Remembering DC Comics’ Strange Sports Stories

In the 75th anniversary year of DC Comics, one memorable series has fallen by the historical wayside…

A watershed moment in science-fiction sports literary history went down in January 1970 when one day, in newsstands across America, youthful readers and observant kiosk owners were greeted with Brave and the Bold #45. This former test vehicle for superheroes (among them the Justice League of America, the Teen Titans and the Suicide Squad) had undergone an insane metamorphosis month-to-month into something which proudly proclaimed itself as featuring “Strange Sports Stories.”

The “Strange Sports Stories” series lasted in Brave and the Bold for five issues, after which the entire concept seemingly disappeared from DC Comics and the public consciousness altogether. Seriously. Do a search for it sometime online. Hell, this was the Wikipedia entry on SSS’ run in Brave and the Bold before BuckBokai got to it:

The first volume of the series ran for 200 issues from August 1955 to July 1983. […] With issue #25, the series was reinvented as a try-out title for new characters and concepts, and most of them are still active to this day: the Suicide Squad, the Justice League of America, Metamorpho, Nemesis, and the Teen Titans, among others. The series was changed yet again with issue #50 as a “team-up” title between established characters, but with issue #67, the series was reinvented once again as a Batman team-up book with the Caped Crusader as the book’s main focus.

You see that? Nary a mention of “Strange Sports Stories.” Not a word about the only science-fiction comic book series ever, not to mention definitive proof of LSD use by DC editorial staffers at that time. The title would bubble up again briefly in 1973, this time for six issues, but much of the intervening time period since has been spent forgetting the series. Until now.

(Incidentally, the also seemingly unwieldly interbreeding of supernatural and war stories worked very well for DC in Weird War Tales, which ran continuously for nearly 12 years from 1971 and was reborn briefly under the Vertigo imprint in 1997.)

Just to put you in an appropriate frame of mind, BuckBokai below runs the full text from the “Sports Arena” column (okay, letters to the editor, but here it’s a letter presumably from the editor) from that groundbreaking, historical and o so underrated mini-series – surely this is a worldwide internet debut of this material.

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Hello, science-fiction fans – or is it sports fans? No matter – whatever you may have been at the outset, by the time you finish reading this magazine, we expect you’ll be a blending of both – science-fiction sports fans!

When you consider that the term *sports includes such diverse activities as baseball, football, bowling, tennis, golf, boxing, wrestling, basketball, hockey, track-and-field events, fishing, horse and auto racing, etc., it is evident that sports are the most popular pastimes of both young and old – whether they be enjoyed as player or spectator.

It’s a wonder then that there are no comic magazines devoted to sports fiction. On further consideration, it’s no surprise at all – for it’s extremely difficult to do a sports story in the words and pictures of the comic book medium – and keep the story fast-moving, exciting and suspenseful.

That was the problem that confronted us when we decided to fill this void in comic magazines. Tackling the problem first from a literary angle, it occurred to us that a gimmick was needed to turn a straight sports story from an ordinary yarn into one that would grip and hold the reader. Searching about for this device, we hit upon the idea that *science-fiction could well serve this purpose.

All of a sudden our sports horizon broadened! The entire universe could serve as our playground! Instead of using cliche motivations for the winning of a baseball game, we could now play for much higher stakes – such as the urgency for winning a ball game in order to save the Earth! Thus was born the startling idea behind this issue’s “Challenge of the Headless Baseball Team!”

Could we be as daringly different with football? Well, not all of us have the physiques and skills to be gridiron heroes, but we can sure dream about it, hey? What if there were a way to enable us to fulfill our dreams – with the help of science? From the seed of an idea germinated this issue’s other story, “Goliath of the Gridiron!”

Next, we grappled with the artistic problem of how to portray our stories in a way that the essential *continuous action element of sports could be maintained. It was at this critical point that we went into a huddle with one of comicdom’s top illustrators – Carmine Infantino, one-time winner of the National Cartoonist Society award as the best comic book artist.

After throwing a number of ideas back and forth, we latched onto an ingenious solution. The story captions – instead of being lettered in the standard, time-honored position above the illustrated panel – would be placed in front of the picture panel and enhanced with a silhouette. In this manner, the eye would perceive the caption and panel in a continuous flow of action, much like seeing a motion picture film unreel before one’s eyes!

So there you have it, fans. How well we’ve scored with this first issue of STRANGE SPORTS STORIES we leave to you “grandstand managers” and “Monday morning quarterbacks!” Have we hit a grandslammer, scored a touchdown – or did we strike out, fumble the ball?

Let’s hear from you one way or another. If there’s any second-guessing to be done let’s fight it out here verbally in this department which we’ve fittingly called THE SPORTS ARENA.

While we won’t tip our hand about what unusual yarns we have lined up for the next issue of STRANGE SPORTS STORIES, we do want to announce that THE SPORTS ARENA will – to our readers’ delight, we are sure – feature a capsule autobiography of Carmine Infantino, including a portrait of this ace artist.

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Hey, BuckBokai’s breathless with anticipation. We’ll be going through all the series in the first five issues of weirdness, cheesiness, bizarry and, in the parlance of our times, WTF? The story list (including links once the review is complete on BuckBokai.com) is as follows:

Brave and the Bold no. 45 – “The Challenge of the Headless Baseball Team” and “Goliath of the Gridiron”;

No. 46 – “The Hot-Shot Hoopsters” and “Danger on the Martian Links”;

No. 47 – “The Phantom Prizefighter” and “Saga of the Secret Sportsmen”;

No. 48 – “The Man who Drove Through Time” and “Duel of the Star Champions”; and

No. 49 – (a title which will not yet be revealed here because the anticipation of its sheer awesomeness might cause your head to explode) and “Warrior of the Weightless World.”

The aforementioned “Goliath of the Gridiron” is an incredible blend of prognostication on college/pro football’s current state and densely concentrated unintentional comedy a la Bill Simmons. There’s actually one decent bit of sci-fi in the Strange Sports Stories lot while certain aspects of Infantino’s art are as interesting and even as revolutionary as the bombastic DC editor who penned the above gushiness claims.

(Wait a minute … wasn’t Infantino himself the editorial director at DC Comics in 1970?)

Next time: The lead story in the immortal Brave and the Bold #45, a tale with more twists and turns than a porn version of Cruella de Vil – a “grandslammer” of a yarn they just had to call “Challenge of the Headless Baseball Team.”

Excelsior, science-fiction sports fans!

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