The Champions 7 Deadliest Villains, Ranked

The Champions were the second major teenage superhero team to spin off from 5the Avengers titles in Marvel Comics, and they have some major villains they have had to face over their existence. The Young Avengers came first, with teenage superheroes trying to replicate Earth’s Mightiest Heroes after the team split up following Avengers Disassembled. However, the Champions formed after Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales, and Sam Alexander’s Nova quit the Avengers because they felt the team didn’t care about protecting the people on the streets. Taking the team name of an old-school Marvel Comics team, the Champions tried to be the heroes the public deserved, but found some deadly opposition.

Here is a look at the most dangerous villains the Champions ever had to face in Marvel Comics.

7) Pagliacci

The Champions formed when Kamala Khan, Miles Morales, and Sam Alexander decided they needed to do more to gain the trust of people on the streets after realizing the Avengers weren’t doing enough after the events of the second Civil War. They formed the Champions and then recruited other young heroes, including Amadeus Cho’s Hulk and Viv Vision. When they found Viv, they immediately discovered a horrific sight, as the villain, Pagliacci, had abducted a group of young girls to traffic.

Pagliacci actually debuted five years earlier in the pages of Power Man and Iron Fist (Vol. 2) as a bad guy who dresses like a clown and uses knives and hatchets as weapons. He is actually a demented opera clown who leads a crime organization known as the Commedia Dell’Morte. He proved as deadly as they come and even left one of his underage victims dead, which led Hulk to almost beating him to death before stopping and turning him over to the police. He isn’t as strong as other Champions’ villains, but his actions were horrific.

6) Freelancers

All superhero teams need rival supervillain teams to match up with. With the Champions, that rival team would be the Freelancers. This is a team of superhuman contractors who began working for Roxxon as their security team. This remains separate from Roxxon itself, which is one of the Champions’ deadliest enemies, but they are on their own since they are contractors and not part of the actual organization.

The Freelancers played dirty because they acted with increased kindness toward the Champions, while also doing their jobs to attack protestors at the same time. However, when two monsters showed up, they teamed with the Champions to fight them before going on their way. The Freelancers also used deceptive actions later when they reported to the police that the Champions assaulted them for no reason. As a team, they have similar powers to the Champions, making this an even fight.

5) Blackheart

Blackheart is a deadly villain for any Marvel Comics superhero. That is because he is Mephisto’s son and has many powers from his father’s realm of Hell. Mephisto created Blackheart from the sins committed in the town of Christ’s Crown, and Blackheart blindly served his father for years, although he later questioned his old-fashioned ways of showing evil.

While mostly a Ghost Rider villain, Blackheart has also battled the Champions. In Champions (Vol. 3) #5, Mephisto offered the team a chance to go back in time to save their teammates, Ms. Marvel and Viv Vision, from dying at the hands of Zzzax. Mephisto had devious plans for Miles Morales here, but Blackheart interfered and tried to get the Champions to fight each other. He only failed when the Champions bonded closely during this time, and they beat him, leading to Blackheart destroying his father’s original plans.

4) Roxxon

Roxxon is easily the most persistent enemy of the Champions. They are dangerous because this is an entire corporation that has evil plans, and thanks to connections inside the American government, thanks to Congressional donations, they have the leverage to get laws made to help them achieve their nefarious goals. However, the Champions had something to say about that.

Roxxon debuted many years before the members of the Champions even existed, first appearing in Captain America #180 in 1974. This is a multinational company that manufactures products related to oil and is worth over $500 billion. However, the company is also involved in several illegal activities, including violent crimes, although they keep them hidden. In the Champions comics, they sent the freelancers after the Champions and even worked to create the legislation that banned teenage superheroes.

3) Warbringer

Warbringer was a member of the Chitauri who served Thanos, and it was Nova who got his Champions involved in this fight. This battle happened in Infinity Countdown: Champions #1, and it saw the Champions try to stop Warbringer from killing countless people, including members of the Nova Corps, and all the Chitauri who served Thanos. Since he planned a slaughter, he had to face the Champions, of all people.

Warbringer has superhuman durability, and not even Wolverine’s claws could pierce his skin. He also shoots energy from his hands. It took all their might, and they didn’t leave the battle unscathed, but the Champions were able to beat him and turn him over to the Nova Corps. However, the battle ended with Nova losing his helmet, Cho losing many of his gamma powers, and Ironheart humbled by Thanos.

2) Eshu

Eshu is considered the Master of the World, and is a 40,000-year-old caveman warrior who was mutated into an immortal world conqueror. He debuted many years ago in Alpha Flight #2 in 1983, but by the time the Champions battled him, he was using an Inua spirit known as Sila to power his tech, and when a teenager named Amka Alikayk freed the spirit, Eshu captured her and used her as the new power source, which alerted the Champions.

Eshu was a complicated villain since he was using this power to repair the damage caused by global warming, but when they learned there was malevolence behind his actions, they had to team with Alpha Flight to stop him, although he escaped. It was the Champions who led him to Weirdworld after Wasp and Novan ended up stranded there, and Eshu chose to conquer that world instead. As an immortal with a genius-level intellect, he was the single most powerful villain the Champions ever faced.

1) The U.S. Government

The deadliest villains the Champions ever had to face were the actual United States government. Just like in events like the Civil War storyline, the U.S. government believes they were in the right, and that makes them the heroes in the eyes of the law. This was during the time that Roxxon used its political connections and endless donations to convince a senator to make all teenage superheroes illegal. The Marvel storyline was called Outlawed.

The government created the group CRADLE to capture all teenage heroes under the Kamala’s Law act and put Dum Dum Duggan in charge of rounding up the teen heroes still operating. However, the terrifying thing was that CRADLE locked up the teenage heroes, separating them from their families, and experimented on them (all of which Duggan didn’t know about). Having the entire force of the U.S. government actively hunting down teenage heroes was something that was almost impossible to overcome.

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