The Undertaker. Danhausen. El Santo. Every wrestler needs a good gimmick: a colorful in-ring persona that dazzles the crowd. Then there’s wrestling champ Shane Bryant. Shane’s a “nice guy” who floats through life with no repercussions and a forgettable gimmick. But Shane’s been keeping a life-changing secret: he has super strength. And when he loses control of that strength, punching his fist straight through his opponent’s brain—in front of 2.4 million horrified viewers—everything changes. Now Shane needs a new gimmick—and a new life.

Welcome to The Gimmick, a Coen Brothers–style dark comedy from AHOY Comics, writer Joanne Starer, artist Elena Gogou, colorist Andy Troy, letterer Rob Steen, and editor Tom Peyer. The Gimmick features covers by Eisner Award-winning The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl artist Erica Henderson, and issue 1 features a variant cover by Excellence artist Khary Randolph.

In the series, the now fugitive Shane Bryant flees to Tijuana, where he begins a career as a masked wrestler. But Shane’s life has too many loose ends to make a clean escape possible. His manipulative mother, his ex-girlfriend, his child, the friends he left behind, and the daughter of the man he killed all want a piece of him….

The debut issue of The Gimmick will be released on March 8, 2023.