Cleats (comic strip)
Encyclopedia
Cleats is a comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 by Bill Hinds
Bill Hinds
Bill Hinds is a sports cartoonist whose work includes the sports comic strips Buzz Beamer, Cleats, and Tank McNamara. He received the National Cartoonist Society Sports Cartoon Award for 1986 and their New Media Award for 2000...

. Cleats features a group of young kids, coaches, and their parents as they deal with the day-to-day trials and tribulations of being on a soccer team (Although there are storylines that have the kids engaged in physical sports other than soccer). Cleats was carried in over 75 newspapers
The last iteration of Cleats had been run on 31 October 2010, in the form of a special Halloween 'exit' strip. Bill Hinds stated that he had ceased producing Cleats because the strip "had suffered in many newspaper comic polls over the past nine years."

In many newspapers, editors have chosen to run the earliest Cleats strips again, allowing readers to compare Hinds'
Bill Hinds
Bill Hinds is a sports cartoonist whose work includes the sports comic strips Buzz Beamer, Cleats, and Tank McNamara. He received the National Cartoonist Society Sports Cartoon Award for 1986 and their New Media Award for 2000...

 initial style and characters against their more recent development. This has resulted in previous Sunday strips appearing on weekdays, but has opened to broad examination the processes by which a professional cartoonist evolves his work over years of production.

Characters

  • Abby Harper, 11, "competitive but not mean."
  • Peri, Abby's best friend.
  • Jack Dooley, 10. Dreams of playing in the World Cup
    FIFA World Cup
    The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...

    .
  • Armando "Mondo" Ruiz. Jack's best friend. Has a crush on Abby.
  • Dee Radomski, a goalkeeper. Has a major crush on Edith.
  • Edith Tippet, also a keeper. A reluctant athlete who would rather read. Does not reciprocate Dee's crush, but enjoys his weirdness. Just before the strip ended, she accepted Dee's invitation to go to the movies. This was correctly perceived as a sign that the End was coming.
  • Jerome, son of the assistant coach and grandson of a curmudgeon who makes sarcastic remarks about modern sports. Jerome and Dee are best friends and play baseball together as well as soccer. Dee and Jerome like to send each other text messages, even while they are sitting a couple of feet apart from each other. Just the thing to drive Grandpa nuts.

The Final Strip - Halloween 2010

The October 31, 2010, strip showed Peri, Mondo, Abby, Jack, Edith and Dee as ghosts playing soccer in the Comic Strip Graveyard. Abby has her giant ponytail back. Jack asks a trick-or-treater in a Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15...

 costume for help in getting back the soccer ball, which has fallen outside the cemetery wall.

Return, on Reruns

GoComics began, on December 2010, to show reruns. These go back to November 26, 2001.

Special Guests

Fictional characters who have made special guest appearances in the strip include:
  • Buzz Beamer
  • Curious George
    Curious George
    Curious George is the protagonist of a series of popular children's books by the same name, written by Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey. The books feature a curious brown monkey named George, who is brought from his home in Africa by "The Man with The Yellow Hat" to live with him in a big city.When...

  • Dracula
    Dracula
    Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...

  • Ferd'nand
    Ferd'nand
    Ferd'nand is a pantomime comic strip notable for its lack of word balloons and captions, lack of continuity and its longevity .-Background:Ferd'nand was first published in 1937 by the Presse-Illustrations-Bureau of Copenhagen...

  • Flash Gordon
    Flash Gordon
    Flash Gordon is the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash...

  • Frankenstein Monster
  • Henry
  • Igor
    Igor
    Igor is a given name derived from the Norse name Ingvar, that was brought to ancient Rus' by the Norse Varangians, in the form Ingvar or Yngvar...

  • Lio
    Lio
    Lio is a singer and actress who was a pop icon in France and Belgium during the 1980s.- Biography :...

  • Mr. Mum
  • the Mummy
    The Mummy
    A mummy is an embalmed corpse.Mummy may also refer to:-Things:*Mummy brown, a pigment derived from mummies*Mummy paper, a paper derived from mummies*Mummy , a monster in the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game...

  • Santa Claus
    Santa Claus
    Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...

  • Sherlock Holmes
    Sherlock Holmes
    Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

  • Tank McNamara
    Tank McNamara
    Tank McNamara is a daily syndicated comic strip written by Jeff Millar and illustrated by Bill Hinds. The strip debuted in 1974.The title character is a local sports television reporter who used to be a defensive lineman in the National Football League, hence his name...

  • the Blob
    The Blob
    The Blob is an independently made 1958 American horror/science-fiction film that depicts a giant amoeba-like alien that terrorizes the small community of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania...

  • Yoda
    Yoda
    Yoda is a fictional character in the Star Wars universe, appearing in the second and third original films, as well as all three prequel trilogy films. A renowned Jedi master, Yoda made his first on-screen appearance in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back where he is responsible for...

  • Zorro
    Zorro
    Zorro is a fictional character created in 1919 by New York-based pulp writer Johnston McCulley. The character has been featured in numerous books, films, television series, and other media....


Books

A compilation
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 of Cleats comics named Who Tracked Soccer Through the House ?: A Cleats Collection was published in March, 2004 by Andrews McMeel Publishing.
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