Sport Comics

[MartinRedmond]

Is there a forgoten history of really hot memorable Sports Comics?Stuff written and drawn by caring, loving professionals who can portray action of course, not the dodgy biographies. Any time period is good.

Does anyone think it's folly to think this could work as long term series? I'm thinking the action combined with cool sporting gear in it could be a bridge between the flash of super heroes and more mature works. All at the same time keeping the action non violent /lethal unlike crime comics etc so it's apropriate for all ages.

[The Confessor]

Well, over here in The UK during the 70s and 80s we had Roy Of The Rovers and that bast**d comic was crap in a way that you could only begin to imagine. There's only one thing worse than football...and that's football comics!!:mad:

So, no. You can keep your sport comics and stick 'em where the sun don't shine!! :p

http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/5170/royoftheroversub9.jpg

[Slam_Bradley]

There have been some stabs at sports comics over the years. Most haven't been remotely successful. Most tanked after a handful of issues. A few lasted around a dozen. The most successful seems to have been Street & Smith's True Sport Picture Stories which went 46 issues from 1942-49.

It's a little interesting that sports comics never took off. There was a great tradition of sports illustration and strips in the first 3 or 4 decades of the 20th century. Probably because most people weren't ever going to see the events live and radio was still sporadic and, of course, non-visual.

Jack Burnley, famous for Starman, Batman and Superman was a tremendously accomplished sports illustrator. I've seen some of his stuff in Alter Ego. It truly deserves to be collected.

[Paradox]

Well, it's certainly neither of these...

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/13937/400/13937_4_001.jpghttp://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/3191/400/3191_4_04.jpg

I'm no help.

[MWGallaher]

Technically a "sports" comic, Charlton's Hot Rods and Racing Cars looks to me like the longest-lived, with 120 issues (making it Charlton's 4th-longest running title, behind Fightin' Army, Billy the Kid, and I Love You).

[Lone Ranger]

Technically a "sports" comic, Charlton's Hot Rods and Racing Cars looks to me like the longest-lived, with 120 issues (making it Charlton's 4th-longest running title, behind Fightin' Army, Billy the Kid, and I Love You).

I was about to say the same - it's a pretty fun little series if you are in the moddo for something different. It's also very very affordable.

Hot Wheels was quite a good series.

I would actually think that an ongoing series along the lines of Friday Night Lights would do quite well in this day and age.

[MartinRedmond]

Kickers was okay, but it doesn't really count because I think it had super powers and guns in it.

Thanks for the Hot Rods suggestion. Of course racing comics count as sport.

[Sir Tim Drake]

There's a long tradition of sports manga. For example, one of the most popular manga today is Prince of Tennis.

[Kan-Man]

I think this was the only sports comic I ever read, but I really enjoyed it...

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c118/Kan-Man/2107_4_4-1.jpg

[benday-dot]

I have that one too Kan-Man. I bought it for the cover alone for a buck a few years back. I then went on to get more of DC's strange Strange Sports series.

Lone Ranger:
I was about to say the same - it's a pretty fun little series if you are in the moddo for something different. It's also very very affordable.

Sadly, I find these are not as cheap as they used to be. I find they've gone closer to the 10.00 mark than the 5.00. But maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

[dan bailey]

The Silver Age prototypes (as reprinted from, mostly, Brave & the Bold #s 45-49, with a few '50s Mysteries in Space & Strange Adventures yarns rounding things out) for that Strange Sports series are some of my most vividly & fondly remembered comics from childhood --


http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u171/stamps77/1852_4_07.jpg

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u171/stamps77/1852_4_09.jpg

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u171/stamps77/1852_4_13.jpg

[MartinRedmond]

So sports + comics = random nonsense and super powers?

[Lone Ranger]

Sadly, I find these are not as cheap as they used to be. I find they've gone closer to the 10.00 mark than the 5.00. But maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

I've seen the 15 and 20 center still for a buck or two at a local bookstore - picked up a couple last month.

At the Paradise Comics convention here - one dealer had a ton in their $2 bin. I'm kicking myself for not picking up a stack.

[Pil]

So sports + comics = random nonsense and super powers?

Not at all.

Actually some of those British series were quite good. There was also a series (Belgian or French I think) named Eric Castle. Very entertaining. At SDCC I found Adrenaline, which is a series about a competition in extreme sports (http://www.awaveblueworld.com/v02/home/), which turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises in the pile I brought home.

[Sir Tim Drake]

"Can you imagine a gorilla baseball team that could never lose?" Isn't that a bit redundant?

[dan bailey]

"Can you imagine a gorilla baseball team that could never lose?" Isn't that a bit redundant?

Depends on whether gorillas can hit (or throw, for that matter) a breaking ball, I'd say.

[benday-dot]

And from the house of Charlton...

Yeah. Chat Chatfield, all-American

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/11343/400/11343_4_001.jpg

[Paradox]

Dumbest looking sports insignia I've seen in a while.

[ForeverTaskmaster]

Sports comics enough

There is Ronnie Hansen if you like football. It's a football comic about a fictional player from Barcelona.

Michel Vaillant if you like racing (and if you call it a sport. I don't).

Yawara, if you like judo. If you don't count the comedy aspect in the comic, the sport of judo is really portrayed authentically.

[thehod]

Well, over here in The UK during the 70s and 80s we had Roy Of The Rovers and that bast**d comic was crap in a way that you could only begin to imagine. There's only one thing worse than football...and that's football comics!!:mad:

No, no, no, no, no!!!

Sports comics were, during a period from the early 50's to the late 80s, huge in the UK, and Roy of the Rovers was top of the pile in this particular genre.

Clearly marketed at boys between the ages of 8-14, Roy first appeared in anthology comic Tiger, before making his way to his own title in 1976, the height of his popularity. During his career, Roy would be involved in numerous championship and cup triumphs for the fictional Melchester Rovers, he'd lie in a coma for weeks after being shot by a mystery gunman in a JR style storyline, half the team would be killed by a terrorist explosion, and Rover's home stadium would be destroyed by an earthquake.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Rotr-annual.JPG

Roy's career came to an end when he was inolved in a helicopter crash and his famous left foot had to be amputated.

Roy became part of the British psyche and was rivaled in popularity only by such characters as Dan Dare and Judge Dredd.

Tiger itself also carried many other sports related comic strips such as The Tough Game (Rugby), Golden Boy (athletics), Skid Solo (Formula 1), and the other well known footballing character of comics, Billy's Boots, which had moved to Tiger from short lived sporting comic Scorcher.

Billy's Boots followed the story of schoolboy Billy Dane who found an old pair of football boots belonging to famous striker "Dead Shot" Keen. Whilst Billy was normally hopeless at football, whilst wearing Keen's boots he somehow channeled the abilities of Keen, turning Billy into magnificant footballer.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0a/BillysBoots.jpg/350px-BillysBoots.jpg

Sadly sports comics (and British comics as a whole really) started a gradual decline during the late 80s and early 90s and these characters have now been relegated to limbo.

The only example of a modern sporting comic I can think of comes from 2000ad and concerns the exploits of Chopper in the futuristic sport of Sky Surfing. The best known storyline "Song of the Surfer" contains the story of Supersurf 11, which has been turned into a lethal death sport for the fun of the populace. It has been described as 2000ad's finest hour, and its a charge that is hard to deny as Song of the Surfer is quite simply brilliant both in story and art.

http://www.2000adonline.com/covers/graphicnovels/hires/chopper.jpg

Its a pity that, along with romance comics and western comics, sports comics seems to be a genre of the medium thats practically disappeared.

[Simon Garth]

There's loads of other Brit sports series - Alf Tupper, Tough of the Track (bottom left of this picture)
http://www3.waterstones.com/wat/images/nbd/l/51/9781845131654.jpg
ran intermittently through various titles for years, Raven on the wing was in Valiant for a while, to name but two.

Earlier 40s/50s/60s comics had a strong tradition of stories about fine upstanding noble young lads from good boarding schools who would win rowing / cricket / swimming / boxing / rugby / everything, against scoundrels - either despicable cheating foreigners, despicable cheating oiks from the lower orders, or despicable cheating cads from less noble schools.