Looking at some of the covers of the Champions issues I don't have, I just have to say, who designed this godawful Angel costume? Was it Don Heck? I'm glad he was back to my favorite Angel costume, albeit the red variation of it, by the time Byrne was drawing it.

Another element lacking in the composition of the Champions as a super-team, if in fact they MUST go in that direction, is the presence of B-story members who are only associated with that team. The All-New, All-Different X-Men were almost exclusively members you could only find and follow in that title. The Avengers had Wanda, Pietro, and Clint... folks who'd only had a handful of appearances before becoming members and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder beside Marvel's top tier players. Soon after, they had the Vision, the Avengers' own live-in super-hero with no real ties outside the mansion. If you were a kid who wanted to follow the Vision, there was really only place to go... The Defenders had Nighthawk, Valkyrie, & Hellcat* amongst others; Members who had only the briefest of histories outside the circle of the team. With Dr. Strange, the Hulk, Sub-Mariner, of the Surfer, you knew you weren't in on the ground floor of their adventures. With Nighthawk or the Valkyrie, you almost were...

Now, at the time, if you were a Black Widow fan, you had to buy Champions, but for those of us who weren't, it just looked like Natasha had gotten thrown (temporarily, you'd hope) onto a random trash-heap of unused Marvel rejects. There wasn't anybody there you could feel you and you alone were just getting to know and find out about... Marv Wolfman perfected the correct mix in the New Teen Titans where a large percentage of the team were either new or had so little history so far apart from everyone else, they may as well have been new. 

Even just a couple of new characters in the recipe could have helped bring readers to the title. As it was, the Champions were a mixed bag which you really had to go out of your way to care much about.

* Marvel's long history with Patsy Walker was practically a non-issue with the character since the super-athletic, flirty, "cheese and crackers!" heroine had little in common with her more straight-laced, fashion and dating tips providing progenitor.

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've long thought the Champions could have been a contender had it gone the Route 66, um, route noted above. Two heroes tooling about the country, visiting out-of-the-way places and heroes. They could look in on Polaris and Havok in New Mexico or wherever they were, meet up with Ghost Rider as his show traveled about, run into forgotten heroes from different eras... The idea has much greater elasticity than the pat, formulaic super-team approach Marvel editorial insisted upon at the time.

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This would have been interesting. I'm always a fan of something different and I'm also a fan of as many US locations being used as possible.

With that in mind, isn't it about time Alaska and Hawaii got some adventures?

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Do you remember the British reprint title? I'm curious now. Could it have been RAMPAGE?

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Two years? Jeez!

When Clinton becomes US President, she needs to legislate to make cross-pollination of villains in comics much easier; in fact, let's make it a UN directive!