Concacaf unveiled a new bird mascot with a comic book tie-in, so I called an expert in both Concacaf and comic books to talk about it

The soccer mascot is a funny thing because it doesn’t really make any sense: In American sports, there are a lot of stoppages, so the likes of the Philly Phanatic and Mr. Met and the gorilla who dunks basketballs at Phoenix Suns games¹Who appears to just be named “The Gorilla?” actually have a practical job of keeping fans engaged while the action is paused. In soccer there isn’t really anything for mascots to do, but everyone seems to have decided that they are a necessary part of the modern game. Most Premier League teams have mascots and the World Cup gets a new mascot for each edition.²Championship side West Bromwich Albion have a man in a boiler outfit. 

And now, as part of this summer’s Gold Cup, Concacaf have a mascot of their own: His name is Volar, and he is a man-seagull-warrior superhero, tasked with protecting soccer so that everyone across North America, Central American and the Carribean can enjoy the game. While some may argue that the spirit of Concacaf is better summed up by the vice president of a small nation subbing himself into a competitive game for a club that he owns, or maybe a low-resolution Carlo Costly highlight reel, an oceanic bird is a perfectly justifiable mascot, given the fact that nearly every nation in the region touches the Atlantic in a significant way

A superhero needs a backstory, so to truly introduce Volar to fans, Concacaf commissioned Marvel to create an original comic book that explains his origin. It’s a somewhat ambling story, telling the tale of Volar, a lowly seabird who suddenly becomes a superhero and the protector of North American soccer, but mostly kind of wanders around until an ocean spirit informs him of his responsibility. 

The comic struck me as a little half-baked and unfocussed, but I am not really qualified to pass judgement on a comic. So I called my older sister Eleanor, who studied comic books in college, has lots of general comic book knowledge and also happens to also be my longest-serving and closest soccer-watching companion. 

Here’s what Eleanor had to say about Volar, the trend of promotional gimmick comic books, and whether or not a bird with unspecified superpowers is really equipped to tackle the myriad problems facing soccer in the region.

The below conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Footnote: So I wanted to talk to you first and foremost because you’re my sister and I like to talk to you about dumb stuff, but also because I was thinking that it’s possible you are in a very limited percentile of people who are qualified to both break down comics in an academic way, and also discuss Concacaf.

Eleanor: Yes

So I guess my first question is, could you tell me a little bit about your background both with comic books and Concacaf?

Yeah, totally. So I am a huge nerd. My qualifications are having read a shit load of comic books. To be totally honest, I don’t read a lot of superhero stuff these days, but there was a time where I read a shit load of superhero stuff. I’ve also read a lot of what could be considered the academic material around comics. It’s pretty sparse, but it does exist. And I’ve drawn and written comics.

The focus of your degree in college was on like both illustrative and narrative techniques necessary to make comics.

It was an interdisciplinary arts degree basically between art and writing with a focus on graphic storytelling. I do not use it professionally.

Sure, but that’s not important And then soccer-wise, I think I remember you turning on a USMNT game in like 2005 or something like that.

Right, which was like before most humans knew that they existed.

So you’ve been watching Concacaf for a while.

Yes, I have been blessed to enjoy Earth’s greatest international soccer conference my whole life.  

So in terms of what this project is, this is like a branded Marvel tie-in thing, which, my understanding is, is actually something that happens pretty regularly? 

Yes, so Marvel and DC have both done this. It’s not super common; it’s not uncommon.  You will frequently see superhero tie-ins for different promotional things. So these range from the corny to the sinister. We’re talking, like, the one where Muhammad Ali fights Superman. 

You were telling me about a Fashion Week one where Tim Gunn wears the Iron Man costume?

Yeah, Tim Gunn put on the Iron Man suit to save Fashion Week. It’s exactly what you would think it is. It’s corny  and kind of cute and mostly harmless. But we’ve also got stuff like a Jeremy Lin Incredible Hulk crossover.  They love to sort of cash in on stuff that’s going on.  

And also people see comics as a way to first of all reach out to a crew of people that they otherwise might not reach, and second of all create a collectible for the people who are already interested. 

One important thing to know about the modern comic book industry is how driven by collectorism it is, in terms of variant covers and how much of that is driven by artificial scarcity. When you think about really valuable comic books, like old X-Men, important Spider-Man issues, Action Comics #1 or whatever, part of the reason they’re so rare is that they were printed on dogshit paper back then. So a natural scarcity occurs with them: Maybe millions of copies were printed but not all of them survived. Whereas modern superhero comic books are printed on really plasticy glossy paper which does not degrade as quickly. The supply of them doesn’t naturally decrease the way that it would with worse-produced comics. So instead what you do is you say “Oh we’ve got an artificial scarcity. We made a run of like 800 of this variant cover.” And that becomes valuable just because of it existing and there being interest in it. 

I think that’s the point of this, which is to create a collector’s item with some crossover interest between two different fandoms, if you want to call what Concacaf has going on a fandom and not, like, a riot.

Right. So that explains some of the why to do this. So I think that leads to our first overarching question on the comic book itself: Is it any good?

No. Asked and answered. It sucks shit. 

I’m inclined to agree. What are your specific critiques of it?

Let’s take the Tim Gunn one just as an example, because I think as ridiculous as it is that it exists, it is on the better end of end of the quality that you get with the promotional tie-in comics, because it’s got a funny concept: What’s the highest fashion that you can possibly think of? The Iron Man suit, obviously. What would Tim Gunn think of it? Well he wouldn’t care that much about the lasers and stuff but he would care about it from a stylistic standpoint. And then it’s just a very fun little story about Tim Gunn through happenstance  using the Iron Man suit to save Fashion Week. And it’s just a very stupid little self-contained story. And he gets to put the suit on and go [robot voice] “Make it work.”

 Right. Great. Very funny.

It’s fun. The story is coherent, to the extent that you would expect a story where Tim Gunn goes in the Iron Man suit to be coherent, and the concept makes at least a little bit of sense, on the face of it. 

Let’s compare and contrast the Concacaf comic book. The story is nonexistent. There is no story. It is a narrative failure. I would rather watch, like, Haiti versus Panama than read this thing again. I’d watch Aruba versus Suriname rather than read this thing again.³I personally would willingly watch either of these games, but this is why my sister is a knowledgeable soccer fan with healthy hobbies whereas I recently wrote a review of the official Gold Cup anthem. 

The character is original. This is an original character who is totally swagless. He looks awful. So it doesn’t even tie in with a fun existing property. The fun existing property is the Barbados national soccer team, which is wild to me. The story, such as it is, is just a bird is either blessed or cursed — hard to tell — by a fish with a soccer ball pattern on it which gives him superpowers and transforms him into sort of like a furry? Like an albatross that’s also a furry. So it was a bird and it became more man-like. Like a man-wolf versus a wolf-man scenario. 

Right.

The bird’s power seemingly is flight. Which is something that it already had, because it was a bird. And it also has the ability to sort of play soccer. And those are the two things it can kind of do. Its whole thing is that it wants to get back to its flock, but instead of flying back to its flock it insists on going through these ocean portals. Despite being a bird it’s just like “Well I’ll go in the water instead of the sky,” which is insane to me. And it just is forced to visit the hundred-odd nations or whatever of North America and the Caribbean,⁴Editor’s note: Volar represents the 41 Member Associations of Concacaf seeing worse and worse soccer teams, most of which don’t even make it to television because it’s so unlikely that anyone will want to watch them. No offense to these teams but, like, yikes.

At one point it’s like “Oh shoot, we didn’t demonstrate this thing actually has superpowers. It’s basically just a bird that can play soccer,” and they show that it can make a big gust with its wings and it uses this to solve bullying very briefly. But even the bullying that it solves is mostly solved through the power of international cooperation through soccer. 

Yes.

And then it goes through one last portal to get to its flock where it meets this Poseidon-like figure which is a sea god that watches over specifically the nations of Concacaf. So if you’re eligable for the Gold Cup, this thing watches over you, and if you’re eligible for the Copa America, go fuck yourself, basically.

And he has given this bird the power and responsibility to watch over all of these nations, but specifically in a soccer way, I guess. So I guess the implication is that the sport of soccer is inextricably tied to the power of the ocean, which is another large question mark. 

And his design just sucks. You can absolutely tell that they never meant to draw this thing more than one time because the final panel of him with his full powers realized, he’s got wings full of feathers and each feathers has the flag of a different Concacaf nation, which if you can imagine drawing that even two times is totally prohibitive.

In summary, every single aspect from story to design to why does this exist — bad. Zero out of ten.

You bring up so many good points, and so many things that I wanted to talk about, but since you ended on character design, I’d like to start there. Because the idea, I think, of this whole comic book is to introduce Volar as Concacaf’s first-ever mascot. I think the idea is that this is going to end up as a costume that someone is going to wear at the Gold Cup final, in the way that the World Cup has a mascot, or they’re going to mass produce Volars. 

This is my first time saying this, but I wish he was AI-generated so that a human being wasn’t forced to draw him. 

I think we can agree that this comic book, which is mostly an exercise in saying “Here is this mascot,” is introducing a mascot that doesn’t look that good. There are a few highlights that I want to discuss because they’re very Concacaf-y in their execution and they really illustrate some very Concacaf ideas. I think it’s worth noting the bullying is dealt with by the mascot of Concacaf just saying “Hey stop it.”

Which is essentially the strategy employed by Concacaf against, for example, Mexico.

Right. So the story ends. As you said, he’s finally wearing his costume, he’s going to protect soccer. And it says “To be continued.” My question on this is: How?

I mean, you and I both cannot answer this question at all. Because there is no story to continue because there wasn’t a story in the first place.

I think we’ve broken down all that there is to break down here. Is there any particular highlight or standout aspect of this comic that you would like to call out in particular? Any favorite parts?

I mean one thing that I found particularly incredible is that most of the characters are random children and they all look identical to each other. One of the really amazing things about this comic — which is theoretically to promote Concacaf, the international-level soccer conference — is the total lack of actual Concacaf national teams in it. Because if there’s one thing that would turn people away from Concacaf, I think it’s actually engaging with Concacaf soccer and the teams. This is the most notoriously violent, ugly, artless, chaotic international conference that there is. 

Yeah. Do you think it would have been better if there was a chapter that was like Volar is witnessing extra time of the 2021 Nations League final, and he’s on the sidelines and he turns to the ocean god and is like “Listen, man, I’m not getting paid enough for this?”

Well it’s tough because it’s like the nations of Concacaf, the nations of Central America and the Caribbean, face very serious actual issues in reality, where we live. And some of those issues are expressed in how their soccer teams do, because part of how you perform on the international level in soccer is just how much money you can throw at the problem, right? If you have other shit to worry about, like rebuilding your nation after a horrific earthquake or hurricane or dealing with rising sea levels or crime or anything else, your soccer team might not do as well. 

And Volar doesn’t seem to be interested in those problems. Volar is not boosting the overall level of competitiveness in Concacaf by fixing infrastructure and poverty issues. He’s also not fixing the other problem with Concacaf which is absolute blood-feud rivalries between these teams that require actual riot police to be at certain stadiums for certain games. So he’s got his work cut out for him and he has said no thank you, pretty much.

It would be big of Concacaf if Chapter Two of Volar, was like a Daredevil-style confrontation of various soccer officials across the region, which is notorious for officials skimming off the top of various soccer-related aid programs.

Yes. I mean that would be a really incredible approach for Volar to take. It would be like “I’m just a bird, I can’t solve poverty, but I can become a spirit of vengeance against crooked referees.”

Just an idea. To wrap it up: Volar: Good or bad?

Bad.

Great. Thank you for taking my call.