Baseball goes sci-fi
You don't have to be a fan of peanuts and cracker jacks to appreciate Ryan Woodward's sepia-toned comic app
Topics: Baseball, The Chimerist, Apps, Bottom of the Ninth, Ryan Woodward, Entertainment News
Possibly the most impressive thing to be said about Ryan Woodward’s comic/app “Bottom of the Ninth” is that it got me to read about baseball, a subject I usually exempt myself from due to extreme indifference. True, the story is set in a slightly sf future (the characters play, or follow, a game called New Baseball) and the central figure is a pitcher who’s the first young woman to play in a professional league, two elements that somewhat softened my resistance to it. But still: baseball, and the way some writers go absolutely sappy over it? Not for me.
Then I fell into “The Bottom of the Ninth,” which despite subjecting me to not-great music and a parody version of sports radio, is a lovely piece of work. The art is a very palely-tinted sepia, and the lay out is much like that of traditional graphic novels, albeit a particularly well-drawn one. Select panels feature animations, which are sometimes full-blown action scenes and at other times just the subtlest of details: fluttering pennants, a curl of smoke, a flicker of hair. Some of these barely register, but, along with the excellent sound effects, they create a pervasive sense of place, which, given that the setting is a crazily high-tech sports arena festooned with holograms and jetpack transports, is remarkable.

The story (of which the currently available “Bottom of the Ninth” is just the opening installment) relates the experiences of Candy Cunningham, whose first time up on the mound is greeted with scorn and skepticism by the fans. Of course, she wows them, but this only attracts the sinister attention of The Corporation, a monolithic entity that has previously been unaware of Candy. You’d think that the public would have noticed her when she made the team, but I will not presume to quibble on points of sports culture.

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site, magiciansbook.com. More Laura Miller.


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