Thinking about these Classic Wrestling Moments strips led to developing a lot of backstory for Mad Doc Crockett’s wrestling career. This particular portion of it involved Doc being a member of a stable called the Slaughterhouse 5, led by Slaughterhouse Bob Cook (who, in turn, developed a fair amount of mythology behind his character, and he’s never even been mentioned in the comic). Bors Lund resulted from having a lot of free time on my hands to draw in my sketchbook while working at the Canadian federal election a few months ago. I had ideas of what Mad Doc Crockett’s tag team partner would be like, and ended up getting paid to figure out his appearance during the very frequent periods of not having anything work-related to do.
Having watched wrestling from the late ’80s/early ’90s, back when tag team wrestling mattered, the idea that tag teams should wear matching (or at least similar) gear has always struck a chord with me, and is one of the things that has bugged me about the thrown-together teams of singles wrestlers that the WWE has been passing off as champions for the past few years. Doc and Bors are also kind of a thrown-together team of singles wrestlers, so I designed their gear to have some visual unity (in that they both wear black singlets) but also reflect their personalities, so Doc has a Scott-Hall-circa-1996 blood pattern while Bors has some vaguely-Japanese-inspired fire designs on the side and a big Slaughterhouse 5 logo on the chest.
Bors’ wrestling style was influenced a lot by the Japanese strong style, which is why I decided on a brainbuster for his finisher, and a spike brainbuster for his tag-team finish with Doc. Which was both difficult and a ton of fun to draw, by the way.
On Wednesday: With the second round of the Super Max Challenge looming, Doc attempts to drop some knowledge on his team.
