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The 5 Weirdest Sports Comics
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Dan Fitch /
29 January 2009 /
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Despite the fact that in both, the protagonists wear ridiculous costumes and run around a lot, the worlds of comic books and sports just don't gel well with one another.
Most comic book geeks are too busy getting beaten up by Flash Thompson-like jocks to be interested in sports, yet every now and again, someone gets the bright idea to launch a sports comic.
The logic is probably that they will attract new fans to the world of comic books, but the results are generally so dreadful that everyone ends up uninterested.
Here are the 5 weirdest sports comics.
5. NFL Superpro - Marvel
The short-lived Marvel title NFL Superpro has long been dismissed as being one of the worst comics of recent years. Written by the X-Men and Captain America scribe Fabian Nicieza, the plot-hole filled series reads as though the entire run of twelve issues were knocked off in one drunken weekend.
NFL Superpro tells the tale of Phil Grayfield, a football player whose career has been cut short due to a knee injury. In the first issue, Grayfield has begun a career as a sports journalist and gets the chance to interview the 'Howard Hughes of NFL memorabilia'.
Amongst the collection of cheap NFL-branded nonsense, is an indestructible football uniform, which the superfan (who is also conveniently a scientist) invented himself. The design never took off, because it could only be moulded on an individual basis, with each suit costing five million dollars to produce.
Whilst Grayfield goes about his fascinating interview, the house of the NFL-obsessed collector, is raided by criminals. For reasons best known to themselves, the criminals kidnap the collector, but eschew the chance to steal the five million dollar uniform or any of the other priceless merchandise. What's more, they decide to destroy the collection by setting fire to the house.
Grayfield is tied up with reel to reel movie tape (oh, come on) and left to die. As the fire blazes, Grayfield in his own words is: "Drenched in chemical foam, gasoline, plastics, and chemicals from the old films." As we all know from reading comic books, any faintly scientific sounding disaster results in super-powers. Before long, Grayfield is wearing the indestructible football uniform and is ready to fight crime.
Critics struggled to get their heads around the flaws in the plot. The suits were prohibitively expensive to produce, as they needed to be moulded to the size and shape of the individual, yet it conveniently fits Grayson perfectly. Also, upon saving the collector from the kidnappers, shouldn't Superpro return the five million dollar uniform? Instead he just steals it for himself. And what's with the sudden recovery from the knee problem that thwarted Grayson's NFL career?
So bad was the first issue, that it even featured Spider-Man making a guest appearance. Marvel normally wait at least a few issues, before they draft him in to boost sales on a failing title. The villains in the series were equally bad as the hero, with Quick Kick, the football placekicker turned ninja, undoubtedly the worst of a bad bunch.
NFL Superpro never recovered from it's inauspicious beginnings and folded after 12 issues. The idea of a super-hero running around wearing an NFL branded outfit, whilst cracking corny football related lines, was never going to go down well with the geek brigade.
4. Roy of the Rovers - IPC
Roy Race stands alongside Dan Dare and Judge Dredd as one of Britain's most iconic comic book characters. First appearing within the pages of Tiger in 1954, the Roy of the Rovers strip became popular enough to spawn it's own comic in 1976.
The comic focused on the exploits of Roy Race, centre-forward for the fictional Melchester Rovers and England (not a fictional nation). Race had a legendary left-foot shot, nicknamed 'Racey's Rocket' and would seem to score at least one unstoppable goal each week.
Melchester faced other fictional teams, though bizarrely when on England duty, Roy would line up alongside real players such as Malcolm McDonald and Trevor Francis. Another characteristic of the comic were the exposition-heavy comments made by individual members of the crowd, in which they seemed to hold conversations, despite being sat miles away from one another.
Roy of the Rovers only got really weird in the early eighties, when it abandoned it's focus on the on-field action and moved into areas more associated with a soap opera. Storylines in this period included Roy's wife leaving him and a whodunit after Race was shot by a mystery gunman. Most shocking of all, was the kidnapping of Melchester Rovers by Arab terrorists whilst on tour in the fictional Middle-Eastern nation of Basran, in which six of the team members lost their lives.
The nadir for Roy of the Rovers came in 1985, with a headline grabbing storyline in which Melchester signed the former real-life England captain Emlyn Hughes and the former Scotland goalkeeper Bob Wilson (who at this point had been retired for eleven years). As if this wasn't bad enough, fans of the comic were forced to suspend belief, as Rovers also brought in Martin Kemp and Steve Norman, of Spandau Ballet fame. Yes, really.
Roy Race's illustrious playing career came to an end in 1993, after his trusty left foot was amputated after a helicopter crash. The comic continued, as Race began a coaching career and his young son 'Rocky' Race made the Melchester first team. The comic ended it's run in 1995, though in 1997 it resurfaced as a strip in the now defunct Match of the Day magazine, which folded in 2001.
R.I.P. Racey.
3. Kickers, Inc. - Marvel
Not to be put off by the disaster that was NFL Superpro, Marvel decided that they would try out another football-themed comic book. The book would feature, not just one, but a whole team of football players turned crime fighters. Yeah, that'll work! All I can guess is that the writers were given loads of free football tickets.
Jack 'Mr Magnificent' Magniconte is the star quarterback of the fictional New York Smashers. His brother invents a machine to increase muscle mass and persuades Jack to test it out. The machine gives Jack superhuman fitness levels, which results in him finding the NFL rather unchallenging. I mean we all know The Flash could thrash Usain Bolt in the 100 metres, but what would be the point?
Bored silly after winning the Super Bowl, Jack decides to form Kickers, Inc. with some of his football buddies. These include the Smashers' defensive tackle Beauford 'Brick Wall' Wohl (who is ridiculously, about as big as The Thing), lightning-quick wide receiver Dallas 'Dasher' Corbin and locker room joker Thomas 'Suicide' Smythe. They are also joined by Jack's wife Darlene, because crime fighting gets lonely without your woman with you on the road.
Though Kickers, Inc. was nowhere near as bad as NFL Superpro, Marvel still called time on it after twelve issues. Jack Magniconte continued to appear in Marvel's New Universe comics, becoming known as 'the All-American'.
2. Triple-A Baseball Heroes - Marvel
Many fathers try to bond with their young sons by taking them to baseball games. The trouble is, kids have ever shortening attention spans, whilst baseball games last around three hours.
Marvel decided to capitalise on the boredom of the young, when they produced the comic book Triple-A Baseball Heroes. The comic was given away free to fans on special days by each of the thirty teams in the International and Pacific Coast Leagues of Triple-A.
The book features the likes of Spiderman, The Hulk, Iron Man and Reed Richards, who are all attending a Triple A game. As with most of these promotional comics, there are some pretty clumsy moments involving our heroes extolling the virtues of the product (see below).
The superheroes have to defend the Triple-A ballparks, after they come under attack from Mole Man, who is out for revenge after the league rejected his plans to start a Monster Island expansion plan.
With the issue predictably resolved by the heroes, the comic finishes with The Hulk playing baseball in exchange for some hotdogs. The best you can say about this comic is that at least Marvel weren't trying to get anyone to pay for it.
1.Strange Sports Stories - DC
If you thought that the idea of your favourite Marvel characters getting involved in baseball-based shenanigans was bad enough, it has nothing on what DC cooked up in the seventies.
Strange Sports Stories was launched in 1973 and did exactly what it said on the front cover. Enclosed within the pages were weird tales of dinosaurs racing horses and tennis matches played with live grenades.
All the stories took place outside the regular DC-universe. That was until issue ten, when I guess the sales were starting to slump. For that issue of Strange Sports Stories featured a baseball game played out by DC's most notable superheroes and villains.
The action begins when The Huntress confesses to The Sportsmaster that she is considering becoming a crime fighter, having got tired of always getting her ass kicked as a villainess. The Sportsmaster proposes that the matter is decided by a baseball game. The Huntress has to pick a team of super heroes, while The Sportsmaster leads a team of villains. Whoever wins will determine the future for The Huntress.
The heroes (all of which for some reason were attending some kind of sporting event) are teleported to the baseball stadium, along with the team of villains. Neither side are allowed to use their super-powers, in a game that would be umpired by Uncle Sam and Amazo the Android.
Obviously it's not long before the villains start breaking the rules and using their powers. Well they are villains after all. Despite this, the heroes win the game, proving that they are not just morally-superior, but baseball-superior also.
It's one thing launching a crappy sports comic, but it's another when you involve your established characters and start messing with their continuity. I mean grumpy old Batman... playing baseball? I wonder if that's the sort of story that could get Chris Nolan interested enough to make a follow-up to The Dark Knight?
