A World for the Winning!

Let me explain why I’m reviewing Super-Villain Team-Up under the Champions blog banner: it’s the beginning of a two-part arc that starts in SVTU, the Champions don’t even arrive until the very last panel.

Here’s the deal: Magneto is in Dr. Doom’s home country of Latveria where he’s pushing through the streets demanding to see their ruler. Everyone ignores him because they’re in the middle of a giant party because Dr. Doom defeated the Red Skull and if they stop reveling, they’ll be in deep doo(m)-doo(m). This is the one thing that I like about Victor Von, he likes partying so much that if you stop, you’re going to die. He’s like one of those 24-Hour Party People that ran around New York City during the 1990s. He even murders like one of them.

This pisses Magneto off and rips down a Dr. Doom statue which freaks everyone out. Magneto finally just makes his way to Doom’s castle where Doom is chilling out with a chess set made up of Marvel Heroes. There’s Captain America, the Beast, Spider-Man’s a rook but Doom is talking to the Mr. Fantastic figure. It’s adorable.

("DOOM WILL PLAY WITH HIS MEGO FIGURES NOW!")

For some reason Magneto has chosen today to ask Dr. Doom if they should team up and take over the world. He’s also surprised, and a little flattered, that Doom knows who he is. Magneto starts rambling on about kicking the X-Men’s ass and Doom is just staring at a statue he made of Valeria, his one true love. Finally Magneto stops talking and Doom is like, I don’t need you to conquer the world I have these neuro-canisters (spelled incorrectly in the book, BTW) that has this gas that will get people to do anything that I tell them to.

Magneto calls bullshit and the next thing you know, the Master of Magnetism is on his knees bowing to doom before trying to kill himself. Doom intercedes then gives him some wine, which is drugged, and Magneto is down for the count. When he wakes up, Doom says that he’ll have his mind back and he can do what he wants.

The first thing he does is breaks into Avengers Mansion and fights the Avengers instead of telling him what Doom has up his sleeve. Magneto pretty quickly kicks their asses—and this is a power-packed line up of Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Wonder Man, the Vision, Scarlet Witch, Beast, Wasp and Yellowjacket—before Earth’s Mightiest Heroes listen to him. Doom shows up, via hologram, and tells the Avengers that what Magneto says is true and makes them bow down to him. And they stay bowed down, though Doom says that Magneto can take an ally in defeating him.

Magneto chooses the Beast ,calling him “the weakest Avenger”, which is kind of shitty, you know?

(That's cold, Maggie. Real cold.) 

The Beast suggest to Magneto that they need more heroes to stop Dr. Doom so they go to the Baxter Building and the Xavier School for Gifted Children and both the Fantastic Four and the X-Men aren’t home. Before deciding to see what the Micronauts or the Defenders are up to, the Beast tells Magneto to hoof it to the West Coast where they can find the Champions.

The Champions have no idea what’s going on and they want to kick the Beast’s ass for brining Magneto to their headquarters. That’s the cliff hanger.

Like the Champions, Super-Villain Team-Up is a book that sounds really cool in theory, but it never really delivers. I bought and read the entire of the SVTU run a few years back in one of the Marvel Essentials trade paperback. I remember being really excited about reading these stories because they were ones that I wanted to read when I was a kid, but they weren’t that great.

They all star Dr. Doom, who is cool, but he mostly teams up with Namor the Sub-Mariner for a lot of the run. When that happens it’s like 15-pages of dick swinging in the third person that would make Rickey Henderson blush: “Von Doom is the best ruler there is!” “No! No King is better than Namor!” “Dr. Doom is the master strategist! Heed Doom’s words!” “Nay, the Avenging Son of Atlantis has no peer when it comes to the mastery of war! We do what Namor says!”

It’s like reading the argument of the two biggest assholes on the planet. When they finally fight whomever they’ve teamed up against, it takes like a half page to wipe him off the planet. Then they bicker again. Which, comes to think about it, is my main complaint with the Champions. For some reason, Marvel thought that 15 pages of bickering was cool.

The idea is actually pretty good, get two villains together and see how they act and how they’d plot, but it kind of runs out of gas every issue. They never fight the good guys, they fight other bad guys; which is lame. I’m sure there was a perception problem in that, you’re never supposed to let the bad guys beat the good guys. And I get that. I also understand that you can’t have the stars of your book get their butts beat every month. But at the same time, it might have been a cool idea to delve behind exactly why villains would team up. Set the paradigm on its ear a little bit.

Have Doom talk about how much he hates Reed Richards and tell the Sub Mariner that he can have the Invisible Girl for a wife if he aids (Dr. Doom needs NO HELP FROM ANYONE) him in destroying the Fantastic Four. Or team up Baron Zemo and the Red Skull to go kick Captain America’s star-spangled butt. They’re both Nazis, they have something in common. Or spend a few issues with Baron Zemo going to different villains and getting them to buy into a new Masters of Evil. Once assembled, they can fight the Avengers in their book or something.

There was a lot of really cool ideas that could have been done with this book that never happened.

Speaking of cool ideas, I never quite figured out why Dr. Doom needed Magneto to light the fuse of his plan. For one thing, how did he know that Magneto was on his way to visit him? How did he know that Magneto would go running to the Avengers? What if Magneto was like, “Meh. Good luck to the world, I’m going back to my asteroid and wait around until the whole shithouse goes up in flames.” There are a lot of variables here that Doom couldn’t have accounted for.

The cover, a John Byrne special, is really terrific. I like how all of the Champions and Avengers are bowing to the good Doctor and Doom is just standing in a B-Boy stance saying, “Yup. This is good.” If I saw that book on a comic spinner at the local drug store, I’d buy that thing in a second.

As far as a Champions story, there are no Disco Angels. Mainly because the Champions aren’t in it at all. But as a Super-Villain Team-Up story, it gets two Doctor Doom pinups. The plot is pretty damn flimsy, even by 1970s writing standards (Champions scribe Bill Mantlo writes it) and the art is pedestrian at best. Also, it was announced as the last issue of Super-Villain Team-Up ever, but there are three after it. They don’t come out until the following three years though (once a year). 

The Man Who Created the Black Window

This is another good issue of the Champions, writer Tony Isabella has really found his groove and things are going along pretty well. This is a classic set-up issue where stories are being laid out, so there’s not a ton of action. Well, meaningful action.

It opens with Hercules, Ice Man and Champions business manager Richard Fenster being attacked by some sort of remote control bomb. It takes them about three pages for the trio to capture it and then they give it to Natasha and her pal Ivan. The Russian ex-pats are going to look into this thing because something seems a bit too familiar about this rocket.

While this is going on, Ghost Rider and the Angel are visiting Stuart Clarke, aka Rampage, in the hospital. The Angel is trying to get Clarke to accept his gift of a lawyer, so that he can be defended in court. Clarke doesn’t want it (I don’t blame him) and he’s being a bit of a dick about it too. Oh yeah, he’s smoking. In a hospital. The 1970s were a weird time, man.

Angel wants to help Clarke because he feels bad for him. Johnny Blaze is like, “Dude, that’s dumb. I’m going to turn into Ghost Rider and scare him into taking your charity!”

As he bursts into the hotel room, he sees the villains Darkstar and the Griffin taking Clarke. Ghost Rider is so taken aback he yells, “Sweet jumping catfish!”

I didn’t read a ton of Ghost Rider books when I was a kid, but I don’t remember him talking like a stereotypical 1950’s TV cowboy. It’s really strange to see a guy with a flaming skull for a head, speak with these south western, homespun axioms. I’d think that you want a guy who looks like a demon, to talk like a demon. But that’s just me.

Otherwise he sounds like Jethro Bodine.

(I know this guy isn't a cowboy, but man alive Ghost Rider, any second now you're going to be prattling on and on about your ce-ment pond and Mrs. Drysdale. BTW, I really did not like "The Beverly Hillbillies". Even when I was a kid, I thought it was too low-brow and I genuinely like "Car 54, Where Are You?" and "Gilligan's Island")

Speaking of looks, the Griffin looks absolutely ridiculous. He’s got brown wings, a chalk white face that surrounded by shockingly yellow mane and he’s clad in a bright red onesie. Ghost Rider calls him “a homicidal maniac”, but he looks completely ridiculous.

(He even has a picture of a griffin on his belt! The fuck, dude?) 

While GR is fighting the bad guys, Angel rescues Clarke. How does Clarke repay WWIII? He punches him in the gut with one his exo-gloves that Darkstar smuggled in for him. Angel and Ghost Rider regroup and go back to the Champions headquarters, located in downtown LA.

Hercules, Ice Man and Fenster are walking around looking for the bomb perpetrator and the Champions business manager won’t shut up about tomorrow. Apparently, the Champions are going to announce to the world that they’re a new super team and looking for a bad guy in their headquarters could be bad publicity. Ice Man gets pissed and calls Fenster, “Dickey Boy” all while completely missing one of the bad guys hiding behind a file cabinet.

Apparently, Ice Man can either come up with a sick burn or be a detective. HE CAN’T DO BOTH!

The trio think that they stumble upon the bad guy, but it turns out to be a crybaby kid who wants the Champions to help him. We don’t know what, exactly, he wants them to do but he starts sobbing on Hercules and hugging him. Zounds indeed! The stealthily hidden villain, who I think is the Outcast (they never get around to mentioning his name), goes down the back staircase and out the door to freedom.

Which is fine because we move our attention to Ivan and Natasha. Ivan has taken apart the bomb and realizes that it wasn’t really a bomb at all, it was a remote-controlled device that was delivered a message. The message? One black pearl. That’s all Black Widow needs to hear and she jumps out a window. Was the pearl scary? No, she saw a guy on the rooftop, so she decided to track him down.

She meets up with him and realizes that it’s her old teacher – they guy from the title of this book! The man who created the Black Widow! He was about to tell her something, but he got shot by the Titanium Man. And that’s where this book ends.

When you think of classic Marvel teams like the Avengers or the X-Men or the Fantastic Four, they all came about in the early 1960s. The Champions debuted 15 years later, which isn’t really that much time, yet it feels like a completely different dynamic. Like I said, I think things are starting to go in the right direction for this book, but it still has a weird, ad-hoc sort of vibe to it.

When you go back and read those other team books, it seemed like there was more cohesion, it was more tightly knit. And I’m not sure whether that’s due to the writing of Stan Lee and art of Jack Kirby (two of the all-time titans of the industry). Or whether it’s because I didn’t read those first books until much later, after I already knew the stories and the background, so I was more familiar with the characters and willing to smooth over the rough, early patches.

But even though Isabella is doing a fine job and the books are entertaining, something seems to be off. Perhaps it’s because I know that I’m reading a finite book that most people have forgotten and that has colored my view – almost as if I’m looking for the one panel where the collective comic community threw up its hands and said, “We’re out!” but there’s no real sense of gravitas here.

It sounds as if it’s me, I’m the one who needs to change my perspective on this book and just read it for what it is: a fun, weird book centered around some C-list Marvel characters and not worry about any larger significance. One of the things that bugs me about modern comics is how super serious every character seems to be. I like books, like Kate Bishop: Hawkeye (I know that’s not the title), where there are some stakes, but the writing is bouncy and fun. The Champions are a lot like that, but in a more ironic way. It is intended to be serious and full of consequences (Ice Man has been having an existential crisis and bitching about quitting the super hero game to become an accountant – which sounds really funny after I reread it) but it’s not.

In a few issues, the Champions are going to fight a former Nazi scientist who’s made of bees. And that sounds pretty damn awesome.

BTW, despite the aesthetics of the Griffin, the cover is pretty damn dope. Six out of seven!

Anyway, I’d give this issue of Champions three out of five Angels wearing a vest.

 

Murder at Malibu!

What makes a team book a fun read? The writing and the art are good places to start. The characters need to be interesting. But the biggest reason is that there needs to be a sense of purpose or an overarching theme behind the group.

The Fantastic Four are essentially a family*, Mr. Fantastic is the husband of the Invisible Girl, brother-in-law of the Human Torch and best friend of the Thing. At its core, there’s a family dynamic. The Avengers are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. They deal with the stuff that no one else can handle. If you’re an Avenger, you’re the best of the best (at least in theory – I’m looking at you Dr. Druid).

* My theory as to why the FF sucks as a movie: there’s not enough time to establish a family dynamic, figure out how to use their powers and deal with a bad guy. Not in two hours. It would be better as a book. When I say this, people always use “The Incredibles” as a counter argument and that kinda works. But the thing is, “The Incredibles” is about a nuclear family: dad, mom, brother, sister and baby. You already know how that works, that dynamic is practically hardwired into your brain, so you don’t need a lot of time to explain it. The FF isn’t a “traditional” nuclear family and time is needed to establish bonds. Why does Sue love Reed when he’s an obvious asshole? Why are Johnny and Ben so close? Why does Ben defend Reed despite Reed constantly fucking him over? There’s no shorthand to this and it’s not stuff that you can get across in two hours.

The X-Men are a little different. They’re together because they’re mutants and half the world hates them, the other half fears them. They needed to be brought together to be taught how to use their powers and work for the betterment of mankind. At least that’s what Professor Xavier says, I think he just wanted to look at some young tail.

Yuck.

Even the Defenders had a reason, even if it was an anti-reason: they were a non-team. That meant if the Hulk doesn’t feel like dealing with the villain of the month, he doesn’t have to. The Sub Mariner has things to do in Atlantis, get to it Subby. There were always plenty of heroes hanging around Dr. Strange’s mansion to lend a hand.

Do these teams above bicker with each other? Constantly. But there's that purpose that ties them back. Yes the Thing wants to knock the Human Torch into next week, but he won't because they're practically brothers. Wolverine routinely wants to ram a claw into Cyclops' throat (let's be honest, who doesn't?) but he won't because he believes in Xavier's message.

That brings us to the Champions. It seems that writer Tony Isabella saw that the Marvel method is, "Have teammates argue with each other" and confused it with growth or substance or something and left it at that. We’re in issue four and I still have no idea why they hang around with each other. I mean I get why Angel and Ice Man are pals and everyone probably wants to sleep with Natasha, but the others are just jerks to each other. Bobby has a hair across his ass about Ghost Rider and now Angel does too.

Before I get into that, I need to explain this month's plot a bit: Hercules and Black Widow are walking on the beach when they’re attacked by an old, crazy guy calling himself Billy. He attacks our hero without any provocation and talks about himself in the third-person, which reminds me of Rickey Henderson. Being reminded of Rickey is great.

(My brother had this poster when we were kids, it's so awesome. AND there's a bonus comics pun in there! Who says I don't bring it all home?) 

They kick his ass and are trying to figure out what to do about it when these six goons come around to bring Billy back to where he came from. Hercules isn’t too happy about this because all of a sudden, he likes Billy. The goons shoot him and Widow and the next thing you know they’re at the San Marino State Hospital. I just looked it up and San Marino is 52.3 miles away from Malibu, so I’m not sure what Billy was doing in Malibu anyway and why it took these guys so long to track him down, but comics!

Anyway, Hercules is in cuffs and Widow has a device around her neck that will fry her if either makes the wrong move. It turns out that this scientist is trying to replicate the Super Soldier Serum* and has been testing it on the mentally deranged, the old and the poor. Surprisingly, it hasn’t worked out very well for any of them.

* I love how the SSS only worked for Steve Rogers. It (at least up until I stopped reading comics in the late 80s) never worked well for anyone else. For the most part, after being injected with the SSS, it drove people insane. I think that says a lot for Steve Rogers, that he’s the ultimate American. Not just in terms of mental capacity, but in terms of will and temperament. That’s a nice idea to hold onto, especially if we use him as an avatar for America.

  

This scientist, Dr. Edward Lansing, is planning to try his experiment on both the Widow and Hercules so that they will be his slaves. Their first mission? Destroy the Champions? Why? I don’t know. They just have to, that’s why.

Herc, Nastasha, Dr. Lansing and some more SSSed-up goons attack the Angel, Ice Man and Widow’s friend Ivan. And they’re kind of kicking their asses pretty well, until Ghost Rider shows up. Remember, he’s not only the cavalry, but he’s also the friend and teammate of Angel and Ice Man.

Angel says, “How ‘bout puttin’ your money where your mouth is for once before we all get creamed?” Does the Ghost Rider need this shit? Fuck and no, he doesn’t. If I were Johnny Blaze, I’d turn my bike around and go somewhere else. But Blaze is a better hero than I would be, so he helps the two asshole mutants fight Hercules and it goes okay. Ivan has his hands full with the Black Widow who is literally choking him—like Homer does to Bart*, only less funny.

* The Simpsons are probably my favorite piece of pop culture ever, when they finally leave the airwaves, it's going to be a sad day. But the whole Homer choking Bart “joke” hasn’t really aged well, has it? I guess it’s good that it's a cartoon because seeing a real 38-year-old man choking a real 10-year-old boy would be disturbing.

This act wakes Natasha up and she kicks Dr. Lansing in the face, breaking his control box. The mutates (his words, not mine) end up turning on him and kill him. I guess that once the people under his control kill someone they are then bound to turn into brain dead zombies. Lansing wanted Hercules and Black Widow to kill their fellow Champions so they would be under his control, which seems like a dumb plan. Why don’t you just have them kill a drifter or two? Why take the gamble that they could kill other heroes – even if those heroes are Ice Man and the Angel.

In a rare moment of empathy, Hercules feels bad about these zombies. Are they zombies? I guess they are technically, though they're not dead. It sort of feels like I'm not being sensitive by lumping all brain dead slaves into one big zombie pile. Angel doesn't care for my PC musings (and you know WWIII would vote for Donald Trump and would tell everyone that he did so) and tells the Scion of Zeus not to worry that the cops will take care of them (uh, okay?). Hercules argues that these people were innocents who went to a doctor for help, only to see themselves get experimented on and altered in the worst way.

Does Warren Worthington III take stock in that and feel any empathy? Of course not. He flips the fuck out and says, “All right! There is evil the world Hercules – and Lansing is part of it. But there’s good as well – and we’re a part of that! The question is: do we do anything about it – or do we sit around crying in our beer? #MAGA*”

* He didn't really say the last thing. 

A few things, WWIII:

1. Hercules wasn’t saying let’s disband the Champions with a murder-suicide pact. He’s just bummed out about what happened to these people.
2. He didn’t say that you were the cause of this, so just relax.
3. You have wings, Hercules is one of the strongest people on the planet. He's a demigod. Maybe you should slow your roll a bit.

And that’s what brings me back to my original point: I still have no idea why these people are still together. They don’t seem to like each other too much, they have completely different philosophies for practically everything and aside from mooching off the Angel (he’s rich and underwrites everything that the Champions do and allows him to crash at his place) there’s no symbiotic relationship.

I think that the Champions stories have struggled in these first four issues because the group has struggled to find a purpose. They never answered that one important question: why are the Champions here?

This was a meh issue. The group just sorta defeated literal ancient gods, so fighting a mad scientist is not just a step down, it’s an entire building down. And again, they didn’t really defeat him, Black Widow kicked him and the mutates did the rest of the work (killing him) for them. And BTW, good job Champions of saving Dr. Lansing. No one lifted a finger to help him. At all. 

"Oh? Those screams? Just good old Dr. Lansing being torn apart by a bunch of brain-dead zombies. I wonder if Warren still has that margarita machine? Taco Tuesday y'all!"

You know you're a 90s kid when ... stupid sentence beginning but, every time I read this headline, I sing it to the chorus of the Hole song, "Malibu". I'm sure Courtney Love will be thrilled. 

The George Tuska art was a little better, but the writing lagged. The front cover is boss, so they have a four-issue streak on that. I’d have bought this book if I saw it on a spinner or the magazine rack at Mahoney’s Drug Store in Methuen, MA. I give this issue two vest-wearing Angels out of five.