Tag Archives: comics

Random Thing: Captain Marvel meets the 1944 Cardinals

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Miss Bizarre Baseball Culture? Don’t worry, it’ll be back soon, but to hold you over, here’s a bit from Captain Marvel Adventures #36, from June 1944, in which Billy Batson (who transforms into Captain Marvel with one cry of SHAZAM!) meets some of movers-and-shakers at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, including Dizzy Dean (who was an announcer for the Browns at the time) and HOF Cardinals manager Billy Southworth.

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 2.36.21 PMIt’s not quite teaching baseball to Martians, but maybe it’ll hold some of you over.

Bizarre Baseball Culture: Anti-Grav Bats and Gladiatorial Battles in Superman Adventures #13

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In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.

Last time, we looked at a Superman-and-Baseball story from the Golden Age. Today, we are looking at something more modern: Superman Adventures #13, an issue from November 1997 and part of a series based on Superman: The Animated Series, which was on the WB Network (remember them?) at the time. Now, much like the Batman cartoon of the time that I talked about in the opening paragraphs of the Cal Ripken comic, it was an awesome show. It was a masterpiece, not just a great kid show, but a great show period, the best adaptation of the Man of Steel and not one to underestimate it’s audience. It’s the only kids show I remember growing up that actually killed off a relatively important character and never brought him back from the dead.

While Superman Adventures #13 isn’t quite up to that standard, it’s still a very good and fun story about Superman having to fighting aliens at a baseball stadium, and, really, what more can you ask for? It’s well worth the 99 cents I paid for it on the Comixology app on my iPod.

(GO BELOW THE JUMP)

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Bizarre Baseball Culture: Action Comics #50 has Superman being a Superjerk

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In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.

Superman. Contrary to popular belief, he was not the first superhero, but he was the first to truly make an impact. First appearing in Action Comics #1, this year is his 75th anniversary, and his latest film, Man of Steel, was a runaway success that already has spawned a sequel due out in 2015 where Superman will meet/fight/probably-become-buddies-after-that with Batman. By the way, Man of Steel establishes that Clark Kent is a Royals fan.

But, for our purposes, we are focusing on the past with Action Comics #50, waaaay back in July, 1942. It’s the first of two Superman stories for Bizarre Baseball Culture. There will be another, more modern, story in a few days. I read it in The Superman Chronicles Volume Nine, which I got from my local library. All scans and screenshots are for educational or demonstration purposes only and are being used under the fair use doctrine. Also, I’d like to note that Michael Clair has also covered this story, and his scans are of way better quality than mine. Maybe he has a better scanner than me. Or maybe he somehow has a more flexible thing to put in the scanner than a large Trade Paperback collection. But I digress…

Anyway, go below the jump:

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Bizarre Baseball Culture: Sub-Zero, Shootings, and Blasted Bulbs

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One of the most underused but coolest (no pun intended) superpowers is that involving ice. I’m not sure why I think this. Perhaps it’s because of the Western New Yorker in me who full knows what it’s like to fall on your butt on a icy day, or maybe it’s because it’s a contrast to all the superpowers that rely upon warm temperatures or fire.

Either way, it’s kind of a bummer that so few heroes seem to have it- it seems to be more of a villain power. There’s Mr. Freeze, for example, and Captain Cold. The only ice-hero I can think of off the top of my head is Iceman from the X-Men.

But there is also one called Sub-Zero, a Venusian who landed on Earth and used his freezing powers to fight crime in stories published by Novelty Press.

…I don’t know why a Venusian would have ice powers either. But he did appear in a baseball story, so he’s now going to be in the rare company of superheroes who have been featured in BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE!

This story, from December 1940 in Blue Bolt Comics #7, can be found here, starting on page 21.

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Bizarre Baseball Culture: The Batman and Cal Ripken Jr. join forces to promote Big League Chew

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In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.

When I was growing up, there was only one true cartoon Batman, and that was the Batman voiced by Kevin Conroy in a series of cartoons that started in the early nineties, ended in 2006, and then briefly revived for the occasional video game or DVD movie. The shows that featured Conroy- usually headed by a writer named Paul Dini and an artist named Bruce Timm- were and are masterpieces, regarded by many as the definitive Batman and not just great kids shows, but great shows period.

However, there was the slight problem that having a deep and rather mature Batman in the cartoons meant there wasn’t as much stuff for the very little kiddies, so in 2004, while the Conroy-Batman was in a Justice League cartoon, a new show was created, entitled simply The Batman. While it did have it’s moments (or so I hear, I think I only watched maybe four episodes of it in total), it was not dark, it was not deep, it was not mature and it just in general was an abomination, especially when compared to the Batman cartoons I’d grown up watching. It was created basically just to sell toys to little kids in the run-up to the release of Batman Begins (which, as we all know, was totally kid friendly, right?).

Still, there was one thing that The Batman gave us: a comic book in which Batman joins forces with Cal Ripken Jr. in order to stop the Penguin and hawk Big League Chew. Just as Bob Kane and Bill Finger intended.

(Go below the jump for more)

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Bizarre Baseball Culture Extra: A Brief Twitter Conversation with Chris Eliopoulos

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Thanks partially to the efforts of Larry Granillo, the article about the 2007 Triple-A Baseball Heroes actually came to the attention of the comic’s writer, Chris Eliopoulos. His comment upon seeing it:

So, I asked him a few questions, and he was kind enough to answer what he could remember from 2007. For example, I asked how he ended up writing the piece in the first place:

In other words, he did the comic because he loves baseball and was willing to work with the clients (in this case presumably AAA Baseball). And, well, most of the unusual and/or bizarre things in the comic can be chalked up because that’s what the clients wanted:

Thanks to Chris Eliopoulos for tweeting with me quick yesterday. Appreciate it. Also, thanks to Larry Granillo for bringing it to his attention.

Bizarre Baseball Culture: Dash Dartwell’s PED use for justice

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In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.

Steroids and other performance-enhancers are, to sports, a plague. They provide some players an unfair advantage, threaten the integrity of records, and could also endanger the long-term health of the user. The great struggle of 21st century sports has, in many ways, been the struggle against PEDs.

But, as today’s installment of Bizarre Baseball Culture shows, the the view that PEDs are bad goes against human nature and human fantasy. The human experience, the human dream, has always been about becoming better. It is one reason why, for example, that larger-than-life heroes have been popular since ancient times.

So it is perhaps not surprising that fictional superhumans (who by their nature are better than human) have often gone hand-in-hand with PEDs (which by their very nature make the user better than the average human). Steve Rogers, for example, became Captain America after being given a Super-Soldier Serum by the American government. Bane, the villain who once broke Batman’s back and appeared in less-steroidy form in The Dark Knight Rises, got his great strength from a drug known simply as “Venom”. Even Popeye, with his spinach, could be said to be using some type of performance enhancers.

But few stories actually have an athlete using a PED… but I have found at least one, featuring the obscure hero Dash Dartwell (sometimes called “The Human Meteor”), a college athlete who has gotten “Metabo-tablets” from a biochemistry professor that make him superhuman until the pill’s effect wears off.

Amazing Man Comics #22, the issue from May 1941 which contains this story (it starts on page 41), can be found here. Go below the jump for the rest of this installment of Bizarre Baseball Culture.

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