Once upon a time in the mid-1970's, when I was merely a whiskerless young Monoid, there was just one newsagent in town that sold proper US-style Marvel comics. Rather sporadically, but that didn't seem to matter too much in the days before pocket money, when your comic addiction was controlled by what you could manage to wheedle out of a parent.
In other words, a luridly-coloured US Marvel comic, stuffed with all the adverts for exotic things like Twinkies that a small child in an English rural market town could never, ever have was a very special treat.
Not that we were starved of Marvel output. Far from it, as Marvel's UK branch churned out vast swathes of monochrome reprints, often on a weekly basis.
However, one of my earliest semi-regular purchases was a monthly black and white magazine title called "Marvel Superheroes". I can only recall ever having three issues, and if you can see the cover scan below, the main feature was the Avengers, and I can well remember trying to learn all the characters' names and being absolutely gobsmacked by it all.
Team titles generally represented good value for money to the owners of the purse-strings, by the way. I do actually remember my mother attempting to explain the concept of six heroes being better than one, and not quite understanding it. Dad was more forgiving on that score, and was also happier to pay for bigger than usual special issues, which explains how Thor #300 ended up in my possession on a Saturday morning in 1980 and started a lifelong interest in Norse mythology...
Anyway, in addition to the Avengers and the X-Men, "Marvel Superheroes" boasted another super-team that time has not been so kind to...
ESSENTIAL CHAMPIONS Vol.1
With the success of the Defenders and the concept of the "non-team", Marvel seem to have thought that was a great excuse to chuck together any old characters at a loose end and try and make them work together. (And on the West Coast too, for when super-villains tire of Manhattan and fancy some sunshine).
So what we got was the Champions.
No, not them. Here's the roll-call...
No, not them. Here's the roll-call...
Hercules, son of Zeus (yes, that Hercules, and probably the role that Brian Blessed was put on this Earth to play), the Black Widow (a reformed Russian secret agent), Angel and Iceman (two of the original X-Men who'd been dropped from that team in Chris Claremont's big revamp of the title), and Ghost Rider. (Imagine Evel Knievel with his head on fire, and his soul bonded to that of a minor demon).
Oh, and later on there was another Soviet agent on the mend called Darkstar, but nobody seems to remember much about her.
Sadly, the Champions never really caught on, and after 17 issues plagued by erratic publication scheduling, the title folded. (In fact, Hercules and his merry men were already a dim memory in their homeland when the Marvel UK reprints were doing the rounds).
I do recall being rather fond of them when they got into their stride (the first issue is a bit rubbish, if you care to peruse the download below), but I did spend my youth scoffing at Captain America for his lack of "super-powers", so what the hell do I know?
Anyway, the Avengers eventually established a West Coast branch (which probably made being Iron Man rather an uncomfortable proposition), and Angel and Iceman reinforced their status as Marvel pariahs and later joined the Defenders just before that title was cancelled as well.
