The Kid Who Could - Page 2

After a one page setup we jump straight into the plot. There's also a surprise on this page!

Peter hotfoots it over to a remarkably diverse collection of children. there's even a girl playing baseball! Imagine that! Kellogg's is apparently a really progressive company, or at least was back in the early '90s. In panel two we meet Peter's co-star, Andrew. I'm eventually going to get around to all the hideous clothes these urchins are wearing, but once again I feel it necessary to harp on a haircut.

Is there not a single barber in this town? Half these kids have a bowl cut and Andrew here is sporting a particularly egregious Moe haircut. With all the diversity going on I originally thought Andrew was the token Asian character, but the colorer but a stop to that by slapping blue eyes on the kid. Don't worry, there's a girl with a black ponytail on page 7 so this comic was able to get their diversity certificate.

Once the writers have established the main characters they pounce on the conflict. No J Michael Straczinski style dialogue where the heroes talk things over for several issues, this is a one off that needs to be wrapped up in 16 pages. "Can I play?" No, you're too little" WHAM - CONFLICT. Right there on page two, panel four and we're off. The panel is a little squicky to me though, the layout looks like a scene from a coming of age gay porno on Lifetime. Comic artists are notorious preverts like (don't click on these links, they're disgusting and NSFW) Bill Ward, Wally Wood and Rob Liefeld, so I'm pretty darn sure this was intentional.

Even worse is Juan's showing up to play literally seconds after Andrew dismisses Peter because he's too short. "But Juan always plays with us..." Then why didn't you say that instead of  "Sorry kid, we need a player but Juan always takes his time getting here. Tell ya what, we'll wait a few minutes if he doesn't show up you can play. Oh wait, there he is now!" Ah, but if Andrew didn't expose his sizeist bigotry Tony the Tiger wouldn't have shown up. No, that's not the surprise I promised you. Tony's on the cover, that's no surprise. The surprise is Juan:

To make the baseball scenes as realistic as possible, DC hired a few up and coming major leaguers to appear in the comic. Have you guessed who's playing the fashionably late Juan yet?

That's right, Sammy Sosa. Why wound a Cubs legend allow himself to be seen in a comic featuring Cardinal Ozzie Smith? Remember, he did this back before he was traded to the Cubs. He's not proud of it, but he was young and needed the money. Good thing he put on glasses to fool everyone.