Kickers Inc. #1
I gave this one a clean miss back in the day. Sports, sports comics, and generally anything sports-related was not my thing. At all. Even my own crude childhood creations didn’t go to that particular well very often. I used to watch boxing with my dad so there was Ultra-Boxer. I also had a cyborg football player called Tackle, which just about covered my knowledge of that sport. So, a team of super-strong football stars didn’t exactly light my eyes up when I first saw Kickers Inc.
Understand, the art by Ron Frenz is on point. Frenz has got friends here. I just recently picked up a copy of The Blue Baron because I dig his work. His run on Thor is criminally underappreciated. I can still remember buying the 400th issue of The Mighty Thor off the spinner rack in a Kroger in Pennsylvania. Ron Frenz is cool.
I just didn’t care about anything sports themed. That might have been different if I had known Doc Savage was a foundational influence upon the title, though a name like Mr. Magnificent and his Fantastic Five (or whatever the proposed original title was) probably wouldn’t have roped me in either. I didn’t acquire my appreciation for pulp-era adventure until a few years later.
Unlike most of the other characters in the New Universe line, the Kickers didn't get their powers from the White Event, not directly anyway. Instead, the team leader's brother invented a device to harness the White Event's energies to enhance the physical abilities of test subjects. Unlike the other NU team titles they didn't have a particularly solid raison d'etre either. D.P.7 were paranormals on the run from the clinic that was trying to control and weaponize them. Psi-Force were all psychic runaways gathered together by the telepathic social worker who sacrificed his own life to protect them. Kickers just seemed to exist because they wanted to go on adventures.
Not a bad thing, but not something to spark your interest either. This comic reads better to me now than it would have at the time of publication. Maybe it needed more of that Doc Savage influence and not less. Kickers is yet another title that makes me wonder what might have been had the creators been given freer rein!
Supposedly DeFalco wanted to do more of an adventure story, but after it got roped into being a New U comic, Shooter wanted it to be more about football and realistic players. I really like this one as a guilty pleasure comic, and there are some really cool things throughout the run. Even with all of the writers, you get some interesting takes on what it might mean to be a celebrity and football star and have super powers.