Got a question this morning that I’m thinking a lot of folks have: Where do I start listening to SKALD!? Seeing as The Only Story That Matters now boasts more than 100 episodes, I understand how it could be kind of intimidating. But it shouldn’t be!

While SKALD is serialized, I’ve always written it like how monthly comics SHOULD be written: Each episode is a part of a whole, but also a satisfying unit on its own. That means that you should absolutely feel free to jump in with the most recent episode, especially since I’ve been steadily improving at doing this thing over the past two years.

But if you’d rather start with the beginning of a particular story, that’s doable too, and you don’t even have to go all the way back to episode 001. That’s because each 16 episode chunk of SKALD is a “cycle,” which means that you can feel free to pick up the story at 017, 033, 049, 065, 081 or 097. All the episodes are available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and at skald.podomatic.com.

Finally, if you want a kind of SKALD bootcamp, a way to get up to speed as quickly as possible, you can also check out the SKALD prose volumes at http://amzn.to/2oyKQWS.

But once again, you should ABSOLUTELY feel comfortable jumping in with the most recent episode, because not only can you always go back to pick up what you missed, but because there will be a brand-new episode released next week!

Here’s something I hate: People getting made fun of for working out. “How much do you bench?” “You should have a BROtein shake!” It’s a classic case of the bullied searching for absolutely any way to, themselves, become the bullies, which is, incidentally, the definition of a nerd: Someone who learned the absolute wrong lessons from getting picked on.

Mocking people for exercising – for investing time and energy in their health and well-being – also props up a binary that’s not only nonsense, but actually damaging. This idea that you can’t be both smart and strong, that your mental acumen is somehow inversely related to your physical ability is frankly, nonsense. Human beings aren’t characters in Dungeons & Dragons, with limited points to apply across their ability scores, and this false dilemma (”Do I want to be smart or strong?”) gives the lazy – both mentally and physically – an easy out for why they don’t put the work in to improve themselves.

I got taken in by this binary. I thought, for far, far too long, that not only did I not need to be fit or in good shape, but that by doing so, I’d somehow lessen what I saw as my core strength: This big, beautiful brain of mine. It was nonsense, and thankfully, in the past year, it’s a bit of conditioning that I’m proud to say that I’ve broken myself fully out of.

And in doing so? I’ve learned something absolutely invaluable: Exercise is magic. Not in a figurative or allegorical sense, but actual, real, observable magic.

At its core, exercise is transformative – by pushing yourself, by running faster, by lifting heavier, by working harder, you can literally transform your body. It doesn’t happen overnight, obviously, but nothing worth a damn ever does. But exercise can also be magical in another way, as it is, rather than a purely physical act, a synthesis of the body, the mind and the spirit, which all have to work together to achieve your goal.

And this has been the big realization for me. Just like I falsely believed exercise to be a merely physical act – one that debased my mind and soul – I also falsely believed magic to be a strictly spiritual or mental activity. For some people, it may very well be, but I know that for me…it doesn’t work that way.

I’ve tried to meditate. I’ve tried ritual magic. I’ve tried sigil work. And while I’ve had intermittent success with it, it was never anything tangible, never anything real, never anything that was lasting and consistent and reliable. And that…that’s the core of chaos magic – figuring out what works, figuring out a way to trick your mind into believing what’s expedient and powerful, so that you can affect the world around you.

I needed something more physical. I needed something visceral and tangible, and sitting quietly, visualizing sigils and trying to navigate the astral plane…it just didn’t cut it. 

I think that that approach to magic, the Crowley-esque wizard, the magician that operates primarily in a mental and/or spiritual place…it’s limiting. Magic can and should be a physical experience. A visceral, primal experience. More shaman than magus. 

And that? That’s what exercise, that’s what working out, has given me the past year. The success I’ve had? Whether personal or professional, I trace it directly back to the magical work that I do at the gym every day. It’s centering. It expels the poison. It gives me focus and reminds me of the power I have – the ability to change and transform the tangible, whether it’s my own body or the physical world at large.

To my mind, that’s the true power of chaos magic: You find what works for you – whatever it is – you find a way to hack your own mind, body and soul, to give yourself the kind of spiritual feeling that unites all three and sends shivers up and down your spine. And then, with that knowledge, with the power to create belief out of nothing, to create truth where there is none…you can shape the world into what you want it to be, what you need it to be. In short: You can do anything.

The second issue of BOOM!’s WWE comics is on sale today. This is significant for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, Dennis Hopeless, Serg Acuña and the rest of the team are doing amazing work. They’re taking a subgenre (licensed wrestling comics) that’s usually…not great and doing something new, exciting and excellent with it. The other point of significance? It contains an Ultimate Warrior back-up story by myself and the legendary Ed McGuinness.

If you’ve been keeping up with me and the changes to my wrestling talk show, STRAIGHT SHOOT, you have probably already said, out-loud or to yourself, “Now hold on a minute there…” That’s because just last week, I spent 90 minutes talking to PWG’s Excalibur about my decision to no longer cover WWE on STRAIGHT SHOOT based on the McMahon family’s support of Donald Trump. In light of that, this could easily be seen as an astounding bit of hypocrisy from me. That’s why I hope you’ll allow me to say a few things in my preemptive defense.

First up: I started working on this story back in August of last year. Back in those halcyon days when most of us assumed, or at least hoped, that a former reality TV star wouldn’t make it all the way to the White House. Obviously, the McMahons and WWE still had their connection to Trump, but at the very least, they weren’t actively funding an authoritarian regime attempting to enact and enforce bigoted policies. It was, in a very real way, a different time.

Additionally, this is something that Excalibur and I actually covered on the show, in the context of Sami Zayn, a Syrian-Canadian wrestler currently working for WWE. Where we both landed was that Zayn, as a guy who has worked for decades to get where he is and achieve a dream he’s had, shouldn’t be expected to throw that all away because of something that happened in the last few months – even though Trump’s policies cruelly target Syrian refugees. Whether or not you agree with that line of logic is up to you, obviously, but if you’re onboard with it, I’d argue that the same thing applies to me here. I’ve worked to become a comic book writer since I was a teenager. It’s always been my end-goal. So no, I’m not particularly interested in causing a scene or blowing up relationships at BOOM!, which is a company that has been extremely supportive of me and absolutely great to work with.

You might see that as hypocrisy, and again: That’s your prerogative. But I’d hasten to point out is that I have never supported or suggested a boycott of WWE. In that entire 90 minute episode of STRAIGHT SHOOT, I said again and again that all of these types of moral decisions about what you consume or create are extremely personal in nature. Much like art/artist separation. My decision to stop covering WWE wasn’t as part of a boycott, or because of some kind of moral categorical imperative, but rather, because of something far more personal: Continuing to cover and promote them made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like the way it made me feel and I didn’t want to do it anymore. By contrast, having a two-page story out about one of my all-time favorite wrestlers (who is, himself, extremely problematic)…it just doesn’t give me the same level of discomfort as what amounts to a weekly, 90 minute advertisement for the current WWE product.

The fact of the matter is that in a capitalist system…all of our hands are dirty. There are folks out there who take a hard line – on both sides of things – stating that you shouldn’t support any company that does things that you disagree with politically or morally. That’s all fine and good, but personally…I have no interest in going off and living in a cave (yet, at least), and that’s the only way you could accomplish that. The Uber/Lyft thing from a few weeks ago is a perfect object lesson: Folks dumped Uber in favor of Lyft only to find out that the rich guys in charge of Lyft were also Trump supporters. We’ve all got blood on our hands, especially once you expand things out to hand out culpability based on tax dollars. Drone attacks that kill innocent children? We all paid for those.

Whether you see me as a hypocrite or not? That’s up to you. Whether you want to buy the issue or not? That’s up to you too. Moral choices are personal in nature and there are no black & white answers, especially in a late capitalist system like the one we find ourselves in.

That being said…if you’re comfortable with it, if you want the best licensed wrestling comics ever made, if you want to see me and McGuinness tear it up on an Ultimate Warrior story that highlights everything I love about that extremely problematic guy…you should go pick up WWE #2 today, either in your local comic shop or digitally on Comixology.