What Superhero Comics Can Learn from WWE's Bayley & Sasha Banks

Steve Morris argues that comics' superhero universes could take a pointer from the story WWE wrestlers Bayley and Sasha Banks recently told.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/what-comics-can-learn-from-the-saga-of-wwes-bayley-sasha-banks

Pro wrestling fans have been contrasting comic book superheroes to pro wrestlers for...you know what, I don't know how long. But since both have origins in circus strongmen there's a lot of crossover, fandom included.

Some advantages to wrestling angles is that they kind of have to be something the audience can both relate to and get the gist of in five minutes, due to the way wrestling shows work, unlike comic book story lines, especially in the era of "decompression". Pro wrestling can only go so far outside the realm of plausibility if only because everything has to be physically done by the wrestlers themselves, be visible to fans to fans and, as profile increases, capable of filming. At sometime in the 1960s someone in superhero comics discovered they could just draw ridiculous things on panel and still get sales, a mentality I don't think has ever been shaken. Wrestlers, as real people, get old, change interests, get better deals and many other things that require they eventually be replaced and most often can't be replaced with functional duplicates. No matter how hard WWE holds onto the three month or seven year rules, Sherri Martel and Rockin Robbin run their course and the successors will all be different enough until Bayley and Banks are what you get. Comic casts are comparatively stagnant and thus so are plot and characterization. Pro wrestling is also a much more cooperative business. WWE may be in a bubble, but be it Martel, Robin, Bayley or Banks, they all came into the company knowing how to draw money to some extent with some established reputation. Comic book companies don't feed each other talent to nearly the same extent. Internally cooperative too. No matter how bad a WWE writer/agent/ect may be, they're fully capable of letting Banks or Bayley do most of the work and hoping that will result in something good(which ties back to fact that even though NXT is a 'developmental' program, both had already been gone through a lot of trial and error) and still be called doing their jobs. And a more cooperative fan experience. WWE tries very hard to ignore it's own fan base sometimes, but they still hear them and hear them immediately in regards to what they did or did not like rather than weeks to months after it is shipped. Pro wrestlers also have an advantage over any other story teller, the ability to modify the story as it's happening based on how fans react. They don't even have to change the overall plot but my god I never expected to get that chant, let me use that right now.

Moreover, because these wrestlers are real people who do visibly react when fans react to them, you don't just want payoffs for narrative reasons or to work the fans, you also have want to keep the careers of those people in tact. At "best" for WWE they might not only be decreasing a wrestler's ability to make money for them but to make money anywhere else but WWE could in fact end up with a suppressed star fans are desperate to see something done with who decides it will be hilarious to coax those fans to come watch them somewhere else.