In my last post, I said that I would be covering the first 560 pages or so of Marvel's Ghost Rider saga, via a copy of Essential Ghost Rider Vol. 1. That wasn't entirely accurate, though, as there were some early Ghost Rider appearances missing from that collection, including an issue apiece of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One and, of course, any issues of The Champions.
That last title was, of course, the name of a short-lived, West Coast superhero team that Ghost Rider joined, lasted a team shoe title lasted just 17 issues between 1975 and 1978.
And unlike so many other Marvel superhero teams, The Champions never really received a proper revival. Part of that is due to the legal issues involving the team name, I suppose, but, more likely it had to do with the oddball nature of the team, the lack of cohesion among its members and, even more so, its non-existent raison d'etre. Like what, exactly, was the point of The Champions, really? They seemed so randomly assembled that they made Marvel's famously non-team team The Defenders look like The Fantastic Four.
(While the original, 1975 incarnation of the team was never revived there would, of course, be later West Coast-based Marvel super-teams, like the West Coast Avengers and The Order, and the name "The Champions" would eventually be reclaimed in 2016 by a group of teenaged heroes. The only time the original Champs were ever really seen again tended to be in flashback stories, though).
It's hard to guess why exactly that might be over 50 years later, of course, beyond those broad problems that I had already mentioned. Additionally, there were apparently some significant publication delays, even if the book was meant to be bimonthly for some of its run. And, of course, there was a pretty remarkable merry-go-round of creators involved in the book's short life.
The credits on the first issue's opening splash page start with "Series conceived and written by Tony Isabella," but regardless, Isabella only wrote only five of the first 11 issues (and got a "plot" credit for a sixth, written with Bill Mantlo). Chris Claremont was credited as "guest writer" on issues #4, and Mantlo took over for writer with issue #8 (According to comics.org, Isabella's last issue of Champions came out in August in 1976, the same month as his last issue of Ghost Rider, which then assistant editor Jim Shooter apparently re-wrote part of, drastically changing a somewhat long-running plot point of Isabella's).
The art wasn't too terribly consistent either, although given the fact that Big Two comics in the seventies hewed so much closer to basic designs and a sense of house style than their later comics would, the book reads smoothly enough.
Don Heck penciled the first two issues and came back for issues #5 and #6. George Tuska handled issues #3, #4 and #7, Bob Hall drew issues #8-#10 and, finally, John Byrne handled #11 (And he got a pretty interesting credit in it; his was the final one, coming after those for letters, colors and editing, and read, "And introducing the pulse-pounding pencils of John Byrne--Artist").
And that is just the first 11 issues of the title, which is all I have to go on, as I have before me a 2006 trade paperback collection entitled Champions Classic Vol. 1, borrowed from a local library. The back half of the series was collected in 2007's Champions Classic Vol. 2, along with what must have been guest appearances in other titles, and it seems like the team's entire 1970s publishing history was collected later still in 2018's Champions Classic: The Complete Collection.
I can't find copies of those books though, so for now let's just read the first 11 issues of the series, shall we? Here are some thoughts that occurred to me while I did so...
•The cover of the first issue (and those of the next ten too) screams the line-up at the reader, listing each hero with an exclamation point just above the book's title. So, what have we got? A couple of ex-X-Men (Angel and Iceman), a former Avenger (Hercules), an Iron Man villain-turned-Avengers ally most recently seen as Daredevil's partner (Black Widow) and, finally, a still rather new-ish character who had never been affiliated with a team before (Ghost Rider). A pretty odd mixture, I think anyone would conclude...even, I imagine, regular Marvel readers circa the late 1970s.
•I referred to the team above as a West Coast super-team which, from afar, would seem to be the organizing principle for the team, a sort of West Coast answer to the Avengers (Coming some years before the more directly so West Coast Avengers, of course). That's not quite why the team is formed, though. It's never articulated on any of its pages that most of the Marvel's superheroes seem to hang out in New York City, anyway, and that Los Angeles and the surrounding environs could therefore use a little superhero coverage.
Rather, this team's coming together seems to be more a matter of coincidence than anything else. All of the five heroes on the cover above just so happen to be in the same place at the same time, that specific place being the UCLA campus, and that specific time being when otherworldly foes arrive there to attack and abduct Hercules...and another Olympian, Venus, who is apparently posing as humanities professor Dr. Victoria Starr. (It's unclear to me after minutes and minutes of Internet research if this Venus is meant to be the same one who shows up in later 21st century Hercules comics or any of the various Agents of Atlas comics)
•What brings all of these heroes to UCLA at the same time? Well the former X-Men are there as apparent students, although a brief conversation between the two, and a narration box referring to them as "confused young men," makes it sound like neither Angel Warren Worthington III or Iceman Bobby Drake intend to finish their degrees.
"Prof X was great-- gettin' me a scholarship here and all--" Bobby tells Warren, "But I guess college isn't what this little mutant is lookin' for."
As for the Widow, Natasha Romanoff is there with her "old friend" (and sometimes mentor/driver/love interest) Ivan Petrovich. She's come to apply for a job as a Russian teacher, and she wears a purple skirt over her regular tight black bodysuit. It's a weird look, but one that allows for Ivan to cry, "'Tash! Strip for action!" when various mythological menaces appear on campus.
Hercules? Well, he's there as a guest-lecturer.
And, finally, Ghost Rider? Well, by this point he has relocated to Hollywood to serve as a stuntman in Stunt-Master's TV show, and he's only on campus to deliver a package from his new friend Katy Milner to her brother, who attends school there.
So yeah, it's basically just a bunch of coincidences. The players are all in place though when harpies, Amazons, Cerberus and mutates all attack, at the orders of Pluto and his allies Ares and Hippolyta. The Greek god of death has a rather convoluted (and kinda dumb) plan: To force Venus to marry Ares and Hercules to marry Hippolyta and, with these potential enemies of his wed to his allies and thus somehow unable to contradict or fight them, Pluto can go ahead and overthrow Zeus and conquer Olympus.
•So hey, stupid question: Where do Warren's wings go when he's in disguise as a normal human? Does he just bind them, or otherwise stuff them under his clothes, and they then seem to disappear...? They seem awfully big to be able to comfortably hide under a shirt and blazer, as he apparently does here.
Iceman just ices up, apparently freeze-drying his street clothes so that they simply crumble off of him (I do wonder what happens to his wallet, though). He's therefore able to start fighting harpies right away, while Warren has to dash off to change into his superhero costume.
When Warren returns, Bobby asks what happened to his mask, and Warren says he's decided to go public with his identity.
I would have asked what happened to his shirt, and if he's sure about that headband.
•Ghost Rider, who almost has his head taken off by a rather Kirby-esque looking giant who calls himself Cerberus and later turns into a (one-headed) giant dog, transforms into Ghost Rider, and uses the word "fracus".
He did so at least three times in the Isabella-scripted issues of Ghost Rider, too. I'm assuming that Isabella and editor Marv Wolfman (who edited both Ghost Rider at the time and these earlier issues of Champions), must have just agreed that there's a "u" in "fracas"...? Me, I like to just pretend that Johnny pronounces it funny, whether he's thinking it to himself as above or saying it aloud.
•Speaking of assumptions, I would guess the various Olympians in these first few issues all first appeared in the old Thor comics, or something else Jack Kirby was drawing? They are all very much apiece with Kirby's Asgardians and New Gods, their costumes more tights than togas.
•In further discussion of his plan, Pluto tells readers that he seems to have unionized the various death gods and devils of the Marvel Universe. Note that both Satan and Mephisto seem to be completely different and distinct personages here.
•Eventually the goofy-looking Zeus-powered supervillain The Huntsman appears and, with a bit of trickery, he's able to kayo the Champs and make off with the unconscious Hercules and Venus, taking them back to Olympus, where the mortal heroes are unable to follow them. Defeated, Johnny, Black Widow and the two mutants all walk away from one another in different directions. This is the end of the second issue.
•And this is the opening of the third issue. Yowza! As I said on Bluesky, I'm not sure why this George Tuska and Vince Colletta splash wasn't used for the cover, which is simply an image of the heroes punching out mutates while Pluto and Zeus look on, and a caption reads "Assault on Olympus!"
This splash, meanwhile, is like an early pre-cursor to the swimsuit specials.
Anyway, Warren and Natasha are apparently so broken up about seeing Hercules abducted right out from under them that they retreated to Warren's beach house and stripped down to their bathing suits to pose in. Bobby, meanwhile, ice skates and thinks about what a loser he is and recaps the events of the previous issues. Interestingly, among his thought clouds is a mention of "The girl I loved, Lorna Dane."
Apparently, Bobby is so closeted that he even thinks like a heterosexual! Of course, given how much time he spends around psychics, maybe that's necessary to keep his homosexuality a secret...
•Johnny Blaze shows up (maybe everyone exchanged contact information between issues?), wearing his regular leathers rather than swimwear. He's thought of a way to get them to Olympus and tells the others that one of the portals that Pluto had opened up on campus, a portal that Iceman blocked with a mountain of ice, may still be open if they can just dig their way through the ice.
They do, carry out their "Assault on Olympus!", have a big fight, Ghost Rider tells off Zeus and convinces him to take his anger out on Pluto, and the five Champions-to-be and Venus return to Earth.
Why doesn't Venus, whose divine abilities, like Hercules', are basically superpowers, join up? I don't know. I would say maybe the goddess of love just isn't much of a joiner, but then she did join the Agents of Atlas, a rather oddball super-team that lasted much, much longer than the Champs did (Although, again, these may be different versions of Venus...I know the Venus on the Agents' team is, after all, eventually revealed to not actually be the Olympian love goddess herself, although now I can't remember how long that fake Venus was meant to have been impersonating the real one...)
•Issue four of a brand-new series! Time for...a guest-writer...?
That's how Chris Claremont is credited here, anyway. He joins Tuska and Colletta for a one-issue story in which yet another mad scientist is engaged in trying to re-create the super-solider serum that created Captain America. This guy, named Lansing, runs a state hospital that seems to essentially be some kind of nursing home, and he experiments on his charges, creating super-strong old men. It is played completely straight.
Our heroes basically just stumble into the plot. At the opening, Hercules and Black Widow are walking on the beach (this time Tuska draws Natasha not in a bikini, but rather her usual costume, and with a trench coat over that). They're kidnapped, brainwashed and then sent to attack Iceman, Angel and Ivan at the beach house, leading a small army of super-old men. Then Ghost Rider shows up. There's a big fight, and our heroes win.
Though it's the fourth issue and a guest-writer, it's at the end of this story that someone finally suggests that maybe a team of some kind be formed. There are two panels of Hercules and Angel arguing about the fate of the mind-shattered old men, and Angel gives a bit of a speech, the last of it over an image of the team standing side-by-side in silhouette:
All Right!
There is evil in the world, Hercules--and Lansing was a part of it.
But there's good as well--and we're a part of that!
The question is: Do we do anything about it--or do we sit around crying in our beer?
Like it or not, folks, we're unique, we've got power--and I hope the responsibility--the duty to use it wisely...
To help those who can't help themselves, the innocents, the victims of people like Lansing.
Because...the world still needs...CHAMPIONS...
•The villain of Champions #5, which sees the return of Isabella and Heck (the latter of whom shares an "artists" credit with John Tartag), is apparently named Rampage, and he is introduced on the opening splash page like so, "Presenting: The everyman of super-villains...the first menace borne of the recession..."
So, um, was there a recession in 1976? I wouldn't even be born until the following year, so you can't blame me for not having been up on current events in the late 1970s.
Is this the time of high oil prices and long lines for gas, of "stagflation" and Jimmy Carter's so-called "malaise speech"...?
Isabella certainly seems to be highlighting Rampage as a character whose backstory revolves around the economic climate at the time.
He's Stuart Clarke, a brilliant inventor with his own company, a company that his lawyer advises him must declare bankruptcy if he hopes to fend off his many creditors. How brilliant is he? Well, he has designed a super-suit to rival the one Iron Man wears, we're told a couple of times (That's what he's wearing on the cover above, and it's powerful enough to allow him to exchange blows with Hercules).
After almost two pages of narration explaining his downfall, he embarks on his plan: Wearing the suit, he will rob FDIC-protected banks (was that not all banks in 1976...?), so that the only one really being "hurt" is the federal government itself, "the very government whose ill-conceived policies caused the recession which has put my business in such dire straits."
•The Champions still aren't really a formal team or anything, but most of them are still hanging around L.A. together.
Hercules is challenged by UCLA's football team.
Black Widow, now wearing a vest and skirt over her costume, talks with the brooding Ivan, who thinks "Warren's ideas for the Champions" might be like those of "The Avengers or even your partnership with Daredevil" and will end with her being hurt.
"It's nothing that makes any logical sense," she tells Ivan of the team, which, um, might have been part of the team's problem. "Just a feeling. You know, the Champions are really a lot like us. Loners."
And as for the mutants? Well, they take a meeting with Warren's lawyer about his inheritance, and he learns just how rich he actually is. It's certainly rich enough to found and fund a super-team, and so before the issue is out he sits down with Hercules, the Widow and Ivan to talk about his idea for the Champions, for them to be "storefront superheroes"..."extending a needed hand when ordinary people face out-of-the-ordinary problems."
They will never actually get there...at least not in these first 11 issues, anyway.
Iceman misses the meeting because he's busy with the team's business manager, who we briefly saw in the first issue, where he was UCLA's lecture agent. The university fired him, blaming him for the damage Pluto's forces caused to campus, so Angel and Iceman hire him to manage the Champs.
Iceman doesn't sound like he wants to be part of the team, though, as his thought clouds reveal to readers that he's worried about operating too publicly as a superhero and risking his secret identity and that he "may want to chuck this whole Iceman bit someday-- --and live a normal life."
•The next issue continues to tie Rampage to the recession, the title page calling him "Rampage-- The Recession-born super-villain who could be YOU!!" and stating that this is "A tragedy of today." It takes the entirety of the issue, but the four heroes—Ghost Rider remains MIA in this issue, dealing with his own problems in his own book—eventually corner the villain. He tries to commit suicide, but a last-second ice shield blunts the explosion that would have done it.
In a bit of a twist accentuating the nastiness of our current capitalist system, Clarke/Rampage's lawyer, who we met in the previous issue, spends the last few panels being pleased with the outcome: "He never had a chance to alter my power of attorney status in regard to Clarke Futuristics. If I move fast enough, I can sell the company-- --and make a tidy fee for myself-- --even after paying his creditors."
•The Champions first came together when the enemies of one of their members attacked, and that's the case for this next arc of issues too, which will comprise issues #7-10. A team of (mostly) Soviet villains will come for defectors Ivan and the Black Widow. They are led by a new Crimson Dynamo, who turns out to have a connection to Ivan (Spoiler alert for a 49-year-old comic: He is actually Ivan's son), and they include The Titanium Man, Darkstar (making her debut here, apparently) and The Griffin (who I actually just looked up to make sure he wasn't from the Soviet Union; I'm actually not sure what he's doing hanging out with the others).
The bad guy's also rescue Rampage from a certain prison sentence, but that particular alliance is rather short-lived, as the Dynamo tricks Rampage into detonating a bomb placed on his costume while in the presences of some of The Champions.
•With issue #8, Bill Mantlo takes over scripting duties, and he's joined by pencil artist Bob Hall and inker B. Patterson.
•Angel's dumb costume is damaged in an explosion, and so he needs to change into another one. The Champs' business manager gets him one, but it is apparently an old one from his X-Men days...although the color is wrong...? It's not great (I've never been a fan of those head-socks that some X-folks like Cyclops and Gambit wear), but it's much, much better than the yellow and red costume Warren's been wearing up until this point.
•That same business manager has arranged a big press conference to officially announce the formation of The Champions, but only Angel and Hercules are available to make it (Black Widow is captured, Iceman is searching for Black Widow and Ghost Rider has rushed the badly injured Rampage to the hospital). The villains are available, however, and so they attack Angel and Hercules.
•Darkstar eventually betrays the other bad guys, rescuing the male Champs from an inescapable trap she herself had put them in with her powers and allowing them to rescue the Widow. She'll show up in issue #11 as well, and it seems like she's in the process of joining the team, but, according to the Internet, she never formally does so.
•In the final issue of the collection, penciled by John Byrne and inked by Bob Layton, the team seems to have finally become your standard superhero team, complete with a headquarters and a fancy new team vehicle with a "C" logo, and they monitor for crises that require superhero intervention. Here, it's an invasion by some shadowy aliens who have apparently appeared in a few other, previous Mavel comics.
•This issue is heavy on guest-stars, as Black Goliath, Hawkeye and the Two-Gun Kid all appear.
•As for Black Goliath, he appears first in his civilian identity as Bill Foster, "Tony Stark's west coast rep." He's on the roof of the Challenger's new HQ as they test their new air car, which he apparently designed. He's dressed in a long white coat but, when the car malfunctions, he grows to giant size, ripping out of his civilian clothes, and revealing the costume he apparently wore underneath them (and which must also grow with him...?). Note the big collar; I guess that must fold down to fit under his shirt?
•Once he's grown giant and blown his cover, he introduces himself to the team as "L.A.'s hardest-to-miss, spanking new super-hero". As an LA-based superhero, he would seem to be a good candidate for joining The Challengers, but he apparently never officially does so either.
•The last panel of issues #11 is a cliffhanger involving Stilt-Man. I would really like to see how that turned out, and how a guy whose super-powers are apparently just stilts would prove a challenge to The Champions...
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