Man of Steel, Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man For Charity at the Home Plate Project

Man of Steel

, Charlie Sheen and Todd McFarlane have all teamed with the Arizona Diamondbacks to bring original art and familiar faces to the Home Plate Project. The Home Plate Project is a fundraiser for local non-profits. The idea of the program is to get members of the Arizona community to decorate home plates that will be provided to them. The plates will then be put on-line here for auction. Participants are encouraged to decorate their plate any way they like that shows their personality, their company's personality, mission, what they do or just any fun idea they choose. They may paint the plate, attach crafts, apply a photo or again; any way they want to creatively use the space. This year, proceeds from home plate auction sales will benefit two programs within Chicanos Por La Causa--De Colores, a safe residence for women and children who had to flee their homes due to domestic violence and the Carl Hayden Community Center, an after-school program for kids that focuses on positive reinforcement to do good in the valley community.

To benefit the charity, Image Comics co-founder Todd McFarlane has provided an original piece of Spider-Man art (see above). McFarlane is a noted sports fan, having spent millions in the late '90s and early 2000s to get a hands-on piece of baseball history in the form of balls hit by the superstar sluggers of that time (Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball and Barry Bonds's 73rd, each of which were at the time new records, for instance). Tim Demeter, creator of the popular motion comic Reckless Life: Locke and the Las Vegas Ninjas, created the custom Man of Steel home plate at left, taking advantage of the pentagonal shape of Superman's sigil for something that makes an awful lot of sense in the context of a home plate.

Even Anger Management star Charlie Sheen took some time out to texting his castmates to say they were fired to draw a little something for the project, calling back to one of his most-loved screen comedy roles as Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn in Major League and Major League II.