The Evil that is Cast …

And so this is how the end of the Champions begins, with a smug Warren Worthington III aka the Angel, lounging around in a Speedo watching TV. It’s reminiscent of how Champions 3 started off, only there’s no Black Widow in a bikini. He gets a call from his buddy, Bobby Drake (Ice Man) telling him that he’s still in Los Angeles with his girlfriend and they want to hang out.

(I was maxin' and relaxin' sippin' a tequila, when Walter Cronkite popped up and said, "Hi, my name is Shelia!")

I guess the Ice Man who we last saw telling Angel and Spider-man that he was going to wander around America looking for himself didn’t work out so well. Angel gives Bobby shit about finally finding a girlfriend, tells him to grab the Champion-car and then informs his girlfriend that they only have 17 hours to fuck before these two people come to New Mexico for a visit.

Since I wrote “New Mexico” I guess I should say that this isn’t a Champions book, but Incredible Hulk Annual number 7, and we quickly move from the Angel’s love nest to a Gamma Base where Doc Samson is showing a news reporter around the base. The run into the Hulk, who is kind of chill but gets angry enough to bunch the gamma-radiated psychiatrist in the head a few times.

That was kind of funny. Doc Samson has never been one of my favorite characters and it’s nice to see him get his ass kicked every once in a while.

The next day Bobby and Teresa Sue Bottoms (the fuck kind of name is that?) show up and Terri Sue seems to have a thing for the Angel. She stares at him, she can’t stop talking to him and she makes him put on his Angel costume all while ignoring Bobby. See, Terri Sue gets hot for heroes and Bobby hasn’t let her know who he is. This puts Ice Man into mopey man mode but it doesn’t last because an intruder has shown up, but he’s no ordinary stranger.

("Wings? Oh yeah, but really, I want you to stare at my hairy chest, m'lady.")

(I have to say, Candy is pretty cool about her boyfriend blatantly hitting on his best friend's girl right in front of her. "Oh that? Yeah, Warren is a prick. No big deal.")

Terri Sue and Candy Southern (Angel’s girl) get into the house, which is good because this guy is a Sentinel. And he’s no ordinary Sentinel, for one thing, he’s a bit of a wise-ass and for another, he’s the Master Mold which means that he’s the top dog. The Sentinel that makes other Sentinels. Ice Man tries something kind cool (no pun) by absorbing all of the heat out of the air, turning everything around him cold but keeping him hot. The Sentinel knows what he’s doing, so he nails him with a Frigi-Blast, and Ice Man is down for the count.

The Angel knows that he can’t beat a Sentinel by himself, so he bolts. As he does, Terri Sue let’s a pretty slick burn on Ice Man.

(Terri Sue, I think I love you.)

The good thing about Angel is that he’s not geographically challenged and knows where he is. He starts flying towards Gamma Base—which is 100 miles away and that seems awfully far for him to fly at top speed while trying to out maneuver a Sentinel, but I guess he does it. Because the Sentinel runs into Doc Samson who punches it and then gets his ass kicked.

This angers the Hulk, not because the long-haired Samson is a friend, but because he just wants it to be quiet (dude, I hear you). He comes out of his room, really pissed off and starts punching the robot, who kicks him.

Now Hulk is really mad and as the Sentinel tries flying away, he jumps on to his boot. Samson tries to help Bruce Banner but miss times his leap and ends up on the ground. He’s useless. Where is the robot flying to? To a meteor base just outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Being in outer space makes the Hulk pass out and when he wakes up he finds himself in a tube that was made for the Blob.

The Hulk freaks, punches his way out and busts Angel and Ice Man out too. He’s really angry now and wants to completely destroy the robot. So he goes looking for him, despite the protests of WW III and Bobby Drake. They both think that they should just silently get the fuck out of there. Which, I mean, way to be heroes, guys. Jeez.

Angel tells the two that he’s going to look for an escape pod – they both realize that they’re in space – and the Hulk says he’s looking for some payback. Ice Man tags along and when the Hulk finds the Sentinel, he starts kicking the crap out of him. Finally, the Sentinel is able to knock Hulk out by frying him with extreme voltage.

Ice Man actually does something smart and tricks the robot into telling them his plan. The Sentinel says that he’s a robot but has the brain of crazy old Steven Lang who you may remember from trying to kill the X-Men in X-Men 100. This is the issue where Jean Grey turns into the Phoenix, so it was a pretty big deal.

The Angel shows up, hearing all of this exposition and tells the Sentinel that he’s not Lang at all. Lang is a vegetable in some hospital back on Earth. This completely confuses the robot who hasn’t noticed that the Hulk has woken up. Oh yeah, the Hulk is even angrier than he was before and literally tears the Sentinel in half. He’s just lying there with his circuits and stuff all over the place.

Angel finds an escape pod and tries to get the Hulk to join him and Ice Man, but Hulk is like, “yeah I’m okay.” Despite being torn in half, the Sentinel is not quite dead though and he overrode the programming so that the pod won’t launch. The Hulk is super angry now and wants to rip the robot to even smaller pieces. Ice Man hits the Hulk with a snowball who retaliates by kicking the pod out of the space station.

The vacuum of space sucks the Hulk out and he splashes down in the ocean next to the two mutants. The Hulk tells them it was nice hanging with them, but he has to go. Ice Man and the Angel are left on an ice raft, with the Angel saying, “We better get back before my girlfriend kills yours.” All Ice Man can think is, “Why me, Lord? Why me?”

I like watching the Hulk punch things, it’s one of my most favorite things about comics. He’s a complete lunatic and he just beats the crap out of everything in sight. That is just great. But I think that I like something else a little better: watching Ice Man get the shaft from the ladies. There were a few times where I actually laughed out loud at Bobby’s bad luck. What’s weird to me is that this girl loves the supes but she doesn’t think that it’s weird that Bobby flies a Champions jet to his friend’s house, who is the world-famous X-Man the Angel and then gets kidnapped by a giant robot.

That’s three pretty huge clues that your boyfriend may have an alter ego. But Terri Sue Bottoms doesn’t get context clues, man.

I liked this issue a lot, writer Roger Stern has a great handle on the Angel and Ice Man’s personalities, which is refreshing. He makes Bobby seem like a guy who’s really unlucky with the ladies rather than a loser, the way Bill Mantlo did. And another cool thing was when TSB was mooning over WWIII, Bobby didn’t act like a baby. He kinda complained about it (which is what I would have done if I was in his shoes) to the Angel’s girlfriend, but he didn’t make an ice razor and try to cut his ice veins.

Also, the Angel wasn’t a prick either, which was a nice change of events.

The art was by John Byrne and it was pretty great. But that’s par for the course for him.

All-in-all, I give this four out of five Hulk babies. This kid looks like my nephew, which makes me laugh even more. 

BTW, I have not given my final synopsis on the Champions as a series. I will do that sometime very soon. Also, there is one Champions book that I have left to read: Godzilla 3, but I have to find it. Don’t worry true believers, I will!