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[MarkWarner]

A few weeks ago I received a message saying that a Jackie Robinson comic

"might be a good one for the first week of April as that is the week the major leagues start their season in the US and Canada."

Although we have already read a baseball comic, it was nearly a year ago so this seems like a good idea to me. I plumped for #2 which was edited by our good friend (and hockey fan) Yoc from the DCM.

The book can be found here https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=46369. The story we will concentrate on is the first one "Jackie Robinson's First World Series".

Happy reading!

[SuperScrounge]

Burt Shotton - Nice lively art, nice info.

Jackie Robinson's First World Series - Interesting, but strange in that baseball is a team sport, and it shows here, and yet the story tries to focus on one player. Then there are those odd moments where they show several people and have them say things they may or may not have said.

Uncle Wilbert Robinson - Interesting.

The Stolen Home Run - Not as bad as an Afterschool Special, although I wonder how true it actually is.

Be a Batting Champion - Nice little overview of batting styles.

The Golden Cup - Another interesting story.

Final sports cartoon - More lively art. 

A nice little package. I'm not a sports fan so I wasn't looking forward to this, but it was a nice read.

[Morgus]

Impressive in it's own way. The art was pretty good at showing movement, which can be hard to pull off for a comic book. (You have limited size restraints, it's hard to isolate a position and still keep the impression of momentum going...the problems just go on...) The whole thing was able to show how the game has changed in the last 75 years...it was a different more wide open sport...before it became a corporation product. Another strength is that the narrative was able to give context to the whole picture and not necessarily depend on an in depth knowledge of the game. So you come away with why the stories matter.  Nice to see Robinson's other achievements highlighted...he was an amazing athlete by any measure. Baseball has had it's share of heroes and true eccentrics, and this was also reflected....You could do worse then read a bio of the guy...he had a complicated life and went through a lot.

[narfstar]

I am not a sports fan but think I would have found it boring even if I was. Art was nice but story was fairly mechanical. I would imagine that any baseball fan interested enough to buy the comic would have already known all the details

[crashryan]

I didn't get much out of this one. The lead story is a tedious play-by-play description of a ball game. I stuck with it only out of a sense of duty. The art (Edd Ashe?) isn't bad...good action shots make up for all the panels of people standing around talking.

The story of Uncle Robbie is better because it's short and tells me about someone I'd never heard of. One line puzzles me: "Fans loved him...as much for his faults as for his virtues." Does "faults" refer to the klutzy players nicknamed The Daffiness Boys? Robbie had a long career of winning games and developing champions. Sounds to me like his virtues outweighed his faults.

I like "The Stolen Home Run" best because it's a real story, with a plot and everything. All made up, I presume. The artwork has a Jack Lehti vibe.

Back to real life for "The Golden Cup." My patience has run out. Even though it whizzes through years of history the story seems to go on forever. I'm sorry the writer chooses not to underline the point that Owens' and Robinson's Olympic achievements were a slap in the face of Hitler's racist policies.

The Willard Mullins-style drawings on the inside covers are typical sports cartoon stuff, but the huge figure of the Brooklyn Bum is scary!

This comic is an interesting piece of Fawcett's attempt to create comics for an African American audience. I recommend an article on the subject in a recent issue of Alter Ego.

Reading the book I found myself wondering all over again about Marvel's late-1960s color choices. Here Jackie Robinson is a perfectly respectable brown. In the 1960s Marvel was capable of printing brown trees and brown wooden planks. So why, oh, why did they insist on coloring their black characters purple???

[John Kerry]

Actually Fawcett did quite a lot of baseball related comics and quite a few were of white players. I suspect that at least in part this book is of more interest to baseball fans than to non-fans. As well when this comic came out baseball was the dominant professional sport. A couple of caveats before we begin. First I'm the one who suggested Jackie Robinson, though I suggested number 3 as it had just been added (and hence caught my eye). Secondly the Dodgers are one of three basball teams I do not like. My father was the Dodgers fan in the family, which made sense for a former Montrealer. Now on to the comic.

1. Burt Shotten: Interesting actually, despite its brevity. One tends to forget there were Dodgers managers before Walter Alston. Learned a bit here.

2. Jackie Robinson's First World Series: Yes baseball is a team sport but each team often has one or two players who become the focus. As well this was Robinson's rookie season so there was a lot of interest in how he would do. Not sure that words were put in anyone's mouth. This series received massive press coverage. There was a lot of material to serve as fodder for the writer

3. Wilbert Robinson: A player I knew nothing about so this was an educational one for me. It is always intriguing to compare the game as it was to what it is now.

4. The Stolen Home Run: Not sure that this one was made up. When you remember that Willie Mays use to out and play stickball in New York City this story does seem credible. I did enlist the help of my comfreres in a baseball book group on Goodreads but no record of a Bull Perry in professional baseball was found. I daresay though that if indeed a true story then names have probably been changed.

5. Be a Batting Champion: Quite informative. I actually read this, and I often skip the text pieces. I do wonder though at the fact there is no mention of Ted Williams in the article.

6. The Golden Cup: This is a part of Jackie Robinson's life I really didn't know about, so it was informatve. I too  noted the lack of any mention of the political implications of the games. It is possible that the author may have, with reason, felt that aspect would over shadow the main point of the story, which was the importance of Mack in Jackie's life. It should be noted that Hitler only attended the first day of the games.

7. Cartoons: Amusing and infomative.

8. Back Cover Picture: Nice action shot. It looks to me though that the catcher is trying to tag Robison out while the ballis in mid-air.

The art was nice. I admit I am not a good judge of art. I know what I like and that's about it. If the art is good and doesn't detract from the story.

All in all a fun comic for this baseball fan. I look forward to the others Fawcett produced.

[MarkWarner]

The main feature reminded me of when someone tells you about what must have been a very exciting event to witness, but heard second hand is quite frankly rather boring.

Next up Uncle Wilbert Robinson. This I really rather enjoyed and it featured an expression I have never heard before:

"That year Uncle Robbie met a broth of a young girl who had come over from Ireland"

I confess that the rest of the book I once again found extremely tedious and just skimmed.

Verdict: A fail due to it being boring.

[crashryan]

I've wondered about the phrase, "a broth of a..." I've run into it mostly in early 20th century pop culture. It was one of the phrases used by stereotyped Irishmen along with "bejabbers!" and "Shure an' begorra!" When I googled it I found lots of people using "a broth of a girl" but no one explaining it. Some writers use it as if it means "a young girl" while others use it to mean "a fine looking girl."

On Dictionary.com I found "a broth of a boy" defined as an idiom meaning "a sturdy youth." It said this about the origin of the term:

The Irishism broth of a boy, which is in Byron, was "thought to originate from the Irish Broth, passion -- Brotha passionate, spirited ..." [Farmer], and if so is not immediately related.

Which was a relief because I was afraid it might be referring to boiling someone down into a broth, like they did in Harvey horror comics.

LATEST NEWS! I just found this:

If an Irishman were to say you are "a real broth of a boy" or "you're a broth of a girl," he would be complimenting you. Indeed, he'd be saying that you are everything that is needed to be a boy or a girl. You are a proper boy or girl.

Do we have any genuine Irishmen in the group who can confirm or deny this assertion?