The Champions (1975) # 12

“Did Someone Say…the Stranger?”

Cover Date: March 1977

On Sale Date: December 1976

Writer: Bill Mantlo

Artist: John Byrne

Inker: Bob Layton

Letterer: A. Kawecki

Colorist: D. Warfield

Editor: Archie Goodwin

Cover Artist: Dave Cockrum

The Champions arrive back at their Los Angeles headquarters to find a battle raging on their rooftop between Black Goliath and the Stilt-Man. The Champions intervene but are unable to defeat the Stilt-Man, instead serving to merely drive him to escape. While Black Goliath chases Stilt-Man across the city, the Champions enter their building to find Regina Clayborne, the woman the villain was chasing. She explains that her husband had stolen a box from Stark International and then disappeared. When the box started glowing she decided to bring it to the Champions for help. Suddenly, a portal opens in the room and through it comes the giant alien being called the Stranger, who declares that the box is a bomb of his creation. While the Champions attack the Stranger, only Johnny Blaze realizes that the alien has not come to harm them due to his having not transformed into the Ghost Rider. When the fight escalates, however, Blaze does indeed transform and joins the battle. He’s thrown out of the building but is rescued by Darkstar mere inches from the ground. When he’s pulled back inside, however, Blaze is less than grateful, calling into question Darkstar’s defection from the Soviet Union. While the battle continues no one notices the device inside the box becoming larger, swallowing Regina and part of the Stranger inside it. The alien explains that he had tried to save them from the bomb, but now the Null-Life Bomb has activated and will continue to expand and engulf the entire star-system. When it reaches the limits of its expansion it will contract, destroying everything within it. Before being consumed by the growing bomb the Stranger teleports the Champions to alien world to retrieve the one device capable of disarming the device. When they arrive, however, they are quickly surrounded by the monstrous army of Kamo Thorn, who has a grudge to settle with Hercules.

The wrath of STILT-MAN!

THE ROADMAP

Darkstar defected from the Soviet Union to join the heroes in The Champions (1975) # 10. Ghost Rider’s animosity toward her will continue to simmer as a subplot in subsequent issues before coming to a sort of resolution in The Champions (1975) # 17.

The plot with Black Goliath, Stilt-Man, and the glowing box are carried over from Black Goliath # 4, which was the last issue of that series.

CHAIN REACTION

The Champions becomes the dumping ground for unresolved plots from Black Goliath, a common occurrence in Marvel titles of this era.

Okay, it’s probably no big surprise that John Byrne’s artwork is what saves this comic and turns what’s actually a frustrating bit of continuity wrangling into a really fun action piece. Bill Mantlo using the series to tie up Black Goliath threads isn’t what I particularly wanted out of this issue, especially since it kinda makes the actual title characters into a team of chumps. There’s a long-standing Marvel tradition that their superhero teams are more interesting if they squabble with one another, one that started way back with Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four. The Avengers and the X-Men argue and bicker at times in their comics, but Mantlo’s Champions seem to actively hate one another. They spend more time correcting one another and being outright hostile than they do fighting the bad guys, and the result is a team that can’t even defeat the Stilt-Man.

THE STILT-MAN.

Daredevil alone has defeated that guy multiple times, he’s a guy with giant telescoping legs for fuck’s sake. Mantlo seems to struggle to give each Champion a moment to shine without sacrificing the whole “team” aspect that’s supposed to be at the core of the concept. I mean, maybe it was Mantlo shrewdly pointing out that this was a group of characters who had no right being in the same room together, let alone saving the world as a functioning unit. That’s certainly where the series does wind up going at its end, but man is it laid on thick here if that’s the case. Black Goliath is the only genuinely nice person in the mix, maybe because he’s the guest-star, and he gets what’s admittedly the only heroic moment in the issue when he tracks down and finally defeats Stilt-Man on his own. The Champions were too busy attacking the Stranger and causing the world to get sucked into a giant bomb to actually defeat the villain themselves, naturally.

This is one pretty comic, though. Byrne makes this thing look on par with the best Avengers and X-Men comics of the time, like it finally has a place with its more sophisticated big brother titles. The scripting may still be stuck in the Silver Age, but Byrne’s dynamic artwork sells everything, even the Stranger’s white afro. Byrne’s Ghost Rider is looking better with each issue, too, he’s losing the goofiness that Byrne was struggling to overcome and is finally drawing him with some menace. 

All in all, this is a mediocre comic that’s successfully elevated by some fantastic art, and I’d recommend it just for Byrne’s work alone.

You're a little outclassed there, Johnny.