Friday, March 23, 2018
The Grooviest Covers of All Time: The Champions
Dig it, Groove-ophiles! The Champions. Ol' Groove just dug that group so much. Yeah, it went through a lotta growing pains in its early issues. Yeah, it was an unlikely team (two X-Men, two Avengers, and the Ghost Rider). But doggone it, when writer Bill Mantlo was joined by penciler John Byrne it was magic. Too little, too late, I s'pose, but if the Champs had only been given a little more time... Ah, well. The Champions also sported some really far-out covers, too. Ol' Groove decided for this round I'd narrow it down to a half dozen. That was HARD, but here ya go! Gil Kane, Dave Cockrum, Ernie Chan (aided and abetted by inkers Dan Adkins, Bob Layton, and Al Milgrom) are definitely champions of cool cover art!
Love the Kane/Layton cover on # 11. It is exquisite.
ReplyDeleteLoved this team & series. But was disappointed with the art team & lack of real villains. Until Bill Mantlo,Cockrum & John Byrne started doing the book. Only to see Byrne exit as fast as he arrived which stunk. They should had gotten a much better creative team on this book before the first issue was even done. And then did the first 6-12 issues first then published them. Same with Dave Cockrum on the bi-monthly X-Men.
ReplyDeleteDon Heck and Mike Esposito. Could they have picked a worse art team for issue # 1 of The Champions?
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, I thought the Champions were great then a minute later the Widow and Hercules were in The Avengers fighting Korvac. What happened?
ReplyDeleteToo young to realize that the book was cancelled.
The book worked for little kid version of me.
I have to read the Untold Stories of Marvel to get the behind the scenes about this. Even Nova got 25 issues.