Cover Date: January 1978
On Sale Date: October 1977
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artist: George Tuska
Embellisher: John Byrne
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Phil Rachelson
Editor: Archie Goodwin
Cover Artist: Ernie Chan
Three evil mutants – Unus the Untouchable, Lorelei, and the Blob – burst into Champions headquarters requesting sanctuary. Only Black Widow and Hercules are present, and the mutants are attacked by a trio of pursuing Sentinels. Black Widow and Hercules hold off the Sentinels while activating the alert to bring the other members of their team, while the three mutants claim the Sentinels have neutralized their powers. While Black Widow and Hercules fight, they fail to notice another individual watching from the shadows.
Meanwhile, Angel is flying above the city when he sees the alert go off at the team’s headquarters. Iceman and Darkstar in line at a theater to see a new movie that features stunts by Johnny Blaze when they see Angel searching for them. Iceman and Darkstar reveal their powers and are attacked by a mob of mutant hating citizens. Johnny Blaze transforms into the Ghost Rider to aid his teammates, but only gets into an argument with Iceman. The rest of the Champions make their way to their building, with Darkstar realizing that Blaze’s hostility toward her is because he thinks she sees him as a monster. The Champions destroy the Sentinels, but quickly realize that the evil mutants are lying. The heroes are knocked out by a stun blast fired by the Vanisher, who was controlling the Sentinels to find mutants that could lead him to the X-Men, who wanted revenge upon. Darkstar wakes up and controls the destroyed Sentinels, using them to knock all of the evil mutants except the Vanisher unconscious. When the Vanisher attempts to escape by teleporting him away, Darkstar uses her power to try and stop him, accidently freezing him halfway in transition. While she is beside herself with grief the other Champions wonder about Darkstar’s mysterious powers.
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| Johnny, you are all kinds of screwed up. |
THE ROADMAP
This is the final issue of the Champions and effectively the last time the team will be seen together. A flashback in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man (1977) # 17 reveals that the team disbanded directly after the end of this issue, and that Ghost Rider was the first member to quit.
Ghost Rider last appeared during the flashback story in Giant-Size Hulk (2006) # 1. Following the flashback appearance in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man (1977) # 17, Ghost Rider appears next in Ghost Rider (1973) # 26.
CHAIN REACTION
To all things must come an ending, and in the case of the Champions its cancellation was as much a mercy killing as anything else.
That’s perhaps too harsh, because for the past six or so issues the creative team had really fallen into a fairly solid groove. Mantlo and Byrne weren’t turning out anything spectacular or even on par with books like Avengers and Defenders, but it was decent superhero stuff that was working as well as it could with the mismatched team dynamics it had been saddled with. If there were any characters less suited to working together as a team, it was this one, and Mantlo was really leaning into that heavily even here in the final issue. Ghost Rider in particular is just flat-out nasty to his teammates, though there’s an interesting bit where that anger and hostility doesn’t come out until after his transformation. As Johnny Blaze he was all about helping his teammates, and it’s a nice touch that dovetailed nicely with what Jim Shooter had been doing with Ghost Rider in his own series at the time.
The story for this one isn’t much to write home about outside of those character interactions, though even those were turned up to histrionic levels. The Sentinels and the cast off evil mutants that Chris Claremont hadn’t wanted to use in X-Men were another example of Mantlo’s Champions not having an identity of its own and resorting to tying up plots from other titles. It’s almost purposefully reminding the readers that, hey, two of these heroes were in the X-Men, and isn’t that team much cooler than the Champions? Mantlo did get to delve into Darkstar a little more here, and if anything she was probably his pet character as the series went along.
John Byrne comes back after having left a few issues ago, this time as the inker over former series artist George Tuska. You wouldn’t think those two would mesh well, but they work quite nicely together. It’s almost poetic that the final issue of the series is carried out by two artists who had previously left their marks, much like the returning Bob Hall did last issue. It’s not as solid as when Byrne was penciling, but it certainly doesn’t look bad.
All in all, the Champions was a series handed to Bill Mantlo after its creator left, and he did the best job he could do under the circumstances. There were a few brief moments of brilliance, but it just couldn’t overcome it’s Silver Age trappings to become more than just a bunch of heroes hanging out together for no real reason.
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