For a comic that has a supervillain who’s a Nazi AND made
entirely of bees, this was a pretty boring story.
We open with tens of thousands of bees invading the
Champions building through all of the air vents. Hercules rips off a piece of
the wall and pushes it against the vent, Angel yells at him for wrecking the
place. Fine Warren, we’ll all just get stung a couple million times, but at
least your building will be safe.
Finally Swarm, the supervillain Nazi who’s entirely made of
bees, shows up and gets one of his robotic giant bees to grab Darkstar. You
know, Darkstar is really becoming the lynch pin of just about every Champions
plot for the last few issues. It’s a good thing that she showed up, otherwise
these guys would sit with their thumbs up their asses for 20 plus pages.
Ice Man, who is smitten with the blonde Russian, sees what’s
happening and yells her name. He is stung by the giant bee and both Champions
are carried off. Swarm scrams.
The rest of the Champions look outside the window and
citizens are getting destroyed by bees. Team leader Black Widow tells Angel and
Ghost Rider to go help them. Surprisingly GR doesn’t call Black Widow a bitch
for being a woman, but Angel is super mopey about helping people because his
buddy Ice Man was kidnapped. Never the less he did what he was told, though he
crabbed about it.
(This is a legitimately terrifying image.)
Ice Man and Darkstar wake up in Swarm’s lair, which is a giant
hive. Darkstar hasn’t paid much attention to Bobby Drake, but he still calls
her honey. Which, considering where they are, is a pretty solid pun. They’re
alone and if I were Darkstar, I’d use this opportunity to patiently explain to
the mutant that just because he likes her, doesn’t mean that they’re going out
or anything.
(Cool Dad joke, Ice Man. HA! I did it too!)
Bill Mantlo is having a tough time writing Ice Man. He’s so
god damn needy and pathetic that he makes high school me look like Tom Jones.
In the last few years, the X-Men from the 1960s were brought to modern times by
the Beast, Hank McCoy. It was a plan to make Cyclops realize that he’s acting
like a dick. It didn’t work.
In any event, the 1960s X-Men realize that they like the
future, so they stick around. In the future, Ice Man realizes that he’s gay and
comes out. I guess what I’m saying is that knowing all of that and reading
these issues now, it seems incredibly awkward. I’m sure that when this was
first written people were just like, “That Ice Man is just unlucky in love” or “He’s
trying too damn hard. Just cool it (pun) and the chicks will come running.” (I
assume that the person reading this is Fonzi).
(Man, I love Fonzi when I was a kid. I really did.)
But reading it now, it seems colored. Like this coming on this
strong on the ladies (he did the same thing with Polaris back in his X-Men days
too) is Bobby Drake trying to lie to himself. It’s more than a little awkward,
I think.
Back to the comic. Swarm spends the next few pages giving us
his origin. It’s Supervillain 101. The only thing that you need to know is that
he’s a Nazi scientist who is made of bees. That’s it.
(This is what he looked liked in the comics.)
He explains his plan and wants the two Champions to help him
with his plan of breaking the queen of his swarm out of an amber encasement.
This is what that guy, an Interpol agent, who Swarm killed last issue was
carrying. Darkstar’s like, sure, we’ll do it. And of course, Ice Man goes full
bat shit and starts yelling at her. Darkstar now has to explain to Bobby that
this was going to be a trick and aww, fuck it, uses her darkforce to shatter
the hive and release the queen bee.
(Christ, Bobby. What did I say five minutes ago about being a Fonzi?)
However, that backfires on Darkstar because the queen grows
to huge proportions and starts attacking Champions. Unfortunately for her, she
attacks Hercules who punches and kicks the crap out of the bee. The bee is
knocked unconscious so Herc takes the bees and flings it from the Champion
Building into the Pacific Ocean. The rest of the bees follow the queen and
guess where that leaves Swarm? Our Nazi scientist super villain covered in
bees, is no longer covered in bees. He’s literally now just a skeleton. And
that’s how we end this issue with a skull—not Ghost Rider’s—staring at us with
it’s mouth agape.
Like I said, this was a bit of a snooze in terms of issues.
It wasn’t the worst comic that I’ve ever read, but it’s nowhere near the best.
John Byrne did a fine job of penciling, but at the same time, it looks as if he’s
a bit bored with his assignment. He’s still really good at what he does, it just
seems that he knows what we do that this is book is pretty close to being
cancelled.
I’m still not sure if Mantlo has a handle on these
characters yet. I know that I complain about this a lot, but I’m still not
seeing what’s keeping these people together. Aside from Hercules, most of these
characters are jerks. Sure, they’re heroic jerks but they’re still jerks.
Two out of five vested Angels.
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