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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2023 3:49:29 GMT -5
What about sports that might not be exciting visually on the comic page? I like watching snooker, but I cannot imagine how that’d work in a comic. Only so many angles of snooker shots that an artist could draw, and I just don’t think it’d be compelling.
To me, I think sports like that are a good challenge/opportunity for a comic artist to really let loose and see what they can do to keep the reader interest.
Now, that is good. Really good stuff by the look of it. I take back what I said.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2023 3:56:52 GMT -5
For me, a sports strip must have one or both of the following: compelling characters and a “gimmick” of sorts. Or, more precisely, if they aren’t doing character-driven stuff, the gimmick has to be a good one. There’s a strip called Martin’s Marvellous Mini, about a Mini that is driven in various rallies. Probably not character-driven, but the Mini was the hook: If it’s a gimmick-free strip, like Roy of the Rovers, then there has to be a compelling, character-driven reason to read. With that particular strip, the soccer was the icing on the cake, I was more into the exploits away from the pitch, such as when Roy was once shot:
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2023 18:28:40 GMT -5
What about sports that might not be exciting visually on the comic page? I like watching snooker, but I cannot imagine how that’d work in a comic. Only so many angles of snooker shots that an artist could draw, and I just don’t think it’d be compelling.
To me, I think sports like that are a good challenge/opportunity for a comic artist to really let loose and see what they can do to keep the reader interest.
What’s the name of that strip, please? Googling various phrases hasn’t helped me, I’m afraid.
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Post by commond on Apr 9, 2023 18:40:06 GMT -5
I think that's Break Shot.
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Post by Duragizer on Apr 9, 2023 20:19:18 GMT -5
Calvinball.
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Post by berkley on Apr 9, 2023 23:47:12 GMT -5
I have nothing against the idea of sports comics but I haven't seen many good ones. I remember liking some of the car racing comics from the late 1960s and early '70s as a kid, e.g. Hot Wheels, but haven't seen them since then so no idea how I'd like them now - though I imagine that Alec Toth's art would make Hot Wheels at least readable.
And I read Joe Palooka in our local newspaper, The Western Star, and still remember some of the story-lines in a vague manner, but I think that was more because I was interested in boxing from an early age and would have been drawn to anything related to it, good or bad. From memory, I suspect it wasn't really a very good strip, at least at that point of its existence. I've never seen the earlier years, maybe I should give them a look, come to think of it.
I'm curious about Michel Vaillant and will probably give it a try one of these days but I must admit that from the few samples I've seen the artwork looks a little pedestrian to me, so I don't have high hopes that I'll really love it.
Frazetta's Johnny Comet sure looked great but I don't recall being impressed by the story one way or the other when I read it back in the 1990s.
I agree with Supercat that in theory hockey should make a good subject for a sports comic because of the visual aspect, but I can't recall seeing anything apart from the futuristic SF version in one of Enki Bilal's Nikopol books.
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Post by badwolf on Apr 10, 2023 13:46:01 GMT -5
Chess
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2023 15:02:33 GMT -5
Hockey does play a role in a couple of Jeff LeMire GN about Canadian life. Essex County is one, which I have read, and I have another on my shelf that I haven't gotten to yet called Roughneck where one of the main characters is a retired hockey player. -M
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2023 17:04:36 GMT -5
The Seventh Seal in comic book form immediately jumped to mind for me!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2023 17:07:52 GMT -5
I could imagine some rather inventive and tense panels in a comic about a chess tournament.
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Post by commond on Apr 10, 2023 17:39:48 GMT -5
There is a chess manga out there atm. Info
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Post by Rob Allen on Apr 10, 2023 17:58:24 GMT -5
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Post by DubipR on Apr 10, 2023 18:07:37 GMT -5
I'm a sports fan, primarily baseball and hockey. I've read my share of sports comics, US and manga and I really enjoy a lot of the manga sports series I've read. From something simple as Ace of the Diamond (baseball) to the insanely silly Ike! Inachū Takkyū-bu (Ping Pong Club), a lot of the sports manga are just good slice of life comics that are needed to break up the spandex comic reading world. What's great about it from the manga view is that's every sport under the sun that has a manga or weekly series. From cards, dominos, Go (highly recommend to Kikaru No Go) to worldwide attention getting sports (Slam Dunk, Ashita No Joe, etc.). Sports in a lot these series isn't the focus it's the mechanism that makes the characters appealing.
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Post by commond on Apr 10, 2023 19:11:46 GMT -5
Go!! Southern Ice Hockey Club is a Japanese ice hockey manga with a twist:
The series follows Getto Rando, who has been living in Canada and playing hockey there since he was ten. However, he also earned himself a very long suspension due to cheating and thus was more or less forced to return to Japan where he was recruited by Hamatsu High School in Kyushu, even though ice hockey is not popular in southern Japan and the school only has a roller hockey rink.
It was popular enough to run for five years and was collected in 23 tankoban volumes. It's an early 90s shonen manga, so you can imagine the kind of tropes it contains, but I like older manga so I can imagine it being a fun series.
I'm pretty sure there's been a manga for every sport under the sun. There's even a manga about kabaddi, which is a sport I'd never heard of until a few years ago.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 10, 2023 20:39:48 GMT -5
First, I enjoyed this: She's taking chances.......
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