"The Great Super-Star Game!" from 1976's DC Super Stars #10

When I was working on that post about Plastic Man team-ups a few months ago, I plugged "Plastic Man" into the Grand Comics Database and scanned his various appearances to see if I was missing anything. Among the Plastic Man appearances that turned up was 1976's DC Super-Stars #10, in which he was one of nine superheroes playing baseball against a team of supervillains. (The story was reprinted a few years later in 1981's DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #13, which has a far better cover, upon which Plas and most of the other characters appear.)

The story didn't really seem to fit the criteria for a Plastic Man team-up that I had established for that post—that is, rather than featuring Plastic Man teaming up with one or two other characters, he was part of an ensemble cast—so I didn't pursue it too urgently, but I remained curious about it. Partially because it seemed like a weird place for Plastic Man to show up and partially because a superhero vs. supervillain baseball game was obviously intriguing. 

Well, it took a while, but I finally found a copy.

The story is the work of writer Bob Rozakis, pencil artist Dick Dillin and inker Frank McLaughlin, and it's an odd one, right from the get-go. It opens with a scene of...domestic violence....?

After an opening splash page detailing the two teams' line-ups and positions (above), not unlike an issue of a Justice League comic might start with a roll call, we get a panel of the exterior of a house, from which argumentative dialogue bubbles seem to be coming. A caption reads, "One of the sounds of the suburbs--or the city, for that matter--a husband-and-wife shouting match!"

The next panel reveals who the husband and wife are, Golden Age villains Sportsmaster and The Huntress, both of whom are in full costume for some reason (Probably because it's 1976, and superhero comics were still just for kids?). They seem to be doing more than just shouting, though. The Huntress (the villainess in the animal print bathing suit, not one of the later purple-clad heroines to use that name) is holding up a chair like a lion tamer might to fend off a big cat, while Sportsmaster is swinging a tennis racket at her ("I just want to knock some sense into your head!" he shouts).

And what are they fighting about? Well, The Huntress is arguing that superheroes always win and supervillains always lose (Fact check: True), and thus she wants to switch sides and become a good guy, to which Sportsmaster objects ("Over my dead body!"). 

To prove that bad guys can sometimes win, he proposes a hero vs. villain baseball game. She picks a team of heroes, he picks a team of villains; if her side wins, she can become a crime-fighter, while if his team wins, she sticks with him.

The next eight pages shows the couple doing their recruiting. Using some sort of never explained equipment, they spy on various heroes and villains and then teleport them to the baseball stadium where the game is to be played. Conveniently, the heroes and villains are all grouped together, and each at some sort of sporting event. 

So, for example, Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance are all at a Gotham City bowling tournament when The Joker and Matter Master show up to steal the prize money. 

Plastic Man is quite literally hanging out with Wonder Woman at a United Nations soccer championship, where upon her first appearance you might notice something off about her (See the first panel below). Though her lasso is glowing with a yellow aura, it seems miscolored, red instead of yellow. This is not a mistake, though.

When Weather Wizard and Chronos appear to steal the championship's platinum trophy, Wondy goes for her lasso and discovers that it's actually Plastic Man! 

They're mid-fight when Sportsmaster and Huntress "Pop" them.

And is it just me, or does Plas' tornado maneuver here make no sense...? Like, I can see that he uses his arms to form the shape of a tornado, but I don't get how that would actually suck up the gas or blow it away. He could have transformed into a big fan or something to dispel the gas, but how exactly does this work...? (Or, wait, on third thought, did Weather Wizard make Plas start spinning with his spell two panels previous, and so his arms aren't merely in the shape of a tornado, but are actually still spinning like a tornado in that panel...? I guess that could make some sort of sense...)

Let us here pause to note how unusual the superhero team is. While some of DC's most popular superheroes are present, it's clear Rozakis didn't choose, say, the nine most popular heroes. Nor do these nine necessarily have anything in common. Sure, most of them are Justice Leaguers, but there are also a pair of Teen Titans and a pair of Golden Age heroes from Quality Comics that weren't known to hang out with the Justice Leaguers all that often at that point.

So, we've got Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Robin, Kid Flash, Plastic Man and Uncle Sam, the last of whom will serve as an umpire given that he is, as Wonder Woman says, "the most honest, trustworthy man alive!"

(Note the editorial box at the bottom of the panel; perhaps that's why Uncle Sam is here; DC could have been using the appearance to help promote the short-lived, 15-issue Freedom Fighters book).

In the next panel, Luthor chooses the bad guys' umpire: "I can't vouch for Amazo's honesty--but since he's an android, he'll have to call them as he sees them!" 

As to why everyone agrees to play in the first place, well, the villains seem taken by Sportsmaster's argument that, if his team wins, it will prove that bad guys really can win, and, as for the heroes, Huntress has (somehow) filled the stands with hypnotized victims who, we're told, will remain there forever if the heroes refuse to play.

To make the game completely uninteresting, no one is allowed to use their powers. 

Rozakis seems to have tumbled on the fact that such a baseball game won't therefore be any more interesting to read a comic book story about than any actual baseball game would, and so a single page montage takes us through the first eight innings ("Readers interested in knowing the complete play-by-play of the game can find it on our text page, elsewhere in this issue!" an editorial note from "Julie" says; indeed, as editor Julius Schwartz promises, there's an all-text breakdown of the game in the back, which I suppose was fun to imagine and write. Maybe to read too, if one were the least bit interested in baseball but, well, this one isn't.)

So, in the ninth inning, the losing villains finally resort to using their powers and gadgets, and some of the heroes similarly use theirs. There are only five pages devoted to this inning, but at least they are a bit more interesting than they might have been sans powers.

Here's Plastic Man, using his powers to first trick and then tag out Sportsmaster:

And so, the heroes win 11 to 10, and then everyone POPs back to where Sportsmaster and Huntress found them, to finish up their battles, which the heroes also handily win (Wonder Woman lassoing Chronos and Weather Wizard with Plas). We see the climax or end of each of these in another montage.

And does The Huntress go straight and become a superhero? Do she and Sportsmaster get a divorce? Unclear. 

I suppose the fact that the creators spend as much time gathering the heroes and villains as they do detailing their game reveals that this was more of a fun idea for a story than it is a fun story, but it's certainly an interesting curio, and I remain fascinated by the choices of heroes included, like using Plastic Man and Uncle Sam instead of, say, Hawkman and Aquaman, or in choosing Kid Flash over The Flash...

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You know, after reading this, I kind of want to tackle my longboxes and see if I can dig up 1994's Showcase '94 #3 and #4, in which Alan Grant and Tim Sale tell a two-part story of a softball game between the Arkham Asylum inmates and the prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary. 

Unlike "The Great Super-Star Game!", it's actually as fun as it sounds, if I recall correctly. And check out Kyle Baker's cover for #4: