ComicMix Six: Comic Book Characters Who Were in the Olympics
It’s time for the Winter Olympics! That special time every four years where the world tunes in to watch athletes from all over compete for medals. I myself am reminded that perhaps I should take up running or some form of exercise other than getting up to grab myself a new book to read. Until that fateful day however, I bring to you this list of six comic book characters that were involved in the Olympics in one form or another.
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First on the list is Jon Sable. A now freelance mercenary who previously was an athlete in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. After having witnessed the terrorist outrages in the Munich games, he married a fellow athlete and moved to Rhodesia. Becoming a game warden and a tourist guide for safari tours. Unfortunately however, life did not go so simply and he returned to the USA to go freelance.
Not the happiest of Olympic tales to start out on, I know. But it is interesting to say the very least. You can also catch up on the latest Jon Sable right here, with Jon Sable: Ashes of Eden. - Second up, we have Mister Terrific. Before he was a superhero, Michael Holt is and was incredibly intelligent to say the absolute very least. 14 Ph.D’s without including other Masters degrees, and was a self-made millionaire with Cyberwear. It somehow does not surprise that he was a gold medal winning Olympian decathlete as well.
- Asterix at the Olympic Games absolutely had to be on this list. The 12th comic book album in the Asterix series, it was serialized in Pilote issues 434-455 to coincide with the Mexico City Olympics and then translated into English in 1972 to coincide with the Munich Games. All about the performance enhancement of drug usage in sports, it’s well worth the read and of course full of satire that we all know Asterix for.
- Number four on our list of Olympian fun is none other than Black Lightning, one of the first major African American comic book characters to make an appearance in DC Comics in his own solo series. Jefferson Pierce was a normal man, wanting success after growing up in the Suicide Slums. He achieved just that, taking out bad guys, stopping crime on the streets and, of course, became an Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon along the way.
- Second to last we have Northstar! I feel that since it is the Winter Olympics after all, I absolutely had to include a Canadian. Jean-Paul Beaubier was originally a member of Alpha Fight, who were a team of Canadian superhumans. Having left them, he became a part of the X-Men. Through his mutation, Northstar secretly used his superhuman powers to win himself fame and wealth by becoming an Olympic world ski champion. To be honest here, who wouldn’t do such a thing?
- Lastly, no Olympic list like this would be complete without mentioning “Spider-Man vs. the Hulk at the Winter Olympics!” It goes without saying, that this is one of the best Olympic related things I have read. It doesn’t get much better than lava men, Olympian kidnappings, the Hulk doing what he does best, and Spider-Man imparting wisdom about the true meaning of what being an Olympian is all about.