Monday, August 14, 2017

The Doomsday Connection



“Someday we’ll find it
The Doomsday Connection
MODOK, AIM and me!
La, la, la, la, la, la!”

Not many people know this, but that was Jim Henson’s original lyrics for “Rainbow Connection”. He was intrigued by Mobile Organism Designed Only for Killing (MODOK) and Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) and wanted to spread their gospel.

Seriously.

Anyway, you’ll notice that the above image isn’t of a Champions comic, rather it’s the 1977 Iron Man annual. Comics are a lot like professional wrestling or hip hop, when something isn’t doing very well, the powers-that-be try to pair them along with something that is successful. For a wrestler, it might be to have him form a tag-team partnership with someone more popular. Or they can feud with someone who has more juice. For a hip hop artist, they can guest on a more popular artist’s record. Or be photographed with him or her.

You want someone that isn’t popular to seem as though they are popular. The quickest and best way to do that is by having them orbit around something that is cool.

I’m not sure how much more popular Iron Man was than the Champions in 1977. Tony Stark has been around Marvel for 15 years and was a star of one of their flagship books, the Avengers. He had cache and the Champions did not. My guess is that Marvel editors decided that the Champions needed to be around more popular heroes. So, without a lot of setup, they guest starred in the Armored Avenger’s annual.

Written by Champions writer Bill Mantlo and penciled by former Champions artist George Tuska, it wasn’t if the creative team needed to get their arms wrapped around the team. Both men knew who the Champions were, so they were dropped right in the action.

Iron Man was in California investigating an AIM laboratory and was looking for MODOK. Iron Man battles through a bunch of robots, but can’t find the big-headed, small-bodied man. He realizes that the majority of the West Coast is now in a blackout and he fears that MODOK is syphoning off energy for some dastardly plot. He decides that it’s a good idea to pay a visit to the Champions Headquarters and see what his old colleagues, Black Widow and Hercules have to say.

I guess Tony Stark has always kinda been a dick because even though he says that the Champions haven’t responded to his radio signal, he decides to bust through their HQ anyway. There he runs into the Ghost Rider, who is rightly pissed off that this happened. Being that this is a comic book, they get into a fight. Angel, Hercules and Ice Man are about to kick Iron Man’s ass (they saw GR go flying through a wall) when Black Widow tells everyone to chill out. They do.

Iron Man breaks out a mini film projector—it’s so cute and tiny—and he explains to his new buddies that MODOK is serious business and that they need to find him before the world blows up. Iron Man suggests that they split up because there are three places that MODOK could be. Angel, Hercules and Natasha decide to head out to Redwood National Forrest.



(Look at that thing, how quaint. It's like being in grade school and IM is your lazy teacher and it's filmstrip day!) 

Here Angel flies around for literally a minute and talks about how good it feels to stretch his wings. OK WWIII. Hercules and Widow start flirting and it looks as if the Prince of Power is going to seal the deal. But those AIM jerks are back again and they start firing on our heroes. Hercules is so taken by the beauty of his surroundings that he rips up a gigantic redwood tree and starts bashing AIM cronies with it. Eventually the trio gets snared.


(In another panel Black Widow is like, 'Oh Hercules, I feel so safe in your arms!" Hercules was getting there, man! -- Shout out to little recognized "Dazed and Confused" sad sack Hirchfelder. Who actually left a pretty good looking chick to go find O'Bannion. Stupid Mitch. Stupid Tommy. Stupid AIM.)

Ice Man, Ghost Rider and Darkstar go to an undersea AIM base near San Francisco. There, they learn that evil corporation is doing unspeakable experiments on fish and turning them into monstrous killers. They are attacked by another set of AIM goons and when Ice Man tries to help Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze acts like a royal prick.




(You're just an asshole, dude. And Darkstar doesn't even like him like that! Way to rub salt in those wounds, Johnny Blaze.)

Darkstar ends up getting knocked out. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, Ice Man loses focus when he sees that happening to Laynia and he gets coldcocked. Eventually the trio gets captured.

Iron Man heads to the Mojave Desert where he happens upon a Franciscan Mission and a gigantic monk. Turns out the monk works for MODOK and proceeds to beat the crap out of Iron Man. Unlike the Champions, Iron Man leaves the monk—who is walking around talking about how he beat up Iron Man and that he’ll be running AIM in less than a week.

Somehow the Champions all escape their messes and jump in their Championcrafts and head to where Iron Man is going: Nevada. He goes back to the place that he destroyed at the beginning of this issue and guess who’s there? MODOK! Turns out while IM was destroying his lab, MODOK was invisible and waiting for him to leave. Just like James Comey used to do when President* Trump drop by.

MODOK explains his plans and starts fighting Iron Man when the Champions come busting in. MODOK decides that enough is enough and blows his entire mountain lair up, seemingly crushing the heroes. But Iron Man has an adaptor and plus one side into his armor (through the yellow circle in his chest) and the other into the Doomsday Chair (I forgot to say that this is the thing MODOK created to blow up the world). The DDC transfers so much energy into Iron Man’s armor that he is able to use it to blow off the mountain that Hercules was holding up. It reminded me of this:


(I loved this issue and this cover, look at how pissed off Hulk was. And this was much cooler because the Molecule Man dumped an entire mountain on these guys and Hulk held it up. Incredible!)



We are on the second to last page and The Champions are like, “Phew, I’m glad we’re safe but what about MODOK?” And Iron Man’s like, “Oh yeah. That dude.” He fires his repulsor rays at him to “stabilize” the bad guy but ends up blowing him up. After dropping the Champions off, Iron Man walks away and thinks that he should probably go to his factory and see how everyone is doing down there.

This was a pretty good issue and I think it’s because the Champions were NOT the focus of it, which doesn’t say much for this team. Ghost Rider was the only real asshole in this issue (aside from Tony Stark) but Bobby didn’t whine so much about Darkstar, the Angel didn’t act like an entitled prick and Hercules and Black Widow had their nice moment too.

I would read more about this team, if I was a kid who picked up this comic off the rack and had no idea who these Champions. They were just eclectic enough to make it work in this Annual. I’d give it four disco-shirted Angels.

I'll start it off with this guy, because he loves to get the party started:





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