‘Invincible Fight Girl’ Creator Juston Gordon-Montgomery Wrestles With A Great Story
Sometimes it just feels good to hit something, right? RIGHT!? Invincible Fight Girl follows Andy, a young girl who dreams of becoming the greatest pro wrestler of all time. She assumes the wrestler alias “Fight Girl” and sets out into the wild and colorful Wrestling World, determined to make a name for herself. But her journey isn’t as easy as jumping into the ring and kicking some ass. As she strives to achieve wrestling stardom, Andy is joined by a collection of zany characters who all look to help her out… all while also attempting to achieve some dreams of their own.
Created by Juston Gordon-Montgomery, Invincible Fight Girl combines the heart of a tale of self-discovery with the action and brutality of some good old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat. The show not only borrows inspiration from anime, but it also pays homage to the world of wrestling. Invincible Fight Girl takes all of that glorious and over-the-top wrestling drama and packs it into a single narrative. And Gordon-Montgomery is no stranger to action-packed animation either. He has worked on projects such as Batman: Bad Blood, My Dad the Bounty Hunter, and DC Super Hero Girls.
Bubbleblabber sat down with Gordon-Montgomery to talk about the heart and soul of Invincible Fight Girl and why he’s ready to reintroduce wrestling to the world.
Matthew Swigonski: What inspired you to create Invincible Fight Girl? How did you come up with the concept?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: It sort of first started percolating for me back in 2016. To talk about what it was like to pursue your passions and your dreams. It’s kind of the central core and theme of the show. I felt like at the time, in the West, I hadn’t seen a lot of animation that was sort of broaching that or tackling that topic. And I was really interested in using a metaphor to do it rather than just overtly talking about it. At the time I was looking at shows like Pokemon or Naruto, and there are things that I really appreciated about those shows. Where they were kind of centered or centralized around a singular concept.
Like in the case of Pokemon, it’s these creatures. In Naruto, it’s a shinobi, and what is a shinobi, and what is a shinobi’s role in society. And the ways that the shows were sort of taking this sort of centralized concept and examining it from all these different angles and lenses. Extrapolating different meanings about people’s relationships with that concept, and their relationships with themselves and their communities.
And then sort of the way that they saw themselves and the ways that people exist with their dreams and their pursuits as they’re sort of grappling against all these different things. And so, to me, there was something really interesting about the possibility of doing that with something like wrestling. But using it as a lens, to talk about your passion and how you relate with it and the way that pursuing it can change you and sort of affect you. Maybe alter even the dreams that you do have for yourself.
Matthew Swigonski: Has the idea behind Invincible Fight Girl changed drastically since 2016?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: It was slowly and steadily coming together from 2016 to 2022. Sort of when we actually started production. But over that time, I had been pitching it and sort of refining it more and more and more. So it didn’t change a whole lot. I think it just became more refined. And I think the ability to use that metaphor and speak to it and analyze it from all the different lenses. I think I just became better at the ability to use that as a talking point.
At some point, there was a choice to make the show much more serialized than it began. Just in the beginning, I wasn’t really sure what it was. And then at some point, it was like, “Oh, I think this needs to be serialized in order to really tackle that to the fullest extent.” Because a lot of it is about the progression of a character. And it’s about their growth and it’s about seeing them change over a period of time.
Matthew Swigonski: A lot has happened since 2016. Can you point to the biggest challenge that you faced while developing the show?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: I think one of the toughest things is when we just got into production, and even sort of before that. When we were just sort of right on the cusp of being greenlit. There are just a lot of changes in the industry in terms of what they were looking for. And even in our company, just different leadership changes.
So it was not necessarily easy. To have this concept and this thing that we’re trying to do. Which at the time, you know back in 2016, wasn’t really a staple in the West. And sort of try to stick to that and still be this thing that we want to do as the industry is constantly changing around us, and then we get to 2021 and 2022. As we were starting production, I think one of the biggest changes is that original properties aren’t necessarily a big thing anymore. That especially was a big challenge. At a certain point, it sort of feels like we’re this very small fish in a very large pond.
Matthew Swigonski: Invincible Fight Girl premiered back on November 2. How does it feel to finally cross that finish line?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: Yeah, it’s huge. There are a lot of shows and a lot of creators who are very talented and had excellent, just incredible ideas, that didn’t make it to the finish line. So it feels great. I also feel extremely fortunate. It feels like, by luck, we just managed to sort of dodge all the bullets along the way. It feels like the fact that now that it’s out there, everything else that happens after that is kind of like a cherry on top.
Matthew Swigonski: You talked about wrestling. Was that something you always had a passion for?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: Yeah, my relationship with wrestling began for me at a very young age. Coming home at night and watching Monday Night Raw. Watching all this stuff at night time, because you know, I’ve got a TV in my room. It’s supposed to be off and I’m like turning it on to watch wrestling. I’m also a 90s kid. So wrestling kind of had a little bit of a different place in pop culture, where it was even more prominent than it is now. I think it’s starting to have a resurgence now. But back then, it was really in the zeitgeist. It kind of occupied a lot of this cultural bandwidth. So for me, it’s always been something that I’ve been passionate about.
In terms of actually sort of incorporating it into the show, I think we sort of lucked out in the fact that a lot of our leadership already had a similar love for wrestling. So it was very easy to immediately start speaking the same language. But then, on top of that, there was an additional fun journey that we got to go on, you know? It’s one thing to watch it. But it’s a different thing to try to understand it mechanically and understand how you can use it to incorporate into fights and stories. To be used as a tool to further our storytelling.
So that was an extra journey that we got to go on. Something that we all like, but we had to sort of look at it a little bit differently and go like, “Okay, we love just watching the matches. But let’s start breaking down why different things are happening and how that’s allowing the wrestlers that were watching to create and advance into different moves and different choreography.”
Matthew Swigonski: So who was your guy back then?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: For me, it was Randy Savage. I mean it’s still Randy Savage. He’s a character who I just love in terms of actual fighting. Undertaker was fantastic to watch. Big Show was fantastic to watch. Brock Lesnar, Kurt Angle, and Rey Mysterio, I mean, you know, all of those guys from that era.
Matthew Swigonski: You already touched on it, but were those wrestling plotlines, with all that drama and that sense of humor, something that you paid attention to in order to try and inject into your story?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: Yeah. I think the question was always to try to take what wrestling is, at least with what we saw. Which was this fun drama that was mixed with humor and really in-depth storylines that had a mythology to them. To try to bring that to an animated storytelling medium and serialize it.
Instead of seeing all these different characters and all these different storylines, we start with one character, who’s going to be Andy. And then start to build outwards, you know? Sort of like when Andy meets a character and then that leads us into that character’s mythology and that journey that they’re going to go on. That character meets a different character and that gives us more insight into the world. And maybe that character eventually meets Andy too, as sort of a way of world-building.
Matthew Swigonski: Speaking of journey, you’ve been on a journey throughout your whole career. So far, you’ve taken on a whole bunch of different roles in animation. Do you think that that’s helped you navigate this long production?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: I think so. I think I’ve been lucky enough to do almost every job in animation. And I think that sort of versatility has been really helpful on this project because so much of it is… we didn’t have a lot of time. So we had to be fast and accurate. We had to kind of nail it every time and so we had a lot of that come down to trying to communicate with everyone, who all use a different language based off of the department that they’re in.
A lot of that came down to trying to convey this thing that we’re doing. It’s a show in its first season, so there’s already going to be some kinks to work out. And also, it’s sort of in this ecosystem where, like I said, there’s not a whole lot of original animation being done. So, there’s a lot of information that has to be conveyed to different people very quickly. I think I’ve been fortunate in that all of the different types of experiences I’ve had have allowed me to be able to switch between the different dialects that are necessary to speak to everyone. To get the best out of them.
Matthew Swigonski: Is there one episode of Invincible Fight Girl that you look forward to the most for fans to watch?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: We’ve sort of done a build-up to a big fight that’s coming. It’s Andy versus Brandon, that’s going to be a big one. I think people are really going to dig it. Then we’ve got a couple more really, really big fights as the season goes on. And each one, I think the audience is going to see that we’re kind of increasing the stakes or increasing the tension.
We’re also kind of taking them on a little bit on a crash course tour into the world of wrestling. So if people haven’t seen wrestling or they’re not familiar with it, the way that we organize our fights, our storytelling, and the way that the fights ramp up towards the end of the season, they will notice. We’re introducing them to different concepts of wrestling, you know?
So, Andy’s first fight was kind of her just flying by the seat of her pants. But now we’re going to start to introduce wrestling and hopefully by the end of the season, if people haven’t experienced a whole lot of wrestling themselves, they’re going to have a pretty good primer on what it consists of. I think hopefully they will be encouraged to go check it out themselves.
Matthew Swigonski: If you had a chance to convince viewers who are on the fence about watching the show, what would be your main selling point?
Juston Gordon-Montgomery: We’re in kind of a crazy time right now. So people want a fun show that is gonna be a nice distraction from the craziness of the world. We’ve got some high-stakes action as well as a lot of heart. And we’re also talking about real stuff. Especially in a day and age like today. Like what does it mean to follow your dreams? And how much is asked of you to do that and how hard is it? And ultimately, is it worth it in the end?
You can check out Invincible Fight Girl on Adult Swim at 12 AM on Saturdays or stream new episodes on Max every Sunday.
