What I Miss About Comics Goofy Ideas

This is DC Comics’ Strange Sports Stories No. 3 from 1974. I used to be annoyed at the presence of comics like these crowding my beloved costumed crime-fighter books on the spinning racks, but these are the sort of oddball comics that I gravitate to when I go rooting around the old long boxes. I miss that era when companies would take a chance on goofy ideas like this. At 20¢, there wasn’t much of a risk to the consumer. It was an impulse buy. A no-brainer. Disposable entertainment. Read it and throw it to a kid brother. Why not?

Strange Sports Stories was one of those anthology books sort of like a comic version of the Twilight Zone. They were science fiction stories with a sports bent. This issue had two different 10-page stories by two different creative teams. I imagine they must have been fun assignments and provided a respite to the same old super-heroes.

The panel above is from a story called Man Who Leaped Over The Earth. The art is credited to Dick Giordano, but I thought this panel sort of looked like Neal Adams’ work. Perhaps he pitched in.

This entry was posted in What I Miss About Comics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.