![]() The unhappy couple uses a device of some sort to recruit their teams in the following manner: She accepts the challenge, and what follows is one of the most absurd sequences in comic book history. Sportsmaster, no doubt a dedicated Cleveland Browns fan, objects to her bandwagon-jumping, and after a bit of domestic violence, challenges her to a heroes versus villains baseball game to prove that villains could win at something. After a lengthy career as a super-villainess, she had finally gotten the concept that super-villains never win their battles, and had informed her husband that she'd rather reform and become law-abiding than be a perpetual loser. Not all was blissful in the Menace household. It was probably then that they caught the eye of several writers, and they were written into a 1976 issue of Batman Family, and shortly thereafter, "The Great Super-Star Game", in December 1976's DC Super-Stars # 10. The duo made no appearances until ten years later, reprising their Golden Age roles as members of the Injustice Society. This isn't relevant to the story being discussed, but might have some bearing on its aftermath.) DC Comics then tested the market for adventures of individual Golden Age heroes, and as part of this, published two issues featuring Starman and the Black Canary, the latter of which had, as villains, the Huntress and Sportsmaster, now married to one another (and billed as "Mr. (The existence of two different sets of heroes, and the fact that the later set were unaware of the earlier set, were explained as their existing on parallel Earths, with the newer one being (unjustifiably, in-story) called Earth-1 and the earlier one being designated Earth-2. Within five years of this revival, called the "Silver Age", the Golden Age characters were brought back, starting with the original Flash, and after much positive response from readers, the entire Justice Society of America. In the 1960s, the super-hero genre was revived with the introduction of a new version of the Flash and later, Green Lantern. ![]() In the early 1950s, super-heroes fell out of fashion (except for the most popular icons, such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), ending what was later labelled the "Golden Age of Comic Books". They were teammates in the Injustice Society, but at the time were otherwise not personally connected. The Huntress and the Sportsmaster were a pair of villains introduced in 1947 - Huntress (a tiger-print-clad big game huntress) as an enemy of Wildcat, and Sportsmaster (a villain who used sports-themed gimmicks and was an expert athlete in all sports) as an enemy of the original Green Lantern. Personally, I'm more partial to the cover of the reprint issue: I first encountered the story in reprint form. Wanting to do more than just reprint old sci-fi/horror stories with a sports theme, they decided to include in this issue an original story: The Great Super-Star Game, featuring a team of super-heroes playing baseball against a team of super-villains! In the title's tenth issue, they decided to do a theme of "Strange Sports Stories," which DC had published several of in the early 1960s and revived the concept briefly in the early '70s. At first, it contained only reprints, but with a theme that ran through them.space stories, magic stories, gun-related stories, or stories about a given super-hero. Unlike almost all other baseball-related comic books, the baseball game, rather than being a plot device, IS the plot, and I believe this comic is completely unique in that it actually offers a complete nine-inning play-by-play of the entire game.ĭC Super Stars was an anthology comic that DC published in the seventies. If the Royals hadn't been the jump-off point for this series, the natural starting point for any discussion of baseball-related comic books would be DC Super-Stars # 10: Strange Sports Stories.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |