“Like all comics readers, I was allergic to sports, but I LIKED Strange Sports Stories!” recalled Robert Rivard.
“I first saw them in the 25-cent DC Special that reprinted some B&B stories, and then bought the series when it came out a few years later. I thought it was a great change of pace with some interesting sci-fi twists!"
Editor Julius Schwartz clearly enjoyed the concept, and promoted the series’ five Brave and the Bold tryout issues heavily in ads. But the series never landed its own title, and this handful of stories by DC’s top talents remain a pleasant curiosity.
In The Phantom Prizefighter (Brave and the Bold 47, April-May 1963), artist Carmine Infantino and writer Gardner Fox introduce us to Paul “Socko” Chase, a farmer who longs to be the heavyweight boxing champion.
Walking home along a lonely country lane, dejected because of his loss in a carnival boxing match, Chase encounters an invisible alien stranded on Earth by a damaged space ship.
Significantly, the alien turns out to be tall, arrogant and red-skinned — a devil of a fellow who wants not Chase’s soul but his body, which he needs to pass safely pass through a radiation belt. In exchange, he’ll first make Chase an invincible prizefighter.
Weirdly, Chase agrees, but he’s angry when he learns that his invulnerability consists of being made intangible in the ring.
He is able to defeat the alien with a semantic trick and a fistfight.
The cover image, of a prizefighter’s fist slipping through his opponent’s ghostly body, might well have looked familiar to older readers. Captain Comet had found himself in exactly the same position nine years before (Strange Adventures 43, April 1954) when he suddenly became intangible while fighting the world’s heavyweight champ.
The superhero discovered that the anomaly was the result of an assassination attempt because a one-eyed, slug-like alien, disguised as an electrical technician, had tried to disperse his atomic structure.
Vincent Mariani wrote:
ReplyDeleteThat series didn't appeal to me, AND I preferred to see Infantino drawing superhero material at the time.
The sports theme was too gimmicky for me. I enjoyed both sports and comics, but a mixture of the two seemed contrived.
Looking back, the lack of diversity in the array of characters who appeared, so prevalent in comics and other media of that era, was particularly discordant in sports series.
Paul Zuckerman write:
ReplyDeleteVirtually everyone was white in comics in those days with an occasional Native American thrown in. Except for the odd sidekick or two (Pieface comes to mind but Chop Chop until the 60s was basically a sidekick as well and he was just a team member after that, which is how minorities, usually black, tended to appear). But in sports by the 60s, particularly baseball and boxing, that was certainly not the case!
Paul Zuckerman wrote:
ReplyDeleteI liked the series. I was interested in baseball for a while-saw the Mets play at the Polo Grounds when I was in day camp; collected baseball cards, was in little league--but that was about it for me and organized sports. Schwartz was a noted sports fan and he was excited to have his two passions-sports and SF-in one series. Fox and Broome though brought all of their SF chops to the series, even creating some new futuresque sports. Infantino's innovation of using shadowy figures in the captions was interesting but never caught on. I am not sure that it worked that well. Of course, Infantino's art, was as usual, top-notch.
The short-lived revival, which did not have Fox, Broome or Infantino involved, was much more of a disappointment.
Bob Doncaster wrote:
ReplyDeleteI remember reading a couple of the Brave And Bold tryouts at a friend's house but the concept didn't interest me enough to buy any.
Mark Engblom wrote:
ReplyDeleteI suppose these titles gave the sports-crazy boys something to buy on the comics rack. For whatever reason, I recall the jocks seldom being fans of superhero comics and preferred to marinade in sports 24/7.... so I suppose DC saw these sports-themed comics as a way to tap into that elusive market... just as the romance comics were a way to get more business from girls.
George Daniels wrote:
ReplyDelete"Like all comics readers, I was allergic to sports...." LOL I just love when people stereotype, especially when they stereotype themselves. Personally, I was never once tempted to open the cover of a "Strange Sports". However, I did play baseball, basketball and ran the mile in track. Oh, I wasn't very good, but I did participate, even though in my day, you didn't get a "participation trophy.'"
Kevin Garcia wrote:
ReplyDeleteGreat write up! I will admit, I thought the guy skiing on Venus was skiing naked, and I thought, "That IS a strange sport!"