Corpus Christi IceRays

36

This year, the former Corpus Christi Rayz decided to go back to their old name, the Corpus Christi IceRays. This coincided with the team being sold by Doug Frank. The Rayz name, incidentally, was adopted when Frank first bought the team. In other words, everyone except for Doug Frank thinks "Rayz" is not a good name. There's a good reason everyone except Doug Frank feels this way, which is that they're right. But what I don't understand is the number of people who think "IceRays" is that any better.

It's obvious what's going on here. The name they want — Stingrays — is taken, and they're trying to find someting close to it. (If you don't believe that this is the name they want, just look at the ray's tail in their logo. Only stingrays have barbed tails.) Let me offer a simple suggestion: "Golden Rays". Yes, it's a real species name, and it has a poisonous stinger. Plus "golden" has positive connotations, especially in times of economic hardship. If not that, how about just plain old "Rays"? And if the baseball team won't let you use that, just take their old name of "Devil Rays" instead.

(Now that I think about it, I wonder if the baseball team didn't somehow entice the hockey team into changing its name. I don't have any proof, but the possibility certainly exists. In any case, let me take a moment to say that "Tampa Bay Devil Rays" is a much better name than "Tampa Bay Rays" in any case.)

The team also went back to their old logo, sort of. They futzed with the color scheme, replacing the dated, 90s color scheme of teal, silver, and magenta with a more modern red, black, and gold. The words are written differently as well. I'd tell you whether I like it better or not, but I can't decide. Yes, getting rid of the teal, silver, and magenta color scheme was a good idea. On the other hand, the now-red splotch looks, quite frankly, like a pool of blood. Although there are occasional exceptions, bleeding is generally a bad thing. It's particularly bad to put a big red splotch on your jersey that looks like a pool of blood. Have you ever seen how a pack of dogs will react to seeing an injured pack member? It isn't pretty. I'd be worried about hockey players doing the same since they, like dogs, can smell fear. In fact, I could see someone getting jumped by his own teammates as a result of this. The entire IceRays team could wind up getting involved in a bench-clearing brawl while the other team is still in the locker room. And what do you do then? What's the penalty for getting in a fight with a teammate? These are questions I'm sure most referees would rather not have to think about.

The new color scheme creates problems for the ray as well. Now that he's got gold eyes, he reminds me of "Black Manta" from the old "Superfriends" TV series. Trust me, you don't want to make anyone think of that. It was a lame TV show, and he was a lame villain even compared to the other supervillains on that show.

Now, I know some of my readers are ready to correct me on this point. Black Manta doesn't come from that TV show; he comes from the Aquaman comic book. For those ready to say that, don't bother. After all, how is being from the Aquaman comic book any better? Aquaman is probably the dumbest idea for a superhero ever. What's his superpower, anyway? Ooh, wow, he can swim! What's that? He talks to sea creatures, too? Great. That's not a superhero, that's Doctor freaking Doolittle.

But even if the Aquaman comic book was a respectable origin for this creature, it wouldn't matter because I (and many others my age, I would guess) associate Black Manta with that TV show. And it was awful. Whose bright idea was it to have a cartoon about superheroes with no violence? My brother-in-law showed that show to his son one time. The conversation that ensued about twenty minutes into the show went like this:

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"When are they gonna fight?"

"They're not gonna fight, son."

"Are they just gonna stand there and talk?"

"I'm afraid so."

"This is dumb."

"I know, but it's all we had when I was a kid."

In terms of "WTF?", a non-violent superhero cartoon ranks right up there with a non-violent Tom and Jerry cartoon. They did that in the 70s too, by the way. I remember when that one debuted. I was already a big fan of the Tom and Jerry because the local independent TV station showed their cartoons from the 40s every day when I got home from school. I was so excited when I found out ABC was going to start airing new ones. Then I saw them. That, dear reader, was my first experience with jumping the shark. Even as a seven-year-old, I knew that those cartoons were an insult to a fantastic legacy. Fortunately, the networks eventually realized that kids were going to beat each other up even if you made them watch nothing but speeches by Mohandas Gandhi, and they started airing violent ones again. Kids today simply have no idea how good they have it. I think that's the real reason my brother-in-law subjected his son to SuperFriends. He didn't want to share some kind of experience with the kid. It was the TV equivalent of having to walk uphill both ways in the snow every day to get to school.

All this talk about cheesy 70s cartoons has reminded me of one thing. There was another villain on SuperFriends named Captain Cold. It occurs to me that he'd make a better logo for this team than Black Manta. Seriously. After all, he had this weapon called a "cold gun" which fired (please forgive me for this) ice rays. If Corpus Christi's hockey team wants to make a logo that reminds me of one of these yo-yos, this guy seems like a better choice.

Then again, one look at this guy's skin and you realize this would just put us back to the color scheme with all the teal.

Final Score: 36 points.
Penalties: Ice, 9 pts; Compound, 13 pts; Software, 8 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Ripoff, 4 pts.
Bonuses: None.