Champions #1 (1975)

“The World Still Needs… The Champions!”
Writer: Tony Isabella
Pencils: Don Heck

In the 70’s, it seems Marvel Comics went “team-crazy”. The Avengers and Fantastic Four had long been cornerstones of their Universe, but it seems Marvel began to really push and market more super-teams. The Defenders, Invaders, (All-New/All-Different) X-Men and even the Champions began to pop-up. All with their own block/perspective logos! Not to mention other teams or groups, like Power Man and Iron Fist and even the Micronauts. Never one to shy away from self-promotion, the first page of this book proclaims: “The Most Power-Packed Premiere of All in This– The Marvel Renaissance”.

The Champions’ roster seems to be picked at random. You have to wonder if the “House of Ideas” used the “Wheel of Random Character Selection” for this roster. We’ve got…

Hercules

With his usual billing of “Prince of Power” (take that, She-ra). Famous for drinking, speaking in old English (language style, not the furniture polish), wearing hip-high leather sandals and a skirt, doing nothing in “Avengers” and duking it out with Thor on occassion.

The Black Widow

Billed as “The Deadly Black Widow”. Hot Russian chick in a skin-tight leather jumpsuit. Had bounced around from “Tales of Suspense” (Iron Man), “Avengers”, “Daredevil”, “Amazing Adventures” and the random guest-appearance in just about every other Marvel book. Somewhere along the line she hooked up with SHIELD, which usually guarantees at least 3 additional guest appearances for any character.

The Angel

Or, as the splash page calls him: “The Avenging Angel”. One of the original five X-men. He can fly… and that’s about it. The X-men had been pegged for a re-boot and all kinds of grand plans had been talked about for years. But the Beast had found a home in the pages of “Avengers”, so they were possibly trying the same tactic with Angel. Oh, and Angel adds a headband to his costume for this series.

Iceman

See above. Only difference is that Iceman’s powers are actually useful. He’s basically the Human Torch, only with ice. Oh, and his adjective-ized title is “The Indomitable Iceman”. Which is more impressive than an “Abominable Snowman”, I guess. He’s a pretty famous Marvel hero and was one of my early favorites, as a wee lad.

Ghost Rider

Hey, why not?! This is probably the strangest inclusion, since ol’ Johnny Blaze was something of an “anti-hero”. He doesn’t seem like a guy who would fit in any team. I mean, he can maybe carry one extra person on his motorcycle and only if they ride bitch. That’s not a team player! And for the record, they bill him as the “Doom-Defying Ghost Rider”. Which I can imagine Dr. Doom retorting with: “Bah! No motorcycle stuntman defies Doom!”

Mix ’em up and throw in a new setting– Los Angeles, California. No real reason for this, although a lot of TV shows in the 70’s seemed to be set in California, and I’m sure Marvel was always getting flack for setting everything in New York City. So they enrolled Iceman and Angel at UCLA. Which kinda’ flows, since the X-men had moved to San Francisco sometime towards the end of their original series. I’m pretty sure that Black Widow had re-located out west with Daredevil, sometime in the 70’s as well. Ghost Rider was usually riding around the American Southwest, so it’s not a stretch for him, either. okay, so I guess there were some reasons for this. Yet it makes you wonder: if the Hulk hadn’t already hooked up with the Defenders, would he have been a member of the Champions, due to the location of Gamma Base?

The geographic landscape isn’t shown too much in this specific issue, but as the series wore on, Marvel resorted to their usual tactics of making Any-City-Not-Named-NYC look just like NYC. I understand why they did this; this was before the days of the Internets and visual references couldn’t be brought-up at the touch of a button; but to this day I’m always furious whenever Marvel sets a story in “Denver”…and it looks like Manhattan with mountains in the background.

But hey, enough of my gabbin’. “The Champions” officially kicks off at the Notre Dame Cathedral..

Err, it’s actually the campus of UCLA, where Iceman and Angel have enrolled. They’re suddenly attacked by a group of mythological Harpies, who make sure to announce themselves as they emerge from a “hole in mid-air”, looking for Venus. Across town, The Black Widow and her pal Ivan face a similar assault from a group of Amazons. Ivan gets off a very interesting line as he alerts the Widow…

Turns out, UCLA professor Victoria Starr is the “Venus” the mythological visitors are after. Black Widow escapes with Starr, while Johnny Blaze just happens to be rolling into campus, as well. Blaze runs into another mythological obstacle, Cerebus, and transforms into Ghost Rider. And, by golly, does Cerebus looks happy to be there…

The final character to enter the fisticuffs is Hercules, who’s slated to be a guest lecturer at, yup, UCLA. Herc is accosted by a group of Mutates, leftover from old Thor comics. The Mutates are trying to capture Herc, buti n the fracas, he tumbles outside the lecture hall and runs into Ghost Rider….who invites Herc to ride bitch.

All five of the heroes and their playmates, all meet in one big hootenanie. Victoria Starr reveals herself as Venus and uses her Golden Girdle to clam all the bad guys (and girls) down. Then the Plot is Revelaed as Pluto, Ares and Hippolyta appear out of thin air. Pluto wants Ares to wed Venus and Herc to wed Hippolyta. Damn, must be hard to get a date in Mount Olympus. Of course, this is all to be continued…

Overall not a bad start at all. It has the usual “heroes who come together by fate to battle a common foe” thread nailed. The bad guys they’re facing are incredibly powerful: they’re frickin’ GODS; which is always a good reason for the heroes to actually start working together. You do feel a little sympathy for UCLA… almost 2,000 years without a super-villain disturbance, until five super-heroes coincedentally roll into town.

It’s a decent set-up and actually makes me want to read more. The only sticking point is the whole “you must wed this person” thing. That doesn’t seem like an awful deal…depending on Pluto’s exact definition of “wed”. If Herc and Venus can simply spend 10 minutes to bang each god and save the world, that seems like an easy choice. So I imagine there’s a plot clarification, next issue, where their offspring will become Pluto’s Evil Army or some sh*t. But who knows– maybe “wed” means they’d actually have to split their 401k, move in, and become an actual spouse or partner. Egads.

Looking at the big picture (and without doing much; make that ZERO; research), I’d guess that “Champions” didn’t last because they really have anything unique. It’s just a group of super-heroes, fighting bad-guys. X-men had the whole mutant thing, FF had the whole family/scientific adventures thing, Invaders had the whole history/nostalgia thing and the Defenders has the whole ultra-weirdness thing. The Avengers were pretty much the main “all-star team”, so that leaves the Champions looking like a buncha’ leftovers. It’s an admirable attempt at a completely new team and one that still intrigues the heck out of Marvel fans, to this day. Yet in character selection, storylines and even promotion, it seems like the Champions had the scraps of the main Marvel buffet.

Summary: UCLA gets hit by mythological monsters, random heroes arrive
Cover Price:.25
Rating: 1.00