It Came from the Long Box: Champions #1

Issue title:  “The World Still Needs Champions”.  (An odd titles, since there had never been a Champions team in the Marvel universe before.

Actually, I’m cheating, as I’m working from the first of the two recent and happily full color Champions Classic trade paperback editions.  These seem to bring together most all of the Champions sporadic appearances, save the one in Godzilla #3  (I was so burned when I got that issue and Ghost Rider wasn’t included!)  and the recent ‘flashback’ appearance in a Hulk annual.  The first paperback collects Champions 1-11.

The Champions was a weird, half-assed superhero team assembled from scratch for no real purpose, and including a bizarre and arguably unworkable bunch of second banana stiffs.  (Of course, an Alan Moore could have made the book a classic, but that’s always the case.)

Of the assembled cast, only Johnny Blaze / Ghost Rider had his own book.  The rest of the team including ex-Soviet agent and Daredevil’s one time lover the Black Widow (Natasha Romanov), Hercules (in Marvel sort of a second grade Thor knock-off, albeit more juvenile and hence potentially more fun at times), and two ex-members of the original X-Men, the winged Angel / Warren Worthington and his chum Iceman / Bobby Drake.  Like presumably many of the book’s small cadre of readers, I was mostly drawn to the thing by Ghost Rider’s presence.

The book’s initial issue is fully in step with the ‘what the hell?’ nature of the project.  Weird things happen one morning at a college campus in Los Angeles, but by sheerest (and laziest) coincidence, pretty much every one of the handful of Marvel superheroes on the west coast manages to be onsite when they do.

Bobby is a newly arrive student, and Warren is visiting him.  Suddenly a wormhole opens and a bunch of full-fledged harpies spills out.   Iceman and Angel gear up and attempt to fight them off.

Meanwhile, none other than Natasha Romanov is in a nearby building, applying for a teaching gig (and in introduced wearing her Black Widow full-length bodysuit, complete with wrist blasters, cleverly ‘camouflaged’ by the addition of a small skirt!).  She also comes complete with an Official Sidekick, a (as far as I know previously unseen) long-time associate/fellow spy/now chauffer named, inevitably ,Ivan, who comes complete with a Stalin mustache.

Some Amazons (!) spill out of another teleportation portal, and call for the goddess Venus.  It turns out (did I mention the level of coincidences here are hysterical?) that this being, in incognito mortal guise and, is the very person Natasha was going to interview with for the teaching job!  She happens along just as Black Widow is preparing to battle the sword-waving Amazons.  BW gets Venus to safety, not getting the whole ‘goddess in disguise’ thing.

Just then, a motorcycle-riding Johnny Blaze appears on campus, having coincidentally just arrived from his then current Hollywood stuntman job to come deliver a package for a friend.  The writing here is indeed impeccable.

At this point in time, Blaze turned into Ghost Rider automatically when danger was about, sort of like Spidey’s spider-sense.  He also basically had complete control of GR during this period.  So he finds himself changing, and soon confronts Cerberus, the guardian of Hades, who here is a gigantic golden dude in armor.  (??)  After taking a blast of hellfire, though, he does transform into the more typical giant hound.  Realizing that he’s out of his league—at this juncture, he was just starting to do the superhero gig—GR drives off hastily.

THEN…we learn that, are you sitting down, the college is hosting a special guest lecturer on mythology that morning…none other than Hercules, the actual Son of Zeus.  (Which calls the whole idea of ‘mythology’ into question, doesn’t it?)  Let’s see, there’s like a teeny handful of demi-gods hanging out on Earth, and two of them end up the same morning on the UCLA campus?  Whatever.  After a weak in-joke about then Marvel writer Roy Thomas, a bunch of demons appears in the hall for no apparent reason whatsoever and attack Herc.

GR, still pursued by the big dog, just happens to drive past as Herc and the demons come smashing their way through a wall.  He invites Herc to jump on his bike (what a weird image, with Hercules riding in the bitch seat of a leathers-clad, flaming skull-headed biker!) and off they go to regroup.

Within a couple of frames all of the heroes and villains collide and a purported battle royale breaks out.  GR takes on the Harpies with his mystical hellfire, Herc naturally decides to tackle Cerberus, who he of course has previously defeated during his “labors of” phase, and the mutant heroes and Black Widow attempt to deal with the Amazons.  The tide changes decisively in their favor when Venus reveals herself and helps out.

As the victors attempt to hash things out, though, they are attacked again.  Their new foes turn out to be lead by none other than the regal Pluto, Lord of the Underworld.  Zeus, we learn, has decreed that they fetch Herc  and Venus back to Mt. Olympus.   This is so that a couple of hastily contrived arranged marriages can take place; to Hippolyta and Ares, respectively.  “And before thy shocked countenances fain leap from thy faces, know ye this,” Pluto warns.  “Shouldst either of you resist these matches, THE UNIVERSE DIES!”

And on that cliffhanger ends our (too) action-packed 19 page tale, including bookend splash panels (art panels taking up an entire page).  As noted, the storytelling barely and laughably exists to get all these folks together.  Meanwhile, the artwork by long-time Marvel hack Don Heck (that might be a little harsh, but Heck really wasn’t a very good artist) is lame and marked particularly by his trademark ultra-stiff layouts and character postures.

Not a very good beginning, but join us again for Issue 2, “Whom the Gods Would Join…”