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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 6:17am | IP Logged | 1  
Who keeps coloring the commissions and why are they so prevalent in Google images?

••

Welcome to one of my personal circles of Hell.

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Eric Sofer
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 7:30am | IP Logged | 2  
I think part of the Champions lack of appeal was that it had no "book" characters except for Ghost Rider. And Ghost Rider, while entertaining enough in the right stories, just doesn't strike me as a team member. I mean, I seem to recall that they even identified the Champions that way; a demi-god, two mutants, an ex-Russian spy, and a demon from hell (or some such... memory flags at this age.)

The Avengers had Cap, Iron Man, and Thor.
The Defenders had Dr. Strange, the Hulk, and Sub-Mariner (for a while at least.)
The Champions had Ghost Rider and... um... hey, how about that art?

For the figures that I could find (Google isn't always cooperative), the best selling books whose characters weren't in team books included Daredevil, Sgt. Fury, and Rawhide Kid. Daredevil might have fit in, and I seem to recall that Hawkeye was at loose ends at that time. So was the Beast for the most part.
But Hawkeye was an Avenger and had regularly been for a long time - not sufficient to give the Champions their own identity.
The Beast turns the Champions into X-Men West Coast.
Daredevil, as had often been noted, didn't fit into a team book (well, he might have, but we'll never know.)
Spider-Man? Hee hee hee.

So, there were a variety of writers and artists, difficulty in even using all the characters in every book, and characters who, while quite a potent team, didn't have any sales appeal. Kinda surprising that it lasted 17 issues, I think.
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 8:25am | IP Logged | 3  
Ghost Rider, while entertaining enough in the right stories, just doesn't strike me as a team member.

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GHOST RIDER was a mystery book for most of us at the time. It most often had what fans declared "bad art" and "bad stories," yet around the Office it was known as "the Book They Cannot Kill." The sales remained always enough to keep it alive.

There was even some speculation that GHOST RIDER had created it's own niche. That maybe it was selling almost exclusively to bikers or something. Certainly, whatever mojo it possessed, it did not cross over to THE CHAMPIONS.

(How weird to be having this discussion! To be talking about the failure of THE CHAMPIONS, when the book pulled in sales that most publishers would kill for today!)

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John Popa
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 8:35am | IP Logged | 4  
As a kid, his look alone convinced me Ghost Rider was the coolest super hero imaginable. My guess would be that was his primary sales power to monster-loving kids like me perusing spinner racks.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 8:41am | IP Logged | 5  
As a kid, his look alone convinced me Ghost Rider was the coolest super hero imaginable. My guess would be that was his primary sales power to monster-loving kids like me perusing spinner racks.

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Yeah, but were there really so many of you?

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Bill Collins
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 9:04am | IP Logged | 6  
I must admit,i found Ghost Rider cool as a kid! I`d speed about on my bicycle imagining i was him! The distribution of The Champions was a bit hit and miss in the U.K.,but the thought of Ghost Rider,Black Widow,Iceman and Beast in a team really appealed to me,when i eventually found some copies,it was a bit of a let down! I must add,the issues i found were not J.B. issues!
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Robbie Parry
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 10:38am | IP Logged | 7  
(How weird to be having this discussion! To be talking about the failure of THE CHAMPIONS, when the book pulled in sales that most publishers would kill for today!)

***

Indeed.

It's been fun reading everyone's anecdotes pertaining to this book.

By the way, been years since I read the book. Did it ever have a letters page and, if so, what was it called? I'm usually good with letters page titles, but not with this one! 
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Tim O Neill
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | 8  


I had never read THE CHAMPIONS until the recent release of the MARVEL UNIVERSE BY JOHN BYRNE omnibus.  Great to see some early JB art I had not seen, but the team members assembled didn't make much sense.  It looked like an audition/competition to see who would accompany Spider-Man in the next issue of MARVEL TEAM-UP.
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Robert Bradley
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | 9  
I really enjoyed THE CHAMPIONS when I was a kid (Hercules and Iceman were a couple of my favorites), but looking back it had artists that were more workmanlike than fan favorites (Heck Tuska and Hall) for most of the series, and I think that didn't help.
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Robbie Parry
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | 10  
Quite a mix of views on THE CHAMPIONS, all interesting to read. Generally speaking, we all seem to have a fairly lukewarm view of the team (at best). Doesn't appear to have set many people's comic-reading world alight, eh?
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Robert Shepherd
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | 11  
All I can recall about the Champions is that at the time, my impression was they were a hodge-podge of tier 2 or 3 heroes randomly put together to fight lame tier 2 or 3 villains. 

I still bought every issue though cuz back then I bought everything.
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Mike Norris
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Posted: 16 July 2016 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | 12  
 Eric Sofer wrote:
Daredevil, as had often been noted, didn't fit into a team book
 

Too bad DD left San Francisco and the Black Widow a few months before the Champions debuted. 

Side question: In checking when DD left SF, I noticed one article said he returned to Hell's Kitchen. When did DD become linked to Hell's Kitchen. I assumed it was during Frank Miller's run. I wasn't a regular Daredevil reader before Frank, but my recollection is DD operated in New York, but not in a specific neighborhood. 


Edited by Mike Norris on 16 July 2016 at 7:45pm
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