Shin Guards And Yellow Cards Coming To Comics Via Adidas

Super heroes and sports - it's a combination that usually results with characters like Triathlon and Booster Gold, burned out jocks reliving their glory days. Adidas is taking a better approach and The Beat has the images to prove it.

It'd be easy to mock Adidas' new promotional soccer posters if they were lame. Honestly though, soccer has never looked cooler at the pens of Jae Lee, JG Jones and Ryan Benjamin.

Sports comics may not be number one in America, but they're a big deal in other parts of the world. Manga is full of sports titles - specifically the soccer manga "Whistle," while South Africa has slide-tackled the sport with "Supa Strikas" (which has Nike rather than Adidas product placement). Both of those properties blossomed into multimedia with animated series and plenty of merchandise.

Still, the difference between series like "Whistle" and the new Adidas campaign seems to be intent. Comics are a business, not a charity, but while the Adidas images have a lot of style, the substance never seems to get much further than the branding messages of the company paying the marketing dollars.

Whatever the case, it'll be interesting to see what impact the comics have on their target audience.