I have little interest in sports, whether in the real world or in comic books. So I'll hand it to Will Eisner: he made baseball almost interesting. The story is quintessential Eisner. On one side we have a sentimental vision of the heroism of the working-class underdog; on the other a cynical vision that the world is dominated by corrupt schemers and femmes fatales. I liked the package a lot, with some reservations.
The artwork is wonderful. Given lighter stories, Eisner amps up the cartoony component of his style. The ballplayers' wildly exaggerated poses really sell the action. Even in the historical feature you can feel speed, strain, and impact. One odd note is the way that the crooks seem to be caricatures of real people. They're a little too realistic to fit into a world of outright cartoon characters. It made me wonder if they were drawn by assistants. A lot of effort went into this production: backgrounds, crowd scenes, novel layout effects to keep the game sequences both interesting and understandable.
To me, the concept is limited by Rube himself. He follows in the footsteps of Joe Palooka: a golden-hearted, slightly-dim, straight-arrow hayseed who becomes a sports star. I wonder why that cliche was so popular in early-20th century pop culture. We seldom see a sports star with an urban background, or a sharp-witted, intelligent hayseed. The problem is that there's not much drama in a noble naif. His thorough goodness limits what he can do without breaking character. A perfect example is when Joe Palooka joined the Army in WWII. Being the hero, he had to be in the thick of the fight, but he couldn't even wound someone, let alone kill them. The writers had to come up with convoluted storylines in which Joe could go to war without hurting anybody.
In the same way Rube is limited to making small mistakes. He can't really be led astray by the vamp. He can't get too angry. Though he can be taken in by swindlers, he can't be too badly burned or else he'd just look stupid. His vengeance is limited to a right to a miscreant's jaw, after which he forgives his enemy without a second thought. Though Rube can doubt himself, he always pulls himself out of it before any real damage is done. Given a hero like that, conflict must come from supporting characters. Unfortunately Pop Flye doesn't have much of a personality and Sunny has none at all. Had the series progressed I would have liked to see the other Badgers fleshed out. They're all reformed (or semi-reformed) jailbirds, after all. Eisner would have had great fun with them.
Despite these gripes, I found the comic entertaining and well worth reading. Two mitts up.
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Topic: Week 120 - Baseball Comics #1 (Read 2614 times)
