Yesterday’s Comic> Contest Of Champions #3

This is the woman Thanos wants to hook up with, people.

Marvel Superheroes Contest Of Champions #3

FINAL ISSUE

Marvel Comics (August, 1982)

The last two contests begin. In China it’s Vanguard, Angel, and Black Panther for the Unknown’s team while The Thing, Wolverine, and Le Peregrine (a superhero from France) are on the Grandmaster’s team and the ones who end up with the next piece. The final piece is fought over by Shamrock of Ireland, the Collective Man of China, and Storm of the X-Men for the Unknown and Sasquatch, Captain America and Germany’s Blitzkrieg for the Grandmaster’s team. It’s Shamrock, thanks to her power of good luck, who wins it for the Grandmaster’s team, giving him the victory. If you’re paying attention you already see the mistake here. Marvel, however, did not, which leads to the West Coast Avengers and Avengers annuals in the next two weeks.

Talisman and Sue reveal the true identity of the Unknown, namely the personification of Death, who tricked the Grandmaster. He can restore his brother but to use the orb he must sacrifice his own. The Collector vows to restore his brother.

Breaking format, there was a lot to like here. The fourth contest was nice and this was early Wolverine in the third, so he was willing to kill Black Panther even though it wasn’t necessary. Truly, the greatest hero of the Marvel Universe. 😛 However, there was a formula to the fights, as none of the hero teams said “hey, we should work together to retrieve the orb piece for our team. Everyone wanted to work alone, which may well represent one of my problems with the Marvel Universe. Even when you’re on a team you operate alone.

If you didn’t catch it (Marvel’s editors didn’t until the comic was done), Shamrock was on the Unknown’s team, which means her win should have created a tie, not a win for the Grandmaster. This could have been easily fixed by changing the text balloons so that Shamrock’s team of Storm and Collective Man were actually on the Grandmaster’s team and we could ignore the page in issue one that shows the sides chosen. I’m curious to see how the Avengers annual titles work around this.

That flaw aside, Contest Of Champions was a good story and worth getting.

Related articles

• “Yesterday’s” Comic overview: Contest Of Champions
• “Yesterday’s” Comic> Contest Of Champions #1
• “Yesterday’s” Comic> Contest Of Champions #2