Whatever Happened to the Ice Man?

The Champions’ book ended in 1977 and comic fans don’t find out what became of that wacky, LA-based team until over a year later. It wasn’t until issue number 17 of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, did people learn what transpired.

I have to hand it to writer Bill Mantlo, he did a pretty good job of framing how the reader learns about the Champions’ demise. For some reason, the New York City-based Daily Bugle has sent a writer and a photographer to the other side of the United States to do a story about what happens when a super hero team goes belly-up. The writer has already talked to the last Champion standing, Warren Worthington III (Angel) and now they’ve sent photographer Peter Parker out to California to grab some shots.

Pete is sleepily walking around Champions Plaza, where the Champions Building stands, when two huge pieces of glass fall from the skyscraper. The Angel catches one, but misses the other. If Parker wasn’t Spider-Man, he’d be dead. But since he is, he jumps out of the way and is safe. No one, not Angel or the two cops hanging around, think that Pete’s display of advanced gymnastics is a huge deal.

The Angel invites him upstairs for a coffee and to replace his busted camera and begins to tell him about his team disbanded. It all comes down to this: the Champions Building is a big pile of shit where nothing ever works. The rest of the team takes that as a metaphor for the Champions themselves and the frustrations bubble over.

Ghost Rider, who feels that he’s never been respected, is the first to jet. Black Widow tries to get him to stick around, but Hercules calls his teammate a “demon” (I have no idea where Blaze gets his persecution complex from) and says to let him go. Natasha begins to cry. Darkstar tells her country woman that things are going to be okay, but she has to leave too because she needs to go back to Russia.

Ice Man tries to get her to stay by telling her that he loves her, which ugh, c’mon man. Jesus Christ. And as she’s flying through the window, she gets one last burn on Bobby Drake. “I – I am sorry. Though I like you – it has never been more than that!”

Which, damn. That hurts. But on the other hand, she’s never led Bobby on. He’s the one who loves her, does stupid shit for her and expects her to love him back despite not having a rapport with her. But man, we’ve all been there. Ice Man takes this semi-public rejection like a champ (pun!) and tells the group that the first chance he gets, he’s cutting the “C” off his belt. I guess this means he quits. He also called Angel, Daddy Warbucks and tells him to “flap off”. Pissy Bobby is the best Bobby.

Angel turns to Black Widow and Hercules and they’re just like, dude what do you want from us. Hercules tells him he’s going to walk the Earth and see what he can find and Natasha says that sounds dope and she’s going with him. Angel freaks and has his “BUT THE WORLD STILL NEEDS CHAMPIONS!” moment.

Peter listens to the story and tells him WWIII he has it rough, but where’s Ice Man? Which is sort of a weird question to ask. Why didn’t he ask about Ghost Rider or Darkstar or Hercules and Black Widow? Angel says he doesn’t know but if he still needs those shots, they should take them now.

Parker thinks the Angel is lying so he returns to the Champions Building, this time as Spider-Man! He’s going to snoop around the place looking for Bobby Drake. I’m still not sure why he feels compelled to look for a guy whom he doesn’t know very well, this is well before they were Amazing Friends.

Spidey overhears Angel talking to a guy in a wheelchair and it seems as if the wheelchair-bound man has Angel over a barrel somehow. But it’s not just any old cripple, it’s the poor-man’s Tony Stark, Stuart Clarke who you remember as the Champion’s first villain, Rampage. Someone else is commandeering the Rampage suit because after the Angel calls Clarke, a “deranged homicidal, little pipsqueak” he gets punched. Hard. If it wasn’t for Spider-Man’s help, the Angel would have a broken neck.

Spider-Man is about to kick Rampage’s ass, but the Angel holds him off. He tries to explain to the New York hero exactly why, but he catches himself. He just tells him that he can’t beat up Rampage. Spidey doesn’t care and cold-cocks WWIII and knocks his ass out. He then takes on the Rampage, when he’s about to get his ass beat. Angel realizes that an innocent is going to get hurt so he hurls an electric spear thing at Clarke which shocks him and Rampage.

You think that Rampage is done, but he’s not. The electric shock only breaks the psychic bond between Clarke and whomever is in the Rampage suit. And guess who’s in that suit? It’s none other than Bobby Drake, the Ice Man. And guess what else, you guys? He found the time to take the “C” off his belt. He’s pissed!

This was a very good issue, probably better than most regular Champions issues. The way that Mantlo explained how and why the Champions broke up made sense. They never gelled as a team, they were always fighting amongst each other and bickering. It got annoying. I mean, I was sick of these people too. It’s like if you have a friend who’s with someone else and all they do is fight. They battle over where to go to eat or who’s turn it is to empty the dishwasher or what TV show to watch. At first, it’s uncomfortable to be around them and then it turns down-right aggravating. You want them to split up, but they stay with each other because they don’t have anything else better to do.

That’s who the Champions are. They’re the Lockhorns of the comic book world.

The art was great too. I love the clean, bold lines of penciler Sal Buscema. He does an exemplary job because his art isn’t rushed or sketchy. This may not make sense, but it looks like how a comic book should. Oh yeah, the cover is pretty great too. I believe it's a John Byrne and the action really pops off the cover. The colors are so great. Such a nice job. 

The one thing that I don’t get is why this was a story that needed to be told in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man? Spidey was starring in the monthly Marvel-Team Up book where he pairs with a superhero to have an adventure. Why couldn’t he have joined with the Angel on that book and do his own thing in the PPSSM book? I’m not complaining, I’m just wondering.

Oh well, it was still a fun read. Since this isn’t a proper Champions book, I won’t give it any disco Angels. But I will give it four out of five hissy fit Angels. 

Death Drone

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.)

(This is what he looked liked when he debuted on TV's Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.)

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.

 

The World Still Needs Champions!

For some strange reason, I have been obsessed with the mid-70s Marvel Comic superhero team, the Champions. I’m not sure exactly why because I came of age reading comics in the 80s, well after the Champions’ “hay day” – and hay day is in quotes because they never really had a hay day. But I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I had heard of all the members, but I never really heard of the team. This was pre-internet days and I didn’t know anyone who knew anything about them. And then they were gone only two years after they showed up.

I remember getting issue 16 in a trade with my friend* once and it blew my mind. Ghost Rider, Hercules, Black Widow, Darkstar, Angel and Ice Man fighting Magneto AND Doctor Doom, with an assist from the Beast and the Hulk? I must’ve read it a dozen times. It was bananas. The team itself was such a randomly thrown together crew: two ex-X-men, a couple of old, not-too-popular Avengers (this is before Scarlett Johanson was Black Widow), a Soviet Super Soldier and Ghost Rider? The hell was this about?

* My friend just wasn't "my friend", she was a girl for one thing and the first girl that I remember liking. This trade was made in fourth or fifth grade. I don't remember what I gave her for it, I just remember being alone in her room and making the deal. 

I just wrote a few paragraphs about this team and if you’ve scratching your head wondering why you’ve never heard of them, don’t be discouraged, like I said not many people had. They weren’t that popular. When people did bring them up (in both comics and real life), they were usually the butt of a joke.

So they’re not the Avengers or the X-Men or even the Defenders, but I kept thinking about this weird team. Even when I stopped collecting comics, this was the one comic that I’d think about. Maybe I just wanted to know more about them, make some sense of this crazily constructed roster. I read as much stuff as I could find on the Internet (not a lot) and with an Amazon gift card burning a hole in my pocket, I ended up buying “Marvel Masterworks: The Champions Volume I*”. What I plan on doing over the next few weeks is to read all of those issues and write them up on this blog.

I’m sure you’ll love it, so stay tuned.

* I’m not sure why Marvel felt the need to include “Volume I” in the title. This book has literally every single appearance of the Champions in it. I don’t think that there is anything left.** And I know that Marvel just put out a new Champions team last year—this team is made up of younger heroes—but that wouldn’t count here.

** This just in, I guess the Champions were also in a Marvel Godzilla comic, but Marvel's rights to Godzilla lapsed, so they aren't included in this treasury. I guess I'll have to search for that one.