Comic Review #81: NFL Superpro #1 (1991)

 

Alright baby! It's time for us to review one of the goofiest and most disliked (by people who probably haven't even read it) Marvel Comics of the 1990s. It's NFL SuperPro. I didn't know that there was an appearance of NFL SuperPro before this so this isn't actually his first appearance. If this is somehow a huge hit I'll talk about more comics but to be completely fair this is not a great comic book. It's not as bad as everyone says. I'd read it again over Identity Crisis but it has some huge ass flaws within it. Anyway let's get into some of the history around this comic and one of its creators!

So the NFL comes to Marvel Comics wanting to help create a comic book hero (They own the character apparently because Robert Kirkman of the Walking Dead wanted to use the character and couldn't due to copyright and all that jazz) and make a comic about it. The only reason Fabian Nicizea wrote any issues of this comic was for free Football tickets. It was lucky that he liked Football I guess because I don't think any of Marvel's other creators wanted to work on it at all. He left after four issues and they had to go for Buzz Dixon, a guy who mostly wrote for every cartoon series in the 1980s and 1990s. Well mostly the 80s but still did some 90s stuff too. Look at his Wikipedia article here and you'll realize that Buzz was pretty awesome.

So this is a pretty simple story. We start out at a building with a sniper. NFL SuperPro shows up and has a big old speech for the guy! How they are NOT going to get Tim Pressman. However it turns out that there's another assassin! However it seems that guy killed the wrong guy! He's gets into a chase over him and we see Spider-Man! Yep it was the 1990s and if you wanted to get eyes on a new character you put him or The Punisher or Wolverine or Ghost Rider in there. Those sons of bitches sold stuff. The only problem with this is that they never actually team up and it feels Spider-Man does more stuff within the comic then the actual hero of the comic! Spider-Man feels more important to this story than NFL SuperPro but then again who would you want to write a story about NFL SuperPro or Spider-Man.

So we meet some random characters that will show up in the series. You know the non-super powered secondary cast. His pal that helps him as a Superhero and his girlfriend. We also see a flash back to how he got his powers and man I wish I had read and was talking about THAT comics instead. Anyway there's a press conference about Tim Pressman who people think is throwing games for a big jerky turd of a mob boss. He wants him kept quiet so the assassin from earlier comes back and dies when running away from Spider-Man. Dumbass forgot he was on a fuckin roof. Anyway NFL SuperPro finally fights some guys at Pressman's house. He finally did something! Anyway Tim Pressman is saved from jail because well all of these guys trying to kill him makes his assertion of how he didn't do it look pretty good and true.

FINAL VERDICT: You know I thought I would get more content out of this comic but it feels very "Yeah yeah I'll get to that after I do the stuff I care about" and that's never much fun. The art also feels rushed too. Some of it is good and other stuff just looks ugly. No one cared about this comic and thats why you get a blah comic instead of a really bad one. I might end up reading some of the issues Buzz Dixon did just to see if it gets any weirder but man this disappointed me a lot.