romp with the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

The GLOW team shill for bucks so they can attend California’s premier wrestling event!

GLOW artwork by Hannah Templer (Courtesy of Netflix, published by IDW)

I can’t say I have a lot of time for all the Netflix half-hour dramedies that have flooded the streaming service recently. I love Bojack Horseman, and am pretty glad Trailer Park Boys have found a way to keep getting paid to do their thing, and thank the Universe for On My Block as well. I only have so much time though–they need to pace their release schedule a little better. I watched season one of Netflix’s GLOW and surprisingly adored it, but I haven’t started season two yet.

I take a lot of my entertainment in comic book form, my medium of choice since the 1980s. Which, by coincidence, is the decade that gave us GLOW: Gorgeous, Ladies, Of, Wrestling! Wrestling as a syndicated sports show works dramatically different from a half-hour ensemble sitcom, and a comic book works differently than either of those. IDW has built a large part of their monthly output on turning television shows into rock-solid comic series, so I assumed they’d know what to do with GLOW and put it in capable hands.

GLOW artwork by Hannah Templer (Courtesy of Netflix, published by IDW)

And they did. Writer Tini Howard (Euthanauts, The Forgotten Queen) and artist Hannah Templer (Cosmoknights, Jem, covers for Tomb Raider) have done a bang-up job translating the GLOW soap opera into four-color fun. Issue one starts off simply enough, the GLOW wrestlers are going on a road trip to SoCal’s Wrestlefest to promote themselves. Yay! The best part is, thanks to shifty sponsors, not only will the ladies not get paid, but they’ll also have to pay $75 bucks a piece for the honor. Boo! After this simple setup, the rest of the comic features a series of vignettes explaining how they each come up with their share.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s how Howard and Templer do it that matters. There’s a very Archie comics feel to this series, not the 2019 CW drama version, Riverdale, but the classic “Archie pulls a stunt and has to fix an increasingly stupid mess” vibe. It still reads like a contemporary story, the characters talk frankly about sex and drugs, but there’s a light whimsy about the whole affair.

When a comic book is based on an actual human being it helps if the illustrations look like those people. Templer’s Sam Sylvia looks like he does on GLOW, and he looks enough like Marc Maron that it feels “right” without being a distraction. Her caricatures aren’t stiff cut-outs captured from a paused screen. Everyone looks like they’re from the same world, they move and emote like humans in comic strips should. Templer’s drawing style makes the cast distinct and charming, and she can drop in a manga style reaction face when it fits.

GLOW artwork by Hannah Templer (Courtesy of Netflix, published by IDW)

The artwork wouldn’t be as effective without Howard giving everyone in the book the right voice, and scenes to help introduce the cast. After all, it’s not like GLOW is WWE (which she has also written) and everybody reading knows what to expect. Carmen Wade (AKA Machu Picchu) is the only member of GLOW who has wrestling in her past, and as such she gets to do the expositional heavy lifting in this issue, explaining Wrestlefest, and why the rest of the crew should be on their best behavior—after all the GLOW gals are going to be surrounded by “real wrestlers” and don’t want to embarrass themselves!

This chapter ends with a not-entirely unpredictable cliffhanger that raises the stakes nicely. Howard does a great job setting it all up. Even if I never get around to season two of GLOW, I look forward to issue two of this comic, and will keep an eye on the shelves for it.