Joe Price 1990 Fleer

On December 24, 2018 I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

On Facebook, I wrote: A new BCB came on Friday and my brother in law John Manasso has the privilege of opening up the envelope. 

Today’s card is Joe Price, who is not to be confused with his name doppelgänger David Price. Joe hasn’t made the amount of money in his whole career as David gets in a quarter of the season, but he also hasn’t has the same success either. 

I don’t recall much about Joe. He was with the Sox for a little more than half the season and he was just there. He wasn’t anything special at all. He wasn’t really good and he wasn’t really bad. He just was. 

He finished his decade-plus career with the Orioles the following year. 

What’s interesting about Joe Price is the philosophical debate he encapsulates. Price was released by the Giants in May 1989. San Francisco went on to the World Series five months later—this is one of my favorite teams BTW. Kevin Mitchell, Will Clark and Matt Williams made up a killer middle of the order. 

I digress. 

When Price settles in to watch the Series, who did he root for? The team that he once belonged to, the one with some of his friends still on the roster? Or did he root against the team that rudely released him on the way to a special season?

We’ve all been fired or dumped or told that you aren’t worth it and it sucks. No matter how much you want to take the high road, there’s a gnawing feeling that you want to see that organization or person fail without you around. And no matter how strong of a relationship you have with the person/people who left you behind, it can be tough to see them succeed without you. 

Did you hold them back? Was it your fault they didn’t reach these heights? Thoughts like that run through your head. 

But these are guys you competed with day after day. You sat in the bullpen with them and swapped stories, learned about their families and spit sunflower seeds at them. They didn’t release you, upper management did. Why should you root against them? They didn’t do anything to you. 

It’s a quandary. 

Joe Price, a really ordinary pitcher but a nice Rorschach Test on how one feels about rejection and putting things behind you. 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

2019 Notes: This is the last card that I received from the BCB. It's been about two months and I'm not sure if I'll ever get another one. But fear not! I found four more cards that I've picked up that I'll write about as if they were sent to me by the Baseball Card Bandit. Just know that they weren't. 

As far as Joe Price goes, every time I think of him (which isn't too much) I think of one of the last Spider-Man stories that Steve Ditko drew. It was called, "Just a Guy Named Joe" and that's kind of how I look at Price. He played for the Reds for a while, the aforementioned Giants and Red Sox before finishing his career as an Oriole. 

He debuted with Cincinnati after the Big Red Machine broke up, yet he played with a lot of the guys that dominated that team, only they were shadows of themselves. Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion, Pete Rose, Tony Perez, among others were all teammates of Price. I wonder what that was like, playing with men who you expect to be great but because of age, just weren't the same as they used to be. 

And imagine being a pitcher managed by Rose when he was heavily betting? I'm surprised there hasn't been a class-action suit against him. 

Price was as ordinary as his first name, he never led the league in anything, didn't appear in an All-Star Game and got into two games in the 1987 National League Championship series, winning one. It appears that he stuck around long enough to get a pension, which is something pretty cool. But his career was just okay. 

And like I keep saying in these blogs, a mediocre or even poor career in the big leagues is a huge success. To be able to compete with the best of the best at a high level with the scrutiny of your team, the press and the fans; that takes a lot of mental toughness to finish four games below .500 in the win-loss column (Price's career record is 45-49). 

Joe Price was a major league pitcher for ten years. That's a pretty incredible thing to say. 

My Friend, My Foe!

This issue of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man opens up with the Angel in a lot of trouble. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned over these last four months is that the Angel is ALWAYS in a lot of trouble. He’s trouble so much, he could be a Disney Princess. There are a few differences this time:

He’s AND Spider-Man are in trouble

The guy causing the trouble is his best buddy, Bobby Drake AKA Ice Man

It’s not an X-Men or Champions book, it’s a Spidey book

In any event a mind-controlled Ice Man is chasing the Angel and the Spider and he’s actually using his powers to their utmost abilities. He’s chucking ice daggers at them, he’s cooled the entire building so that the two heroes are freezing and using more energy to keep them warm (thus slowing them down and making them easier targets) and he chucked a giant, spiked ice ball at them.

And to make matters better, he’s not whining. Like at all!

This means that crippled super villain and second-rate Tony Stark, Stuart Clarke (his name rhymes with Tony’s!), who has had zero training as Ice Man AND is in fact unconscious right now, is a better Ice Man than un-hypnotized Bobby Drake. In fact, Ice Man should sing, “Clarke-y, Clarke-y, Clarke-y can’t you see? Sometimes it’s better when you hypnotize me!”

Maybe not. But he probably should.

As the fight is going on, we get a couple of flashbacks as to how this all happened. Immediately after the Champions broke up, Ice Man heads to the hospital (as Ice Man, BTW; not Bobby Drake) to Clarke’s hospital room where he’s bandaged, paralyzed and in a coma. For days, Ice Man stays there soliloquizing about how sorry he is for what happened and how it sucks for Clarke to be all messed up. If you’ve forgotten, in order to get rid of the Champions (after he was knocked out by Black Widow’s dad, Ivan [remember him?]), Clarke (as Rampage) presses the self-destruct button on his costume, which blew him up. So while, I’m usually up for an Ice Man beatdown, this isn’t his fault at all. Nor is it the Champions’ fault either.

So, Ice Man is sitting there, feeling sorry for himself when the bandaged Clarke tells him to come closer. He then blows hypnotizing gas in the icy mutant’s face and Bobby is his slave. I have no idea how Clarke was physically able to get the chemicals that he needed to do that, but he did – it was explained that these chemicals were found in the hospital, which okay. But how did he stand up and get them. They’ve made a pretty large point of saying that Clarke is a cripple. Again, I don’t know.

After the flashback, Ice Man is really kicking these heroes’ collective asses. At one point he calls Angel “Daddy Warbucks” again and grabs him by the throat. As he’s doing this to his best buddy, he’s freezing him at the same time, which is a pretty bad ass move. I’ve read probably about 20 comics with Ice Man in them over the last four months and this is the most ruthless I’ve ever seen him. And it’s not like it’s a new writer at the helm, this is still Bill Mantlo who has been writing the character for over two years.

Spider-Man isn’t about to watch the Angel die (awwwww, mannnnnn) so he tackles Ice Man out a 35th story window. As they’re falling, they’re still fighting and Spidey manages to bring the duo into a car wash. The “scalding hot steam” melts Ice Man and snaps him out of his stupor. And this is why Spider-Man is so awesome, after he kicks Bobby’s ass he thinks, “Oh yeah, people might not know who he is” and he webs up a mask so that Ice Man can keep his secret identity!

Peter Parker puts the “friendly” in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

(Spider-Man is my hero!)

As the two were fighting, three businessmen burst into the Champions building – seriously, you guys, you didn’t see the donnybrook going on here – to talk to the Angel about the building. They actually represent the construction company that screwed the Champions over and they want to reach an understanding. We don’t hear what they say to him, but the Angel flips out and starts flapping his wings creating a mini-hurricane which tussles papers, glasses fall off and ties are askew.

It’s a bad scene.

The businessmen are so freaked out that they tell the Angel his debts are cancelled, the property is rented and the place will be repaired, free of charge. I guess business was done differently in the late 1970s.

(I'm glad Trump doesn't have wings! Wocka, wocka!)

The three talk about getting Clarke back to the hospital and Ice Man tells the others that he has a lot of thinking to do, but he’s going out on his own. I guess he’s going to wander around a bit like Caine from the TV show “Kung-Fu”. And that’s about it.

There are two buttons to the story:

The camera that the Angel gave to Spider-Man is broken after he took it through the carwash. So he doesn’t get the camera or his fight with Ice Man.

Flash Thompson is walking around campus with his new girlfriend that he got while in Vietnam (“I went to Vietnam and all I got was this lousy girlfriend!”). They’re so in love that they almost get smashed in the back of the head by a Frisbee. Good thing that Hector Ayala is there to save them both. You remember Hector Ayala right? He’s the White Tiger!

This was another really good issue. I think that when Spidey is part of the crew, things work really well. Angel isn’t as much of an ass and even though Bobby was hypnotized through much of these two issues, he was cool (HA!) too. Plus Ice Man actually used his imagination and jammed his feet on the accelerator when it came to his powers. He was really fucking shit up. Too bad he can’t do that all the time. The Clarke story was pretty lame, but what are you going to do? I’ve read much worse.

Sal Buscema did another great job with his art, though the cover was a little sketchy (he didn’t do that). I do like how someone is still holding out hope that the Champions are going to be a thing again, with the bubble, "A Champion Gone Mad!" Stop trying to make the Champions happen, Gretchen! It's not going to happen! 

All-in-all, I’d give this story four bullied half-Peter, half-Spider-Man, Spidey Senses! (Pretty sick burn by Flash Thompson, BTW. "This is a bowling alley! Not a knitting parlor!" Eat that, Puny Parker!)

 

Jesus, Parker's practically Bobby Drake in that panel. "Oooh, I'll punch you one day, Flash! You just wait and see!" Spoiler Alert: he doesn't!

Whatever Happened to the Ice Man?

The Champions’ book ended in 1977 and comic fans don’t find out what became of that wacky, LA-based team until over a year later. It wasn’t until issue number 17 of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, did people learn what transpired.

I have to hand it to writer Bill Mantlo, he did a pretty good job of framing how the reader learns about the Champions’ demise. For some reason, the New York City-based Daily Bugle has sent a writer and a photographer to the other side of the United States to do a story about what happens when a super hero team goes belly-up. The writer has already talked to the last Champion standing, Warren Worthington III (Angel) and now they’ve sent photographer Peter Parker out to California to grab some shots.

Pete is sleepily walking around Champions Plaza, where the Champions Building stands, when two huge pieces of glass fall from the skyscraper. The Angel catches one, but misses the other. If Parker wasn’t Spider-Man, he’d be dead. But since he is, he jumps out of the way and is safe. No one, not Angel or the two cops hanging around, think that Pete’s display of advanced gymnastics is a huge deal.

The Angel invites him upstairs for a coffee and to replace his busted camera and begins to tell him about his team disbanded. It all comes down to this: the Champions Building is a big pile of shit where nothing ever works. The rest of the team takes that as a metaphor for the Champions themselves and the frustrations bubble over.

Ghost Rider, who feels that he’s never been respected, is the first to jet. Black Widow tries to get him to stick around, but Hercules calls his teammate a “demon” (I have no idea where Blaze gets his persecution complex from) and says to let him go. Natasha begins to cry. Darkstar tells her country woman that things are going to be okay, but she has to leave too because she needs to go back to Russia.

Ice Man tries to get her to stay by telling her that he loves her, which ugh, c’mon man. Jesus Christ. And as she’s flying through the window, she gets one last burn on Bobby Drake. “I – I am sorry. Though I like you – it has never been more than that!”

Which, damn. That hurts. But on the other hand, she’s never led Bobby on. He’s the one who loves her, does stupid shit for her and expects her to love him back despite not having a rapport with her. But man, we’ve all been there. Ice Man takes this semi-public rejection like a champ (pun!) and tells the group that the first chance he gets, he’s cutting the “C” off his belt. I guess this means he quits. He also called Angel, Daddy Warbucks and tells him to “flap off”. Pissy Bobby is the best Bobby.

Angel turns to Black Widow and Hercules and they’re just like, dude what do you want from us. Hercules tells him he’s going to walk the Earth and see what he can find and Natasha says that sounds dope and she’s going with him. Angel freaks and has his “BUT THE WORLD STILL NEEDS CHAMPIONS!” moment.

Peter listens to the story and tells him WWIII he has it rough, but where’s Ice Man? Which is sort of a weird question to ask. Why didn’t he ask about Ghost Rider or Darkstar or Hercules and Black Widow? Angel says he doesn’t know but if he still needs those shots, they should take them now.

Parker thinks the Angel is lying so he returns to the Champions Building, this time as Spider-Man! He’s going to snoop around the place looking for Bobby Drake. I’m still not sure why he feels compelled to look for a guy whom he doesn’t know very well, this is well before they were Amazing Friends.

Spidey overhears Angel talking to a guy in a wheelchair and it seems as if the wheelchair-bound man has Angel over a barrel somehow. But it’s not just any old cripple, it’s the poor-man’s Tony Stark, Stuart Clarke who you remember as the Champion’s first villain, Rampage. Someone else is commandeering the Rampage suit because after the Angel calls Clarke, a “deranged homicidal, little pipsqueak” he gets punched. Hard. If it wasn’t for Spider-Man’s help, the Angel would have a broken neck.

Spider-Man is about to kick Rampage’s ass, but the Angel holds him off. He tries to explain to the New York hero exactly why, but he catches himself. He just tells him that he can’t beat up Rampage. Spidey doesn’t care and cold-cocks WWIII and knocks his ass out. He then takes on the Rampage, when he’s about to get his ass beat. Angel realizes that an innocent is going to get hurt so he hurls an electric spear thing at Clarke which shocks him and Rampage.

You think that Rampage is done, but he’s not. The electric shock only breaks the psychic bond between Clarke and whomever is in the Rampage suit. And guess who’s in that suit? It’s none other than Bobby Drake, the Ice Man. And guess what else, you guys? He found the time to take the “C” off his belt. He’s pissed!

This was a very good issue, probably better than most regular Champions issues. The way that Mantlo explained how and why the Champions broke up made sense. They never gelled as a team, they were always fighting amongst each other and bickering. It got annoying. I mean, I was sick of these people too. It’s like if you have a friend who’s with someone else and all they do is fight. They battle over where to go to eat or who’s turn it is to empty the dishwasher or what TV show to watch. At first, it’s uncomfortable to be around them and then it turns down-right aggravating. You want them to split up, but they stay with each other because they don’t have anything else better to do.

That’s who the Champions are. They’re the Lockhorns of the comic book world.

The art was great too. I love the clean, bold lines of penciler Sal Buscema. He does an exemplary job because his art isn’t rushed or sketchy. This may not make sense, but it looks like how a comic book should. Oh yeah, the cover is pretty great too. I believe it's a John Byrne and the action really pops off the cover. The colors are so great. Such a nice job. 

The one thing that I don’t get is why this was a story that needed to be told in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man? Spidey was starring in the monthly Marvel-Team Up book where he pairs with a superhero to have an adventure. Why couldn’t he have joined with the Angel on that book and do his own thing in the PPSSM book? I’m not complaining, I’m just wondering.

Oh well, it was still a fun read. Since this isn’t a proper Champions book, I won’t give it any disco Angels. But I will give it four out of five hissy fit Angels. 

28. Justice League

When I was a kid there were two things that I loved: comic books and cartoons. And when the those two worlds crossed over, I was obsessed. As a Marvel Comics guy, shows like “Spider-man and His Amazing Friends” and “The Hulk” and “GI Joe” were some of my favorite stuff. However, nothing could compare to “The Super Friends”—especially “The Challenge of the Super Friends”. Liking this showran against the grain for me, because as I said I was a Marvel guy through-and-through and this was a DC universe show.

If you watched TV in the 80s, you should remember the CotSF, it's the one that had 11 heroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc) that fought 13 villains. I couldn't find the show's opening monologue*, but I did find out that the narrator was a person by the name of William Woodson. That's good to know.

* I think that it went something like, “Banded together from the far reaches of the galaxy are 13 super villains known as the Legion of Doom.” After that there was a bunch of other explanations on why these guys suck and what the Super Friends were going to do to them. What sold it for me was the jazzy music and Woodson's voice. So full of bass and seriousness, there is no way that you'd change the channel—this was important, damn it!

Any how, the show was kind of hokey and the good guys always won mostly because the Legion of Doom (which was headquartered in something that looked like Darth Vader's head in the middle of a swamp, seriously how cool was that?) managed to screw something up. The more important part of this show weren't the story lines, it was that there was a bunch of super heroes on the screen battling a bunch of super villains. It was like a cartoon Wrestlemanina and it was awesome.

Despite its popularity, there was only 16 episodes produced and while DC made a half-hearted attempt to revive the series in the mid 1980s (the original was shown on ABC in 1978 and later syndicated) they never could recapture the original's glory. Even during the comic cartoon boom of the 1990s, for whatever reasons, DC never went back to this well, which I found odd.

In the early aughts, Cartoon Network finally got DC to get off its ass and move ahead with a new Super Friends project. Only it wasn't going to be like the good old, cheesy 1970s version. As the kids from the 70s and 80s grew up to adults, a good bunch of them still watched cartoons. They didn't want moralizing stories, they wanted more action and more gravitas. With the new “Justice League” they got it.

The producer of the show, Bruce Timm, had hits on his hands with the new animated versions of Superman and Batman and wanted the new JL to be done in the same vein both artistically and thematically. The first season was a huge success as fanboys got to see their heroes act like the heroes they read about every month in the comics and kids who are new to the genre weren't lost. That's not an easy tightrope to walk across.

The artwork is the first thing that most be notice. It is absolutely fantastic with bold, smooth lines that accentuate the story telling and also establish that these are some of the greatest legends ever created*. Also, the animation is unlike its 70s predecessor's in that it is not choppy at all. There were some CotSF animation that looked cheap and silly—either a character was painted a wrong color or the background scenes were limited—but not with this incarnation. Everything is done perfectly, you can tell that Timm and his editors took great care to bring these characters to the small screen and wanted to do their best to have a great effort.

The show as a whole had an overall design style that was both unique and simplistic that didn't burden the viewer with too much detail that they got lost. At the same time, it was just enough so that they didn't get bored.

* I read somewhere that comics were society's next generation of myths and legends and it makes sense. Superman is a modern Hercules, Batman is an updated verison of Sherlock Holmes. There will be a day when people realize that and accept comic books for what they are, timeless stories that are meant to entertain.

While the art is legitimately spectacular, the greatest effort went into the writing. Many of the stories were taken from the annals of DC stories, but there were also shaped and rearranged so that it made sense in 22 minutes. Unlike CotSF, “The Justice League” had season-long story arcs and things that happened in past episodes mattered in future ones.

The first two seasons of “Justice League” focused on DC's seven “Big Guns”: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern (John Stewart version), Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl. The last two may not be as well known as the first five, but they have been with the company for decades.

Each character has a different point-of-view and as such there were times when the heroes bickered amongst themselves. Because of this, there were times when the League lost a few battles, but as is customary with these shows, they always won the war. However, this series put a spin on that old axiom. One example occurs in the last three episodes of Season Two where Earth is attacked by Gordanian aliens. Hawkgirl, who is from outer space as well, calls upon her race—the Thanagarians—the lend a hand. Batman realizes that this is a trick and the Thanagarians set this attack up to take over the Earth. Hawkgirl has to decide between her adoptive or her home planet.

As you can see, this wasn't a show where Aquaman needed help battling poachers at the docks because even though Hawkgirl chose the Earth, she was seen in subsequent seasons as a traitor.

According to published accounts, “The Justice League” was supposed to end its run with Season Two, but it was a big hit on Cartoon Network, so more was demanded. Instead of doing more stories with the same seven characters, Timm and his crew decided to do something more adventurous. They took scores and scores of DC characters and added them to the show, redubbing it, “Justice League Unlimited”.

According to Wikipedia, there were “well over 50” characters on JLU—most of which were making their first televised appearances. As a former comic geek, it was cool to see guys like Red Tornado and Green Arrow and Dr. Fate show up and get some action. And with that many characters it would be understandable if the writing or art faltered a bit, but it didn't. It was still up to the same standards as the original Justice League run, which is nice to see.

And that what is so cool about this show. Sure, the writing and the animation is awesome, but the whole show is fun and the producers never lost sight of that. Yes, there are some “serious” issues and it's a bit more dark and adult than most super hero shows, but there are also some great action scenes, terrific interaction between the characters and lots of jokes (both obivous and inside baseball) that keeps the mood light.

My biggest problem with the show is that I can't find it on my cable channels anymore. It now airs on Boomerang, which is Cartoon Network's retro channel, and for some unknown reason; it isn't a part of any package for people who live in Burlington, MA. I've called the cable companies and asked for it—always under the guise of this channel if for my “Yogi Bear obsessed two-year-old daughter”—but they say that there are no plans to add it.

Bummer.