Sports and comics have not always gone hand in hand. They seemingly sit at different lunch tables, one celebrating the victories of the Cleveland Cavaliers, while the other laments the death of Wolverine. This book unabashedly declares its love of both subjects.
The Comic Book Story of Basketball tells the long storied history of the sport from the cradle to its current domination of sports arenas across the globe. It chronicles the many failures of predecessors to the NBA and the legends that rose to stardom throughout the decades. You’ll learn about how the rules have changed over time, the inspiring tale about the formation of the WNBA, and how basketball took over the world.
Fred Van Lente and Joe Cooper work together to make a book that is truly one of a kind. Van Lente does an incredible job at breaking all of these huge movements in the sport into engaging storytelling. Cooper is able to draw the players as the stars you’ve come to know, but with an added comic book flavor. Together, they are able to visually bring to the page very difficult, nebulous concepts. For example, to describe how well the “Buffalo Germans” worked as a team, they showed them all with long necks connected to the same oversized brain.
I can count on two hands the number of basketball games I’ve watched. The majority of my scant knowledge comes from the video games representing the sport, however, I can’t express what an absolutely fantastic ride this book was. Sports fan or not, you can’t put this book down.