Cover Date: September 1977
On Sale Date: June 1977
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artist: John Byrne
Inker: Mike Esposito
Letterer: Bruce Patterson
Colorist: Irene Vartanoff
Editor: Archie Goodwin
Cover Artist: Dave Cockrum
Millions of killer bees arrive in Los Angeles, their attack centered on the Champions building where the insects begin to build a massive hive. While fight off the bees the Champions realize that they’re after the briefcase recovered from the dead Interpol agent. Swarm arrives and retrieves the briefcase, while his giant robotic bees capture Iceman and Darkstar, fleeing deeper into the building with them captive. The Champions’ pursuit is cut off by a giant hive wall blocking them, which not even Hercules can punch through. Black Widow orders Ghost Rider and Angel to go assist the city’s authorities, during which they save a bus full of kids from going off the freeway.
Iceman and Darkstar wake up in the center of the Hive with Swarm, who tells them how he was a Nazi scientist studying killer bees in South America. There he found a giant mutated hive of intelligent bees which he attempted to control using a device he built. The bees attacked him and devoured his body, but not before he claimed the queen bee, giving him control of the entire hive that his mind now inhabited and controlled. The Interpol agent kidnapped the queen and encased her in amber, and Swarm has to reclaim her to maintain control of the hive. Darkstar uses her power to smash the amber, releasing the queen and destroying the hive wall. Hercules and Black Widow destroy the two robotic bees only to face Swarm and the queen, which has mutated into a giant monstrous form. Hercules fights the queen and throws her out of the city into the ocean, which causes all of the bees in the city to follow. The collective bees that make up Swarm’s body follow the queen as well, reducing Swarm to nothing but a skeleton that falls dead before the heroes.
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| The voice of reason yet again. |
THE ROADMAP
Ghost Rider appears next in Ghost Rider (1973) # 23-24, Marvel Team-Up (1972) # 58, and Ghost Rider (1973) # 25. His next appearance as a member of the Champions occurs in Iron Man (1968) Annual # 4.
CHAIN REACTION
Six superheroes fight a bunch of angry bees in what was definitely the wildest issue of the Champions series.
You know, bees are scary, sure, but you wouldn’t imagine just HOW scary until reading this issue. Swarm is legit terrifying as a villain, and his backstory is pure Bronze Age comic gold. A Nazi scientist finds mutated smart bees and through science gains a body composed of their hive. That’s nuts, and if the Champions had embraced more insane concepts like that perhaps it wouldn’t have been cancelled after the next two issues. Maybe the Defenders had the monopoly on weird shit in superhero comics at the time, they had the Elf With a Gun and an evil deer with a bad guy’s brain inside it, but damn it Champions, at least you tried.
There’s not a lot for character development in this issue, though Mantlo continues to make Ghost Rider a total dick to every single one of his teammates not named Natasha. This issue its Angel who gets a bit of the ol’ hellfire verbal from Johnny, and it’s a nice touch how irritated Angel is that the bees won’t sting Blaze because of his hellfire. Otherwise, this is pretty by the numbers superhero stuff, except for Hercules getting in a wrestling match with a giant queen bee and chucking it into the ocean. It also has one of the most memorable villain ends when Swarm is reduced to nothing but a skeleton in a cloak.
John Byrne totally sells the peril of a killer bee army, and I’m definitely fighting the urge to make a Wu-Tang Clan joke. Seriously though, Byrne is excellent as always and his Ghost Rider reaches maximum spookiness now that he’s finally dropped the eyeballs in his skull. The final page of Swarm’s bees detaching from his skeleton is horrifying and framed in such a way that it comes off as scary instead of cheesy, which is admittedly a hard line to keep from crossing. Unfortunately, this is Byrne’s last issue of the series (I believe he jumps ship for some book called X-Men or something) and the Champions never recovers.
As a swan song for the brief, yet excellent, Mantlo/Byrne creative team this one is definitely solid and perhaps a teasing look at what the series could have developed into.
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