The Sentinels Hunt Again!

Champions 17 is a sad issue of the Champions because it’s the last issue of the run. Marvel made a last ditch effort to push the Champions in the middle of 1976 when the team appeared in Iron Man’s annual, the Avengers and Super-Villain Team-Up (as well as an issue of Godzilla, but that comic wasn’t included in this omnibus due to licensing issues. Will I buy it off eBay? Probably!).

Apparently, the push didn’t go well and this was the last stand for Los Angeles’ favorite super hero club. I guess if you’re going to go out, you may as well go out in a mess. The art (George Tuska is listed as the artist, John Byrne as the embellisher) felt sketchy and incredibly rushed. The writing from Bill Mantlo was probably one of his worst in terms of the plot hanging together.

Spoiler alert: it’s not good. But here goes …

Three former members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (Blob, Unus and Lorelei) bust in on Black Widow and Hercules who were on guard duty at the Champions Headquarters. They looked freaked out because they brought friends, the Sentinels. the mutant-hunting giant robots are the latest villains to destroy a wall of Angel’s precious Champions Tower (“I PAID BIG MONEY FOR THIS PLACE!”).

The one cool thing that the Widow does is hit the Champions Signal, which turns the windows of the tower into a gigantic “C”.

("C" for Champions! Get it? I wonder how many times they had to explain this to Ice Man?) 

It makes for a cool visual but there are a few problems:

What if the other Champions aren’t outside when the signal is lit. Or what if they are, but they can’t see the building?

On the page prior, the Sentinels were clearly shown ripping down a wall. How was the Champions signal lit when a quarter of the building is gone. Even if the Sentinels ripped the opposite wall down, that building isn’t standing tall.

Whatever. Something is going on because the Vanisher is in the corner and he looks sinister.

Warren Worthington III is flying around and he notices that the signal is lit and he knows that he has to tell his other teammates. Good thing that Darkstar and Ice Man are at Johnny Blaze’s new movie premiere. I guess after months of being ignored, Bobby and Laynia are now a couple. Though Ice Man is still acting like a douche and throwing major shade at his comrade’s new movie, “Biker flicks are the pits!”

He sees the Angel flying overhead and he immediately ices out. This excites the crowd into an anti-Mutant riot and they try to kick his ass. Darkstar knows that her boyfriend (is that what we’re calling him?) is in trouble (because of course she is) and she unleashes the darkforce on the angry citizens of LA. This makes them even more scared and they try to attack her.

Johnny Blaze arrives on the scene, angry that his premiere has been ruined by his buddies, and attempts to start punching. He turns into the Ghost Rider which scatters the other people waiting to see the film.

Ice Man and Ghost Rider bicker for the eight millionth time and it’s all so exhausting. Read the panels below if you want to be bothered by two assholes.

 

(No Angel and Ice Man, that's a total normal way to get one of your teammates to a battle. Looks cool!)

Ghost Rider is such a world-class dick throughout the entire run of the Series that he's number one with a bullet on the Worst Champion list:

1. Ghost Rider – he’s just a thin-skinned asshole who believes the worst of everyone. I hate him.
2. Ice Man – he’s a mopey douche who takes offense to everything. I hate him.
3. Angel – he’s a rich prick who would be the lead in every slob vs. snob movie in the 80s. Not only that, but he’s completely useless. I can fly! Big deal. I hate him.
4. Black Widow – She’s cool. I like her.
5. Darkstar – She’s mostly confused about just everything. I like her okay
6. Hercules – Surprisingly super cool. I like him a lot! 

Black Goliath doesn’t get votes because he wasn’t in the comic very much.

The Champions assemble and quickly kick the Sentinels’ ass. Like, it was really easy. The only really funny thing is Bobby saying how slow these Sentinels are in one panel and then two panels later, a Sentinel grabs him. This forced Ghost Rider to save his icy ass – which I’m sure pissed both men off.

The Angel is surprised to see the former BoEM members in Champions HQ and smells a rat. Great job, Warren, maybe you’re not so dumb after all. Too bad, the Vanisher appears and shoots them all with a gun. The entire Champions team is knocked out. Blob suggests that they should just fucking kill them and the Vanisher lays down a solid burn, “For one so slow, Blob, you are remarkably lacking in patience! I want to savor this moment!”

The Vanisher is dumber than the Angel. He starts telling the people whom he recruited for his rouse all about his plan. Remember, the Champions are knocked out so they can’t hear him say that he found a Sentinel, reprogrammed it and then had it chase Blob, Unus the Untoucable (I love this last part of his name, BTW) and Lorelei to Champions’ headquarters. He thought that the Champions would then lead them to the X-Men somehow.

The Vanisher would have then killed both teams. Okay, dude. Sounds completely plausible. Great plan.

Anyway, after this long and dumb story winds down, Darkstar wakes up and uses her darkforce power to reanimate a Sentinel so that it attacks the three evil mutants. It kicks their ass. As Vanisher realizes what’s going on, he’s about to vanish when Darkstar hits him with her power. The villain is frozen between being tangible and vanishing.

Ice Man is like, “Holy shit! Is he dead? Wow!”

Darkstar answers, “Oh Bobby, hold me!”

And Ice Man is like, “Sucks for you Vanisher, but awesome for me!”

(All it took was for a man to almost die for Ice Man to get a little bit of tenderness. Good going! You know that Bobby is the guy who leaves a strip club convinced that all of the dancers love him, for real.)

So the last issue ends on a cliffhanger bout Darkstar and her weird powers that we are promised will be answered in an upcoming Avengers, but I don’t think that happens because there are only three comics left in this collection: two Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-man issues and a Hulk annual. I don’t think Darkstar is in any of those mags.

Like I said, this was a pretty shitty issue; especially coming on the heels of the best issue from last month. I’ll save my final thoughts on the run as a whole for a later blog entry. As for this issue, the cover is pretty good though it looks like Ghost Rider is running away from the battle. The one thing that I know that I keep harping on, but it’s true, I am shocked at how much bickering these people do. They’re all jerks.

I give this issue two Disco Angels, and that’s being very kind.   

You know what, this is a pretty goofy picture of Angel too:

What is with this guy? How come no one can draw him looking cool?

The Demi-God Must Die!

As a Champions story, this wasn’t too bad. As an Avengers story, this wasn’t too good.

We open the action with Iron Man hurtling himself towards the Championcar. As Black Widow said, “He’s diving at (us) at missile speed!” Since I just finished reading Iron Man Annual 4 where the Champs help ol’ Shell Head, to see him attacking his new/old buddies was a bit confusing. Writer Jim Shooter, who was a terrific writer back in the day and has a better handle on the Champions than the team’s regular writer Bill Mantlo, doesn’t give a lot of clues as to why Tony Stark is doing this.

Iron Man starts beating the shit out of Hercules. When Black Widow and Ice Man help their Olympian friend, they get a pretty nasty beat down too. Herc, BW and Ice Man are the only Champions that appear in this book because the others are all off doing something. It literally took Iron Man two pages to take down Ice Man and Natasha. And he did it in a douche-y way too. He crumbled a building on Black Widow, when there were a ton of bystanders around –don’t worry about collateral damage, Tony! And after Bobby encased him in ice, he used his chest beam to drill him in the back.

For the rest of the issue it was a slugfest between Hercules and Iron Man. They took turns trading punches. Hercules would punch Iron Man in the chest, IM would gasp about how he almost just died. Iron Man would punch Hercules in the mouth and Tony would wonder why Hercules wasn’t dead. Every other panel would center around Hercules asking Iron Man if he had lost his mind. Why was he attacking him? WHY?

Turns out Iron Man and the Beast were chilling at the Avengers Mansion—most of the other Avengers were still in the hospital after their recent fight with Ultron—when an Olympian Titan named Typhon came out of nowhere and captured the two Avengers. Seems as if Typhon has a score to settle with the Lion of Olympus and he heard that this was Hercules’ last known address.

Iron Man has to explain to Typhon that Hercules doesn’t live there anymore, but he’d be happy to get him. Typhon tells Stark that he better get Hercules and kill him otherwise he’s going to turn Hank McCoy into a furry blue pancake. In a wonderful moment, the Beast tells Iron Man not to do it, he doesn’t care if Typhon kills him and that he doesn’t want to be a pawn. You know what Iron Man says?

“Shut up, McCoy.”

("Fuck you, dude." That's what I would have said.)

See Tony Stark was always a dick, it wasn’t just the movies.

Typhon tells Iron Man that when Hercules makes it to New York, he has to fight him and if he sees him screwing around, he’s going to kill the Beast. By the way, Typhon is doing all of this because he’s trapped in Hades. Pluto, the ruler of Hades, said if Typhon can kill Hercules, he can leave the underworld. You may remember Pluto from Champions 1, 2 and 3. Typhon is down with that because Hercules clowned him a few years back so he can get revenge AND escape from eternal torment.

That’s win-win, in the bad guy business.

So now Iron Man has to go toe-to-toe with a demigod and his plan of telling the Black Widow is out the door because she’s knocked out thanks to falling debris. Debris, that Iron Man, made fall on her. Bad plan one.

He doesn’t want to tell Hercules what’s going on because “Typhon forced me to set up a monitor for him! He’s watching every move I make.” Okay, I know that people were kind of tech stupid back in the 1970s, but c’mon. Who’s filming this? How is the monitor that Typhon is watching picking up everything that these two guys are doing? I mean, they’re literally fighting over all of Manhattan. It’s a pretty big place. Iron Man couldn’t have whispered to Hercules his problem?

By trying to explain the holes in his story, Shooter just digs more.

Finally, Hercules and Iron Man fight their way to Avengers Mansion. Despite being glued to “his monitor”, Typhon doesn’t realize this. Maybe he’s never been to New York City before and doesn’t know where the Mansion is in relationship to where the fight was.

“Mid-town, I thought that the Mansion was downtown! Oh, fiddlesticks,” Typhon could have said. But he didn’t.

Hercules and Iron Man have pretty much exhausted themselves beating the shit out of each other. But guess who’s awake and followed their teammate to the Avengers Mansion? Ice Man and Black Widow! They try to attack the titan, but are getting the short end of the stick. All of a sudden, the Beast gets free and kicks Typhon.

Then he says, “Rottsa Ruck, Cluck!”

(Kinda concerning? BTW, that image of Typhon is ghastly.)

I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds kind of racist. I may be a little on edge after all of the shit that went down in Charlottesville this past week, but WTF Hank? Seriously? You’re doing a fake Chinese accent. And Typhon’s not even Asian, he’s Greek. You couldn’t have thrown a “Cheebugger, Cheebugger, Cheebugger!” John Belushi thing at him? Your’re better than this, man.

Anyway the Beast kicks Typhon into the air and Ice Man freezes him solid, just like they did in the X-Men days. He breaks out, but Typhon is now facing Ice Man, the Beast, Black Widow, Iron Man and Hercules. Pluto calculates the odds and realizes that Typhon isn’t going to win and brings him back to Hades. Before he goes, Typhon vows vengeance! Vengeance on the Avengers, I like that.

Iron Man apologizes to Hercules. Our Greek buddy is a stand-up dude and tells him not to worry about it. Hercules likes trading fists, so I’m sure that he was not bothered by it at all. The last panel shows the Beast having a crisis of confidence, but we won’t find out about that because that’s an Avengers’ problem, not a Champions’ problem.

A few things:

•  If you’re Ice Man and you find yourself in the Avengers Mansion, do you walk around and check stuff out? I would. How many times has Bobby been invited to the Mansion? Once maybe twice? I’d walk around, go to the bathroom (number two, just to say I did it), nose through the silverware, maybe have Jarvis make me a sandwich. That would be cool (no pun). What’s Iron Man going to do, kick you out? You just saved his ass. I’d probably sprawl out on the couch, let out a big yawn and loudly say, “I could get used to a place like this! I really could!”
•  Jim Shooter really is a hell of a writer. I wish that he wrote a couple of issues of the Champions. I better they’d be really good. BTW, another issue with no petty bickering between teammates. I like the Champions better when they’re in another person’s book. If I was reading this book as an Avengers fan, I don't think I would have loved it. For one thing, there was really only one Avenger: Iron Man. Beast was locked up for 95% of the book and this was a flimsy plot. Plus, it seemed like a fill-in and a favor. Like they could have printed this thing any time they felt like it. And the favor comes from getting some eyeballs on a book (The Champions) that no one is reading. Bleh. 
•   The cover art is great. I love George Perez, he can really draw. In fact, I think that I might like him more than John Byrne. That’s saying something. I also enjoy that the Beast calls Iron Man "Shell Head" when he's in the middle of kicking the shit out of Hercules. George Tuska’s comic art was fine. It wasn’t anything great. He does a workman’s job. Nothing awesome, but nothing terrible either.

This was a pretty good Champions story, I’d give it three disco Angels out of five. However, it was not a very good Avengers story. I’d only give it only one one-legged Wasp pants suit.

 

Or:

I know that it was the 1970s and the Wasp was supposed to be fashion-forward and everything, but what the hell was she thinking? Like WWIII, she's rich. Why is she flying around in a costume that looks like it was designed by a blind guy? Comics.