Column: Sports aren't just for jocks

Bizarro is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Yeah, I did a double take too.

Bizarro, for those not in the know, could best be described as "Superman on Opposite Day." He's a twisted reflection of the Man of Steel, down to the inverted Superman logo on his chest.

On the cover, he's flying above a baseball field, shocked to see a Tampa Bay Devil Ray holding Yankee Derek Jeter in triumph. The caption, in perfect comic book format reads: "Bizarro Baseball! Featuring The Mighty Rays! The Last-Place Yankees! And Other

Mysteries of the '08 Season!"

OK, it's a kitsch cover, a throwback to how comics looked about 15 years ago, but still -- there's no real reason for a Superman villain to be there. The cover would have made the same point without Bizarro.

Mark Bagley, who illustrated the cover, is one of the best artists working in comics. He did 111 consecutive issues of Ultimate Spider-Man in an era when, for most artists six issues on a book is considered a good run. He also completed that run in about seven years, averaging well over a comic a month. Bagley is now at DC Comics, so connect the dots: DC is owned by Time Warner, which publishes Sports Illustrated. It doesn't take much guesswork to figure out how he got the gig.

But it takes a lot more guesswork to figure out why Bizarro's on the cover. Even with the word "Bizarro" on the cover, it assumes a lot of the reader. It assumes the reader is familiar enough with the Superman mythology to know that this guy -- backwards "S" and all -- is a mirror image of Superman. He's one of Superman's better-known villains, but certainly not in the same league as Lex Luthor, whom everyone knows.

Bizarro's on the cover because the editors figure most of their readers will recognize the character.

In other words, the editors are saying what I've suspected for years: readers of Sports Illustrated are nerds.

Obsessive statistics, weird terminology (Cinderella was an abused shut-in, not an expectation-defying college basketball team) and cross-country trips just to visit a ballpark… yep, nerds. Then, there's the oft-repeated line about how fantasy football is just Dungeons and Dragons for jocks.

(Remember that scene in Revenge of the Nerds II when Ogre realizes he's a nerd? No? Yeah, I don't blame you).

Sports has a lot to offer comic book fans: human bodies at their prime, fantastic feats of athleti-cism, ego and contrived narrative (that's why I never really got into sports: not enough plot).

Still, one Sports Illustrated cover isn't going to erase the jock-nerd stigma. Booger won't be loaning Coach Harris his Dr. Strange comics anytime soon. (Or, as one of my favorite writers responded when asked about his favorite sports teams, "I don't know. The Gilmore Girls?").

But comics don't have much to offer sports fans.

Comics, which at the second-tier publisher level (non-superhero) cover every story genre from romance to history, don't offer much in the way of sports. Yeah, there's Tank McNa-mara, a comic strip that requires an awful lot of ESPN fluency, and that's about it. I remem-ber one comic where a zombie hockey player helped solve a mystery, some issues of the X-Men where they take a break from fighting Magneto to play pick-up sports and a graphic novel about a Jewish baseball team. I'm sure there are more, but the fact is, in comics, there's nothing like "The Natural" or even "The Mighty Ducks," stories that are just as much about the people as they are about the games. An Orioles game might bore me to tears, but if I channel surf onto "The Natural" or "The Sandlot" I'll need to clear my afternoon.

The nation's biggest jock magazine put a B-list super villain on the cover. Comics need to return the favor.

Staff writer Josh Eiserike can be reached at 703-878-8072.