The Champions #12 - The Stranger Strikes!

The Marvel Comics company has many great super-hero teams but none are better than the Champions.

I know this because they're called the Champions and that must mean they're the best.

Right?

Well, perhaps not. If ever Marvel had a useless super-hero team, it had to be this bunch who just seemed to be made up of whatever super-doers the company had hanging around and out of work.

As that was basically the function of the Defenders, and these heroes weren't even interesting enough to get into that team, you have to suspect this outfit really is fighting a lost cause.

Also, in what mad world are Ghost Rider, the Angel, Iceman, Hercules, Black Widow and a blonde Russian woman whose name I've forgotten, a logical combination of talents?

Still, I'm nothing if not a lover of plucky underdogs and I did, in my youth, have a couple of issues of their mag.

One of those was #12 which featured not one but three epic clashes, jam-packed into just a single tale. So, all these years later, just what do my shattered senses make of it?

We join the action midway through, as the Champions catch up with Black Goliath and help him fight Stilt-Man.

When I say, "Help," despite there being six of them and one of them being Hercules, they prove to be no assistance at all and, in the end, Black Goliath has to chase off after Stilt-Man on his own while the Champions, who he's got fed up of and told to shove off, lose interest in the fight and return to their massive headquarters, for some quality Me Time.

I think I'm starting to see why they're not one of Marvel's most revered teams. I can't see the Avengers just losing interest in a fight and going off home while leaving a rookie to fight a villain that all six of them combined couldn't stop.

Anyway, when they get back to their HQ, they find they have a visitor, a young woman called Reggie Clayborne who has a box her love interest stole from Tony Stark's factory. Barely has she finished expositing all over them than the object inside the box starts to rapidly expand and then the Stranger walks in through the wall, declaring that he's there to help them.

Needless to say, that's the cue for the Champions to start trying to smash his face in because... ...ah, why not? They're Marvel heroes. What else are they going to do?

Needless to say, the team that couldn't stop Stilt-Man doesn't get very far with thwarting one of the universe's most powerful beings.

However, the rapidly expanding object does and, as it starts to swallow up the Stranger, he tells them it's a weird kind of bomb he once built and that it'll expand until it encapsulates the whole solar system and then turn solid and contract and kill them all - even Stilt-Man!

Realising this might not be a good thing, they agree to go off somewhere to get the one object the Stranger says will fix things. And, with his magic wavy hand, the Stranger sends them to a far-off world to do it.

Unfortunately, when they get there, they quickly discover that world belongs to Kamo Tharn and his horde and now he's going to try and kill them!

It's a story that's not short of incident. Not many comics would start with a fight against one foe, abandon it halfway through, introduce the Stranger, launch into a whole new storyline and then fling its heroes into a totally different world, to face their third foe of the issue.

This does, at least, mean you don't get bored.

But this might be its main problem.

It's a bit too conflicty.

Not only do we get the clashes with Stilt-Man, the Stranger and Kamo Tharn but the Champions themselves seem to be constantly at odds with each other. It's clear the Angel doesn't like being told what to do by Iceman, Ghost Rider doesn't trust the blonde Russian woman whose name I can't remember, and the Black Widow, at one point, tells off Ghost Rider for getting in her way. It's like, seriously, can't we all take a chill pill?

Still, in fairness, the tale does make you want to read next month's issue, to find out just how the problem of the expanding bomb gets solved.

John Byrne's art is, of course, perfectly pleasing to the eye. It seems to lack detail compared to some of his other work, suggesting he might not be giving it everything. Or maybe that's just how he was drawing things at this particular stage of his career.

Main annoyances of the tale are the sight of seven super-heroes totally failing to make any headway against a foe who gets beaten up by Daredevil every six months, and the fact we're never told who the blonde Russian woman actually is. I've seen her before, in some Hulk story or other but her name escapes me.

Still, I've always liked the Stranger, even if he's quite annoying. It's just a shame we don't get to see more of him before he's swallowed up.