Sportsmaster
60 years ago - Lawrence Crock is born.
45 years ago - 15-year-old Lawrence Crock earns national attention as a multi-sport prodigy. He earns the nickname "Crusher".
41 years ago - 19-year-old Crusher Crock begins several simultaneous sports careers.
36 years ago - 24-year-old Crusher Crock's gambling is made public, and he is banned from ever again competing in professional; sports. He becomes the professional thief & hitman, Sportsmaster.
33 years ago - 27-year-old Crusher Crock is invited to join Vandal Savages Injustice Society, where he meets Paula Brooks
29 years ago - 31-year-old Crusher Crock is sent to prison by the All-Star Squadron when Paula Brooks rolls over on him.
26 years ago - 34-year-old Crusher Crock escapes prison and kidnaps his daughter Artemis Crock, taking her on jobs while on the run. relentlessly hunted by Paula Brooks
24 years ago - 36-year-old Crusher Crock is found by Paula Brooks with the help of John Law, whose collarbone Crusher shatters before he is caught. He is sent to prison, now classified as a Metahuman.
12 years ago - 48-year-old Crusher Crock escapes prison again with his daughter Artemis Crock's help. He takes the job from Carmine Falcone in Gotham to catch Batman, but is caught and sent back to prison.
5 years ago - 55-year-old Crusher Crock escapes prison again and attempts to kidnap his grandson. Wally West & Roy Harper help Artemis Crock track him down, and while she chooses not to kill him, he ultimately dies in his own deathtrap.
Sportsmaster is probably most recognized for his appearance in the Young Justice animated series. For most of his comic appearances, he's been depicted as a relic of an earlier era of comic books, but we've all pretty universally agreed that he has a certain flair even on those classic appearances that we all enjoy and would like to find a way to preserve. Let's see how we do...
Sportsmaster's Comic HistorySportsmaster is a recurring Golden Age villain for Alan Scott's Green Lantern, which seems like quite a mismatch to modern readers, but Allan was less powerful back in those old stories, relying mostly on punching his very creative rogues gallery into submission. Crusher Crock was a pro-athlete that was banned from all professional sports and decided to use his athletic prowess as the leader of a criminal gang. Of the gimmick villains of the era, you could actually do considerably worse; he posed a pretty reliable threat that you could repurpose from issue to issue by changing the sports he was referencing, which meant you could redraw him each time in different sports equipment. Crusher was a recurring member of the Injustice Society and would follow that team as they became the go-to villains for many of the crossovers from Earth-2 in the pages of Justice League.
Over time, you started to see Sportsmaster regularly paired off with fellow long-time Injustice Society member Paula Brooks, who used the names Tigress or Huntress, depending on the decade. He was updated regularly, having small occurrences here or there, but he only remained relevant as a throwback classic Golden Age villain, or as the father to modern-day Injustice Society member Artemis (later Tigress). Of course, when Artemis was reimagined in the animated Young Justice series, Crusher got redesigned as well. |
Sportsmaster's CostumeThere is an awful lot to like about the Young Justice version of Sportsmaster, although much like his daughter, the character here is really a combination of a few unrelated characters more than he is any sort of interpretation of the comic character. Yes, he is still vaguely sports-themed (just enough that the name makes sense), but he has way more in common with the more popular martial arts assassin-types of DC like Deathstroke or David Cain (both of whom are notably also dads of martial artist daughters).
The decision to update his face mask to a stylized hockey mask is a pretty clear indication that the main inspiration for how to interpret his sports-gear-as-weapons thing was the Ninja Turtles' Casey Jones... and I'm just going to call that a genius move. |
Our Sportsmaster StoryLeaning too hard into Crusher's assassin persona from the animated series can actually go too far pretty easily because we'd really prefer to hang onto some of the fun of his early persona when he was literally just donning sports equipment to go rob banks. Even in the silver age, when he was basically just wearing a double-brested coat and ascot with a crossed bat & mallet logo, there was a distinct charm about this guy. Perhaps this can be something that carries in his earliest appearances.
Of course, as his story goes on, he's revealed to have some pretty major character flaws. Endangering children is less of an infraction in a comic book world, but kidnapping your daughter to keep her from her mom is decidedly not cool, and that is a major element of his storyline. Perhaps it's around this time that his stylings and the way he uses his sports equipment as weapons can shift, making him less a stylish bank robber and more of a lethal assassin. To that end, we actually included him in the night of assassins storyline in Gotham. Of course, in the end, he's going to go too far; kidnapping his grandson the same way he did his daughter... and he gets exactly what's coming to him. |