With a Marvel story in Thor Annual #1 already under his belt, former WWE Superstar CM Punk is wasting little time moving ahead with his passion for writing comics. Not only has he landed his first ongoing series with Guardians of the Galaxy's Drax, but his oddball/baseball piece for DC debuts today in Strange Sports Stories #3.

I had the chance to talk to Punk about his frightfully funny new Vertigo tale, his thoughts on the upcoming Preacher TV adaptation, Drax challenges, and how crafting comics compares to UFC training.

IGN Comics: I have to say, I really liked your story. It was a funny take on the idea of sports superstitions.

CM Punk: Oh, that's fantastic. I'm hypersensitive about this one because I'm actually super-proud of it, so that means a lot to me.

IGN: People know you from wrestling and now from UFC. And also your hockey fandom. The story you've written is about baseball though. Can you talk about growing up with that sport?

Punk: Well, of course, there are two baseball teams in Chicago. The Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox. And it really seemed, at a young age, that you couldn't like both of them. It was either one of the other. And if you were a Cubs fan you were supposed to hate the White Sox fans. And vice versa. At least that's how my interpretation of things went. And they have what's known as the Crosstown Classic every year where the Cubs play the Sox and it's a couple games at Wrigley and a couple games at U.S. Cellular Field. So there's an interesting attitude regarding both teams. When the White Sox were in the World Series in 2005 you didn't see a lot of crossover fans, even though it's the same city, pulling for the other team. So there's an interesting dynamic.

IGN: Your story is about a team being cursed but you heighten the various curses and make them supernatural and dangerous. Do you think believing in a sports curse is endearing or do you think it hurts the game?

Punk: Being a Cubs fan it's hard not to always think about how they haven't won a World Series in over a hundred years. If you're not a Cubs fan, it's a bullseye. It's an easy target to pick on. Cubs fans will say they haven't been good because of this or that, or because of the Billy Goat Curse, and so I really just got fascinated with the whole idea of a team being that bad for over a century because of a silly curse. And is there anything to it? I know plenty of ball players and hockey players and some of them are ultra superstitious. So it's just kind of an interesting subject for me. Plus, I'm a huge Universal monster movie fan and a lot of those movies - especially The Wolfman - were presented as a curse. This is a curse. So there are two extremes. Like, this baseball season's no good because of a curse or I turn into a murderous werewolf because of a curse.

IGN: Obviously, you're in the UFC now and it's a whole new endeavor. But so is comic book writing. And it's non-physical. How is the process of writing comics for you? How are you adapting to taking a story and putting it in a set number of pages, within a certain amount of time?

Punk: It's kind of nerve-racking, honestly. I train hard every day, you know. And some days are better than others. Sometimes I punch someone in the face and sometimes I get punched in the face. But I can deal with that outcome because it's instantaneous. It's in the moment and you can learn. Writing is a little bit harder because you have to go through this whole process before fans have gotten a chance to read any of it yet. So the verdict's still out. It's a much longer wait for a payoff. So it's a little nerve-racking.

IGN: You've been a comic book fan for a long time and have a lot of favorite writers. Did you pull from any of them for your story? Were there any influences?

Punk: You know, I can't honestly cite a direct influence here. Obviously, I have my favorites but no one person really influenced me here. Aside from maybe my editor. But I didn't set out to write, you know, a Frank Miller style comic book or anything like that. I really tried to just find my own voice and my own flow. I really had the creative freedom to do whatever I wanted, but it's a work in progress. I'm learning on the job and hopefully I'll get a little bit of praise out of it.

IGN: The art from Andy MacDonald really fit with the story. It worked with the supernatural stuff and it also felt nostalgic. Like you'd expect from an age-old sports story. What was your collaboration process like?

Punk: You know, I think maybe I had one or two suggestions along the way. Like, make the tiger mauling a little more graphic. But other than that he nailed everything on the first go through. There wasn't a whole lot of back and forth. It was just me praising everything I saw. And I agree with you, it just really fit the tone. There wasn't a whole lot of deliberating. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted but I really didn't have an idea of who I wanted it to ultimately be doing the art. And so that's where Will Dennis, my lovely editor, stepped in and said "I know exactly what you're saying" and suggested Andy. And I looked at his work and I thought "This is amazing. He's probably perfect for this." And then he did a couple of sketches and it was dead on.

IGN: You're a big Vertigo fan and now you're a Vertigo writer. That has to be trippy.

Punk: Yeah, that hasn't really set in yet. I'm trying to downplay it as much as I can, being like "Eh, it's only eight pages." But yeah, it's pretty wild. If you had told fifteen-year-old me that I'd be writing comic books, let alone for a Vertigo title, I wouldn't have believed it.

IGN: Speaking of Vertigo, what do you think of the Preacher adaptation that's currently in the works at AMC? Are you pro-adaptations or do you like things to remain on the page?

Punk: I'm a huge, huge Preacher fan. But I have to reserve judgement though and wait for the final product. Because the way these things always go, you always hear about it and then you immediately cast judgment on it. And I always go back to when Heath Ledger got cast as the Joker and everybody s*** all over it. It was a pretty knee-jerk reaction to have and now we have this masterpiece of dark, graphic novel comic book movie and Heath Ledger's Joker is pretty much the template for every single comic book movie villain on the big screen. So they might surprise me. And I think it'll be just because, on this side of things, I'm a little bit of a pessimist so I'll have lowered expectations. But I hope they pull it off and that it'll be way better than I expect.

IGN: Do you have any takeaways from this Sports Story and from your Thor work that might help you with comics going forward?

Punk: I really think the three things I've worked on so far have been so drastically different. And with Drax, I'll be writing the full book, so that's obviously more of an undertaking. So I'm still trying to get my feet under me. I'm still learning the ropes. But getting two shows stories out is a good introduction to how I write and a way to see if fans actually like my writing style. I think for the most part it's been positive. And each step has been helpful and now I'll be writing this full book. It's all great experience to have going forward.

Strange Sports Stories #3, featuring CM Punk's "The Most Cursed," becomes available Wednesday, May 13th.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/Showrenity.