So, at the time of writing Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is blowing up theaters with its
only major competition the quickly rising star of the boxing film Creed, a spin-off/follow-up to the Rocky
franchise. The fact that November
is being essentially dominated by sports films (wasn’t there a James Bond movie
this month? Does anyone remember that?) isn’t really a surprise but it does
leave me in sort of a rut covers wise.
There are plenty of sports based comics, mainly from the ‘50s when
superheroes didn’t dominate the medium, but they’re all pretty generic. However, in the ‘60s when Marvel comics
was born and fundamentally changed the comics landscape forever something
strange started happening.
In an attempt to compete horizontally with Marvel DC started
producing stranger iterations of its ’50s comic line. Now fundamental characters like Flash, Adam Strange, and
Martian Manhunter emerged from an attempt to reintegrate superheroes into the
weird science books that had been DC’s stock and trade for so long. DC also applied this idea to the all
purpose manly adventures they published like cowboys, war stories, and
sports. So, in 1963 the
quasi-brand of Strange Sports Stories
was born. It didn’t last long at
the time but DC has always sort of obsessed over it, even resurrecting the
brand in the ‘70s and in recent years.
