Jorge González

I remember Giant González during his brief WWF stint both for his size and his ridiculous furry airbrushed muscle body suit.  I don't remember his in-ring work in any great detail because my interest was beginning to wane away from pro wrestling by this time in 1993.  I do remember marveling at the enormity of this human being.  At 7'7" Giant González was actually 3" taller than André the Giant.  But unfortunately, unlike André, there doesn't seem to have ever been a time when Jorge was nimble in his own frame even relative to giant standards.

When you're as tall as Jorge González was it's pretty much inevitable that someone is going to put a basketball in your hands, even if your height is the result of a genetic defect.  Jorge got a spot on the Argentinian national team and eventually NBA scouts came around and saw him, well, being really tall.  

When your head is that close to the rim the odds are that someone in the NBA is going to take a chance on you.  That someone was the Atlanta Hawks.  The Hawks selected Jorge in the 3rd round (54th overall pick) of the 1988 NBA Draft making him the first ever Argentine ever drafted by the league.  It took very little time to determine that González's body was not going to hold up to the rigors of NBA play.  Not one to pass up on a marketable asset Hawk's owner Ted Turner hard pivoted Jorge's career path to that of a professional wrestler in the WCW, which he also owned.  Jorge debuted for Turner's World Championship Wrestling in 1990 and would wrestle for the promotion until 1992 when health problems forced him back home for treatment.  González resurfaced in 1993 in the Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation, but was only with the company for about 10 months.

Jorge was able to get a couple more years as a wrestling attraction by going overseas before retiring in 1995.  He passed away in 2010 at the age of 44 due to complications from diabetes and severe heart issues.

I recently came across the photo used for this card showing Jorge dwarfing then Hawk's coach Mike Fratello in Atlanta's Omni Arena and thought it would make for a cool custom card.  If there was any foresight back then to Jorge González's eventual pop-culture status there may very well have been a card made of him, so hopefully this card fills someone's 'cards that never were' gap.

Being as Atlanta took Jorge in the 1988 Draft the card gets a 1988-89 Fleer style framing.  Surprisingly I was able to find some stats from Jorge's  final two seasons in Argentina with gave the card back a big boost in my opinion.

Absolutely Perfect!

I found out through some research when making this card that Curt Hennig actually had a run with the WWF in 1981 through 1983.  I was too young to have known about him then.  But, by the time he returned in 1988 I was full blown obsessed with wrestling.  Back then my whole week revolved around Sunday -I believe it was- when Superstars of Wrestling would come on right after Pee-Wee's Playhouse.  And, by the same token, my whole week would be ruined every so often when it was preempted for something else.  I didn't care that most of the superstars were just wrestling blue Speedo jobbers.  It was still pro-wrestling, and I loved pro-wrestling.  "Hulkamaniac" was the religion with which I identified.  *Please note the past tense of love because you simply couldn't pay me to watch it these days.

The WWF did a masterful job building up anticipation for Mr. Perfect with a series of vignettes showing Mr. Perfect as the perfect athletic specimen in any sport he chose to partake in.  Whether it was catching a touchdown pass that he himself threw or bowling the perfect game... everything Curt did was "absolutely perfect".  They say the best wrestling gimmicks are an amplification of the wrestlers personality, which is why the "Mr. Perfect" such a great fit for Curt Hennig because it's said that he really was a hell of an athlete.  Even though Mr. Perfect was a heel wrestler, you had to love him because he was so damn entertaining.  He was a completely sound technician, but I think my favorite part is how he sold for his opponent.  He could wrestle circles around anyone, but also make them look like a world beater.  I don't think anyone sells anything in wrestling these days.  They just get back up and continue their overly-choreographed acrobatics. 

And, if you're wondering, yes... I was one of those kids that would try to slap my gum after spitting it out because of Mr. Perfect.  Unfortunately Curt Hennig is one the scores of pro-wrestling legends from my childhood who is no longer with us, passing away at only 44 years old.

I saw this photo of Curt holding a basketball, so of course I knew I had to get right on a custom basketball card.  I can only assume the picture is from one of those famed vignettes.

The template was easy to choose because there was only one widely distributed basketball card in 1988, which was the 1988-89 Fleer set.

For the border I chose two colors inspired by one of Mr. Perfect's signature singlets.  I had some fun with the back of the card.  It's Mr. Perfect, so of course he didn't miss a field goal attempt nor a free throw.  In the other statistical categories I gave Curt exactly one more in each category than what is the single season record.  Absolutely perfect.

License To Drive

When you talk about quintessentially '80s movies I have to believe License to Drive makes the short lists, especially when talking about teen comedies. It's got everything you need.  The look, the music and the Coreys at the height of "Corey Mania".  

In doing my research for the card set I watched a number of interviews both from when the movie was released and years later that had the actors looking back on the experience.  It made me a bit sad because it really did seem like Corey Haim was a sweet person who was chewed up and spit out but the dark side of Hollywood.  License to Drive was Heather Graham's first big movie and Corey Feldman, thankfully, was able to resist doing Michael Jackson dance moves in the film.

I've had this movie in mind as a card set for awhile but couldn't quite pair it to a vintage inspired trading card design that I thought would lend well to it.  The reason I like to use trading card designs that match the year of the movie's release is it gives you a mental place marker for when the movie was out.  License to Drive SHOULD have had a proper trading card release, but it didn't.  So, rather than guess at what a 1988 design for a License to Drive trading card set *might* have looked like I framed it in a card design that *did* come out that year.  I just feel it adds a bit more of a authenticity to the set. 

1988-89 Fleer

The design I landed on was 1988-89 Fleer basketball.  It's really nostalgic for me personally because I was heavy into basketball cards at the time. There are some baseball set that, while they may be more recognizable, didn't give me the same creative "fit" as I pictured with this Fleer design.  

Once I settled on a design it was almost overwhelming with all the possibilities that I was thinking could be with an automotive theme.  Eventually I pictured something that could marry the '88-'89's design while incorporating some automotive elements and at the same time not going overboard.

For the card front I incorporated some of the colors that are found on the movies' logo.  Just as a side note, I noticed that the License to Drive logo used the same color pallet as the classic MTV logo.  That's a genius subliminal.  A correlation to MTV, especially in 1988 when it was still a music video channel the way our forefathers intended, would be a perfect marketing fit for this movie's target audience.  Even though the font style of the '88-'89 Fleer is pretty irregular I kept it for the card's captions to really give the eye something to volley the set's original look to this movie adaptation look.  The tire tracks in place of the gradient that was on the side of the Fleer is another attempt to give the cards a License to Drive theme while maintaining the spirit of the original design.  

Some of the images I was finding just wouldn't work well put into a vertical layout , you'd lose a lot, so I went ahead and also made a horizontal template too.  It was a bit of a pain because at that point I was eager to get on with the fun part of making the actual cards, but it was something that I felt needed to be done.  It's a little extra that was definitely worth it. 

The card backs is where I started to freestyle.  I just couldn't see it being a fun card back with mimicking the backs of the original cards.  I had a bunch of different ideas but then it sort of hit me that a license plate would be an absolutely perfect creative complement. It's a California plate, the same style plate that was used on Les' Grandpa's Cadillac.  The tabs were perfect for use as the sequential numbering spot and card numbers.  In addition, the font is a license plate style lettering. 

 

This set ended up being 22 total cards.  For the backs I was thinking of doing some storyboard synopsis to the scene on the front, but then I reasoned someone who would want this set is going to be familiar with the movie.  Stuff like quotes and little known facts and trivia are the type of stuff I'm into, so that's what you get on the backs of this set.  The first card in the set is a title card, so it's got the cast listed on the card back.  Then you've got 4 character profile backs, 1 quote back, 14 film fact backs and 3 trivia backs.

Awhile back I made a movie accurate Les Anderson driver's license.  I wanted to incorporate it somehow.  What I came up with is a die cut sticker (approx. 3" x 2.5") that comes with the set.