Today's ODDBALL COMIC is NFL SUPERPRO with commentary by today's guest-columnist, comic book and animation writer Buzz Dixon!
[fieldinserts][issuetitle]Title: [subissuetitle]NFL Superpro[subissuetitle]
[issuetitle][issue]Issue: [subissue]No. 6[subissue]
[issue][publicationdate]Date: [subpublicationdate]March, 1992[subpublicationdate]
[publicationdate][publisher]Publisher: [subpublisher]Marvel Comics Group[subpublisher]
[publisher][coverartists]Cover Artist(s): [subcoverartists]Penciled by Ron Frenz; inked by Joe Sinnott[subcoverartists]
[coverartists][introtext]Today's ODDBALL COMIC is NFL SUPERPRO with commentary by today's guest-columnist, comic book and animation writer Buzz Dixon![introtext]
[fieldinserts]Commentary by ODDBALL COMICS guest-columnist Buzz Dixon - It's not like I set out to deliberately antagonize people. When I co-wrote "Eks," a rock opera staged by high school students in Raleigh, N.C., it was only my segments that got singled out as offensive (prompting one irate school board member to resign in protest when the whole performance wasn't canceled). When I decided to run a hard news item in an Army newspaper instead of the standard grip-and-grins, the post commander acted as if it was my idea to drive the tractor-trailer rig and bulldozer off the side of the mountain in the first place. When I wrote "Wizard War," the second season opener for THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN, I didn't intend to create a script so action packed that it would horrify ABC Standards & Practices' censors enough to use it as their official bad example for the next fifteen years. And I don't care what that guy in Pennsylvania claims, there was no gay subtext in the "My Brother's Keeper" episode of G.I. JOE (the gay subtext was in other episodes…).
So when I put pixel to paper in writing "The Kachinas Sing Of Doom!" for Marvel's NFL SUPERPRO (not "Iced!" as the cover erroneously proclaims), it wasn't my intent to provoke an Indian war with the Hopi nation…
This was one of those deals that only the marketing morons could love: Combine Marvel superheroics with real life NFL superstars and do a comic about a superhero who was really a football star…only he wasn't actually on an NFL team. The result was a superhero who turned off superhero fans and never appealed to sports enthusiasts.
Mercifully, memory fails me when it comes to assigning blame…er…responsibility for the origin of NFL SUPERPRO at Marvel. The set-up was already carved in stone when it was handed to me, including the lame by-an-accident origin and a plastic uniform the hero had to wear (in fact, in this very issue, I had the hero complain about the tremendous heat built-up such a uniform would cause).
I wrote three of the twelve issues of NFL SUPERPRO patterning my interpretation of the character somewhat on Millar & Hinds' excellent sports strip, TANK MacNAMERA: Basically a good-hearted guy but not the hippest person around (and certainly not the sharpest crayon in the box!). As far as I can tell, everybody who wrote for the book had a different take on the character.
In this issue I managed to tick off the Hopi Indian nation not by being inaccurate but rather by being too accurate. The plot revolved around NFL SuperPro getting involved in a personal conflict between Hopi sisters Laura and He'e'e Eagle (Laura being a world champion figure skater and He'e'e being heavily involved in Hopi tribal politics), a conflict aggravated by mysterious villains in kachina costumes.
To give the story some air of authenticity, I did a considerable amount of research on the Hopi kachina religion. The kachinas (often mistakenly referred to as "dolls" or "clowns") are a constantly evolving pantheon of gods, demi-gods, and spirits, much like Marvel's own line-up of superheroes (a point I alluded to in the story). New kachinas are added all the time; in fact, this is the only religion to have camera toting sunburned white tourist demi-gods!
The Hopi tribe is divided into two opposing political camps, which refer to themselves in deliberately ironic terms as "hostiles" and " friendlies." Through them I took pains to emphasize was that the non-Hopi villains using kachina identities were committing a blasphemy that no real Hopi would ever do (something I used as a clue to the true identity of the culprits). Beyond that the story operates pretty much on a SCOOBY-DOO level, with me trying to have some fun with the sheer outrageousness of the situation.
I suppose the Hopi are used to completely bogus interpretations of their religion and shrug those off but this one apparently was too close for comfort (like a horror film that almost but not quite gets the Christian POV right). Their tribal leader fired off an angry letter to Marvel denouncing the comic primarily for being too accurate (though I will give him his due re his complaint about a fictitious casino on Hopi lands; Hopi don't play that game…). Marvel's lawyers promised to pull the issue, and pull it they did...but only when the next issue hit the stands 'cause by the time all the back and forth was done, number 7 was upon them.
Someone once asked me if I was every worried that I'd managed to anger an entire Indian tribe. "Nah," I said, "but then, if they had been Apaches…"
ODDBALL Factoid -- I got the gig writing NFL SUPERPRO because I was the only person that anybody at Marvel knew who had ever played organized football on any level (4 years in high school), thus making me their defacto expert on the game!
http://www.oddballcomics.com/article.php?story=archive2001-04-24