Sunday August 14 at Oracle Park in San Francisco, the Giants are hosting HEROES & COMICS DAY. It's the final event of a weekend celebrating the 10 year reunion of the 2012 World Series Champs. The first 15,000 fans in attendance Sunday will get a FREE comic book with a story featuring players from the 2012 World Series winning team and the debut of a brand new Giants superhero. Published by 10 Ton Press, featuring interior art by Brandon McKinney, story by John Hageman, cover art by Arthur Adams and edited by yours truly, FlyCoJoe!
Who or what is the new Giants' Superhero?
Find out in GIANTS UNITE: Heroes By the Bay!
Now, let's look back on bits of the Giants long and fun history in comics!
Peanuts comic strip creator Charles "Sparky" Schulz was a big Giants fan, especially in the early years after the team moved to San Francisco when Schulz lived in the Santa Rosa area.
And he was as bummed as every Giants fan when the San Francisco team lost to the New York Yankees in the 1962 World Series...
Willie Mays is the greatest ballplayer ever! The Say Hey Kid has been celebrated in comics going back to his rookie season of 1951 when the Giants made it to the World Series courtesy of Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World" pennant winning home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1954, Willie Mays came back from two years service in the military during the Korean conflict...and what a comeback it was! Not only did Willie win the MVP Award that year, the New York Giants also won the World Series in a four game sweep over the Cleveland Indians. The Amazing Willie Mays comic book from Famous Funnies is just one indication of what a huge star Willie Mays was!
In 1954, Willie Mays came back from two years service in the military during the Korean conflict...and what a comeback it was! Not only did Willie win the MVP Award that year, the New York Giants also won the World Series in a four game sweep over the Cleveland Indians. The Amazing Willie Mays comic book from Famous Funnies is just one indication of what a huge star Willie Mays was!
Over the years, the San Francisco Giants have been featured in other comics, including one by DC Comics in 2001 (shown below on the right), as well as a Willie Mays unauthorized biography comic in the '90s.
Back in the '70s, the Giants logo was on the cover of an issue of Harvey Comics' Casper, a promotional comic from KTVU Channel 2 (the Giants TV station at the time) and Straw Hat Pizza. I'm sure in other part of the country and for other National League teams, local TV stations and advertisers were featured.
A few months after the Giants won the 2010 World Series, Marvel Comics and WonderCon teamed up for a special variant cover of X-Men #536 featuring the X-Men in black & orange with the WS trophy. Very cool!
More about Heroes & Comics Day!
The event got its start on August 7 2013 when the Giants invited the late great Stan Lee to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. That was also the day Stan Lee did a fantastic event at Flying Colors prior to going to the ballpark.
Now here we are in 2022... and the San Francisco Giants have led the way with their HEROES & COMICS Day, celebrated every season. It's a great event bringing together baseball fans and comics/pop culture fanatics. Some will even show up to the game in costume as their favorite comics characters.
The new Giants superhero will debut in the full-length comic book FREE to the first 15,000 fans attending the Sunday August 14 game vs the Pittsburgh Pirates. Game time is 1:10, with the special VIP Triples Alley event hosted by the ever awesome Amy Gutierrez starting at 10:35AM.
In the production of this comic book, at one point we thought we'd have an extra page to fill, so I invited my long time friend (and long ago FlyCo Faithful) artist Jeff Johnson (Marvel's Wonder Man, CrossGEN's Way of the Rat, among many other credits) to do a special pin up page commemorating the
I thought it would be a very cool way to finish the comic book, but it got squeezed out at the last minute. I'm happy to share the pencil/ink piece with you here. (Print it out at large size and then color it in with your fave shades of orange and black!)
Bottom line, I'd love to see you at the Giants game Sunday August 14 for HEROES & COMICS DAY.
I'll close this out by sharing the awesome Brandon McKinney's pencil art for a couple of the pages in GIANTS UNITE: Heroes By the Bay!
Go, Giants! And Go, Team Comics!
Peace, Comics and SF Giants Baseball!
Joe "FlyCoJoe" Field
3 comments:
Wow! Awesome Joe! I’m not even a sports fan but I thought this was really interesting!
Joe, You should have named it “Mr Strikeout”!😛😛😛 Go Big Blue! Ed
Oh, Ed. I love how you love the Dodgers! Even if the Dodgers and Yankees are the Evil Empires of major League baseball!
Did you know that even if they win 110 games, the Dodgers are paying $2.4 Million per win! Truly a team that only Scrooge McDuck can afford! ;)
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