Updated Apr 16, 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Marvel’s The Champions comic books and omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through February 2026.
Reading and Collecting The Champions
The Champions is one of Marvel’s most unusual teams, with a strange history both on the page and behind the scenes.
The team began its life as a pitch by writer Tony Isabella. While the details have grown hazy over the years, one thing is certain – Isabella had designs on Angel and Iceman, the two X-Men left over after the original team was splintered by the arrival of the Giant Size X-Men team, and the other three characters – Hercules, Black Widow, and Ghost Rider – were thrust upon him. The title was written entirely by Isabella and then by Bill Mantlo (with Claremont filling in on #4) along with a merry-go-round of artists.
The series opens with them all five characters on the UCLA campus, each for their own reasons, when it comes under assault by a strange group of anachronistic villains. They turn out to be agents of the god Pluto, who intends Hercules to be wed to Hippolyta!
Despite this oddball set-up, The Champions weirdly worked well. It’s a series about heroes being heroes because they simply cannot help it, joined together by proximity more than friendship or destiny. It gave Iceman and Angel a chance to breath away from Cyclops and Jean. It gave Black Widow a rare chance to shine after her breakup with Daredevil – she would go on to become the team’s chairman. And, it showed just how brutal and terrifying Ghost Rider could be – as he tended to have an unsettling effect on his teammates.
If fans took interest, this team could have become the de facto West Coast version of the Avengers years before that team made its debut. Alas, despite Marvel’s best efforts to promote the book it ended early, with its epilogue shuffled into a pair of Spider-Man issues.
That was the end of The Champions for forty years – unusual, given Marvel’s propensity for reviving their intellectual property every so often. In this case, it was because they were barred from doing so! While Marvel’s Champions were dormant, Heroic Publishing had began publishing a Champions comic book to support their popular 1980s role playing game.
Whether Marvel wanted to get the gang back together or not, they couldn’t – so Iceman and Angel returned from X-Factor to the X-Men in 1991, Black Widow and Hercules anchored the “Leather Jacket” Avengers, and Ghost Rider briefly expanded into his own franchise in the 90s.
Flash forward to 2016. Marvel is launching a youthful new team in the wake of Civil War II featuring characters like Miles Morales and Ms. Marvel that is quite deliberately not The Avengers. What could they be called? While the obvious answer seems like it ought to be “New Warriors” (especially with Nova on the team!), Marvel’s editorial team got a twinkle in their eye and asked Legal if they might be able to revive The Champions trademark – and they could!
That’s how we got a new Champions team so unlike the first one – it’s literally just an IP grab by Marvel of their own IP!
Surprisingly, this new Champions turned out to have some real staying power. Marvel’s youngest generation of heroes were never quite the right fir for the Avengers team they hero-worshipped as kids. They’re much more compelling when they are left to their own devices.
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