2007-04-04 - NO TIME FOR LOSERS: THEY WERE THE CHAMPIONS

As we've discussed in these pages from time to time over the years, you just can't hit a home run every time you're at bat. Every now and then, you'll just whiff one right into your own dugout, which is kind of what Marvel did in 1975 with their attempt at a new super-team series, THE CHAMPIONS.

With Marvel about to relaunch the team in name only as a spinoff from their recent CIVIL WAR event, it seemed like a good time to go back and take a look one of the more fondly remembered flops in comics.

The behind-the-scenes origins of the team are legendary, and maybe apocryphal, but this was the story as I've always heard it. Marvel writer Tony Isabella was looking to pitch to Marvel a new series featuring the Angel and Iceman, as the only two members of the original X-Men not currently in play either in X-MEN or AVENGERS. However, Marvel editorial (I've read differing accounts of either Len Wein or Marv Wolfman) decided that if you had more than one star, it was a team book, and you can't have a team book with only two members. Furthermore, for a proper superhero team, it was declared, you had to have a strong guy, you had to have a woman, and you had to have a member who was also starring in his own comic. Accordingly, Isabella saw Hercules (strong guy), Black Widow (woman) and Ghost Rider (solo series) added to the roster of his new team, which was to be called "The Champions."

Okay. Now what?

That was essentially the problem with the Champions from the very beginning, and one that never really went away. If you look at all your truly classic super-teams, you can sum up the bare-bones concept in a single sentence.

The Justice League of America: "The world's greatest super-heroes." Period. What more do you need?

The Avengers: "Earth's Mightiest Heroes assemble to tackle threats that they couldn't handle alone." Again, pretty basic, but pretty good.

The Fantastic Four: "A family of explorers is forever changed by cosmic rays and protect the world from threats great and small." The family and explorer angles set it apart nicely.

The X-Men: "Trained in the use of their powers at a secret school, a band of mutants fight to protect a world that hates and fears them." Boom. High concept. You're golden.

The Champions: "Two mutants, a Greek god, a Russian spy and a motorcycle-riding demon hang out in an office building. In Los Angeles. Because the weather's nice, I guess. I got nothin'."

Actually, if you think about it, there is a good concept analogy for the Champions, but it's not an exciting one, and it certainly wasn't going to sell any comics: Five people with very little in common but their occupation go to a high-rise building every day to do their jobs, despite the fact that they don't much like each other, and grudgingly take orders from a boss that no one really thinks is qualified. Sound familiar?

Being in the Champions was like going to work every day. They might as well have been punching a time-clock and sitting in cubicles...

Let's take a look at how the whole thing started in THE CHAMPIONS #1 (October 1975), entitled "The World Still Needs...the Champions!", written by Tony Isabella (who also gets here a "Series Conceived by" credit, and drawn by Don Heck and Mike Esposito. The story opens with ex-X-Men Warren "Angel" Worthington and Bobby "Iceman" Drake strolling the grounds of UCLA, having both been given scholarships there (thanks to a few strings being pulled by Professor X) upon leaving the X-Men and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Neither seem to be embracing the academic life (let's face it, after taking your exams in the Danger Room for a few years, a normal blue book or Scantron is bound to seem a little dull), and are discussing their options when the campus is unexpectedly attacked by a pack of Harpies, who demand that the goddess Venus be handed over to them.

Warren and Bobby leap into action, with Warren in particular wearing maybe the ugliest costume he's ever had. I mean, I know it was 1975, but a dude wearing a headband (and a red headband at that) is never a good look.

As luck would have it, also on campus at UCLA that day is Natasha Romanova, a.k.a. the Black Widow, former secret agent and Avenger, waiting to be interviewed for a position teaching Russian at the university. Now, I don't recall the Widow ever having a teaching credential in the past, but hey, she's a secret agent, right? She could probably forge one if push came to shove. Before she can be interviewed, she too is attacked by mythological types looking to capture Venus (who's apparently on the faculty at UCLA and is waiting to interview Natasha), this time a band of Hippolyta's amazons. Lucky the Widow was just wearing a miniskirt over her superhero costume, I guess, and she jumps into the fray.

As even more luck would have it, coincidentally cruising by the UCLA campus at the moment was stunt rider Johnny Blaze, who deftly ducks a warhammer being thrown by a giant armored type calling himself "Cerberus." The danger sets off Blaze's curse, transforming him into the demonic blazing Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider throws a few fireballs at Cerberus (who transforms into a giant dog at one point), then elects for the better part of valor, electing to beat a hasty (and flaming) retreat.

And finally, as even more luck than one can possibly stand would have it, also on the UCLA campus that day is none other than the Prince of Power himself, Hercules, there for -- wait for it -- a speaking engagement. Yes, Herc was lecturing giving a speech entitled (and I'm not kidding here) "Mythology: What It Means To You." Man, Tony Isabella must have pulled a couple of muscles from all the stretching he had to do to get five superheroes on campus on the same day.

Anyway, Herc also gets ambushed by mythological monster types, and his brawl with them soon takes him outside the lecture hall, where he encounters a passingby Ghost Rider. Despite having never met before, the two immediately get so chummy that Herc winds up snuggling cozily behind G.R. on the back of his chopper.

The two ride to the rescue of Angel, Iceman, Black Widow and Venus, who are running from a combined pack of harpies and Amazons. Eventually, Venus uses her "love power" (if I knew, I'd tell you) to knock all the bad guys out somehow, and the six heroes quickly confer, before being zapped from behind by another otherworldly visitor, Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, accompanied by Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and Ares, the God of War. Turns out the whole invasion was actually a prelude for a pair of arranged marriages, as Pluto (claiming the authority of Hercules' father Zeus) demands that Herc marry Hippolyta and Venus wed Ares, or else (naturally) "the universe dies!"

How so, you ask? As would be revealed in CHAMPIONS #2, Pluto had brokered a deal with all the other lords of the dead, and approached Zeus with a proposition: arrange the marriages of Hercules and Venus to Pluto's allies, or else his coalition of death-god types would attack Olympus. Zeus, despite being, well, Zeus, folds like a house of cards to Pluto's demand, somehow not realizing Pluto's ultimate plot, to overthrow Zeus himself once Hercules and Venus are bound by matrimony. Not sure why that matters, but okay. He's the Lord of the Underworld, he must know what he's doing.

Meanwhile, another attempt is made by Pluto's minions to kidnap Hercules and Venus, this time by the Huntsman, an Olympian mercenary type imbued with the power of Zeus and the haircut of Moe Howard.

In the heat of battle, Black Widow naturally falls into the role of leader, a circumstance that doesn't escape the notice of Warren Worthington:

Left to protect the knocked-out Herc and Venus, while the others battle the Huntsman, Ghost Rider is startled at the return of Pluto and company and lets loose with a blast of hellfire, only to discover that he'd been deceived, and actually blasted his friends, allowing the Huntsman to escape to Olympus with his targets.

Through circumstances too silly to recount here (apparently mystic otherdimensional portals can be plugged by blocks of ice), the remaining Champions make their way to Olympus to rescue their friends, and after more mindless brawling, the whole matter ends rather anticlimactically when Ghost Rider reminds Zeus that hey, maybe you shouldn't trust the Lord of the fricking Underworld.

Zeus agrees, boots Pluto from Olympus, and that's all she wrote. At least the Avengers actually beat Loki in their first adventure...

With Venus electing to stay in Olympus, the five Champions return to Earth. What then? Well, come on back next week and find out.

When Scott Tipton was a kid, he assumed the Champions were on the same level as the Avengers and JLA. At least for an issue or two. If you have questions about the Champions or comics in general, send 'em here.

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