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.
