I posted this in the Bonus Art section as well, but I have no idea how many, if any, of you actually read that section at all. Actually I’m not sure if any of you really read THIS section much either, but meh.
I’ve been watching a bunch of stuff from Japan recently, and as a result I’ve been making notes and developing ideas to use later on in the comic. Part of those notes were a big list of Japanese wrestler names that I came up with, and I decided to take a crack at designing one of the first ones I thought of, Michi Okagawa. Michi was the name of my dad’s Japanese business partner when he was over there all the time in the late ’80s/early ’90s, and Okagawa was the result of forgetting whether Yoshinari Ogawa’s last name was Ogawa (which it is) or Okawa (which it is not). I was going to go with one of them, then couldn’t remember which one was attached to a semi-legendary-by-association wrestler and which one was made up, so I mashed them together and went with the result of that instead.
The “Diamond King” nickname came from the idea that he should have gear based on the suits of a card deck. I don’t know why I thought that, but in my brain at the time that was very important. Then I started thinking about “king of ______” which morphed into “the Diamond King” when it occurred to me that he could use Diamond Dust as a finisher.
I’m not sure at what point in the card suit thought process I decided to use Hiroshi Tanahashi’s tights as a basis for the design, although that may have been influenced by the fact that he was on the cover of a Japanese wrestling magazine I had on my drawing desk. It doesn’t hurt that he’s the 100% Ace of the Universe and has really cool gear, I suppose. Actually, he’s basically Suwama’s head on Tanahashi’s body. Which I suppose is fitting for a character that will be holding a major title, since Suwama was the AJPW Triple Crown holder in most of the DVDs I was watching, and Tanahashi was the NJPW IWGP Heavyweight Champion.
Also, it just occurred to me that this guy won’t be appearing in the comic for at least a year. So… SUPER sneak preview!
Love the drawing! Thanks for describing how you came up with the character name and the design and whatnot–I love that stuff. I have reams of notes on wrestlers I designed for a might-never-get-done animation series, with a “kayfabe” section on each data sheet explaining the real origins of the names and whatnot. I find that sort of stuff fascinating.
Glad you dug it, Ted! I’m going to try to do stuff like this more often, since I know there are people out there who are into it.