First Look: AfterShock Announce New MMA Drama ‘Kill a Man’ From Orlando, Kennedy Johnson And Morgan

Writers Steve “Slugger’ Orlando & Phillip “Kick-Ass” Kennedy Johnson (a MMA practitioner), artist and colorist Alec “Mighty” Morgan (another MMA practitioner)and letterer “Jostling”Jim Campbell bring you a new Mixed Martial Arts underdog story with a slight difference in Kill a Man #1 announced by AfterShock today.

Coming out can be a pretty hard deal, but being outed and in the violent world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is brutal, as our hero James Bellyi very quickly finds out:

As a child, James Bellyi watched his father die in the ring as payback for slurs thrown at the other fighter. Today, he’s a Mixed Martial Arts star at the top of his game, and one of the most popular fighters in the world…until he’s outed as gay in his title shot press conference.

Abandoned overnight by his training camp, his endorsements, his fans and his sport, to regain his title shot Bellyi is forced to turn to the last person he ever wants to see again: Xavier Mayne, a gay, once-great fighter in his own right…and the man James once watched kill his father.

Writer Orlando wanted to point out just how different this story was in the world of combat sports narrative, not the action sub-genre you’d expect a story of this nature to take place:

Yes, we’ve seen combat sports narratives before. Yes, we’ve seen coming out and LGBTQ+ struggle narratives before. But a gay lead has never been allowed to be the star of this type of underdog, combat sports narrative before.

Here’s a first look at the debut issue, due out 6.3.2020.