Issue(s): Champions #16
Cover Date: Nov 77
Title: "A world lost!"
Credits:
Bill Mantlo - Writer
Bob Hall - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker

Review/plot:
A big nonsensical fight concludes the tie-in with Super-Villain Team-Up.

Even the Hulk gets thrown into the mix.

Ghost Rider, who apparently doesn't breathe when he's in blazing skull form, was unaffected by Doom's gas, so he teams up with the Beast and Magneto. The plot is resolved when Doom's face mask accidentally breaks open, and Doom breathes in his own controlling gas, which apparently defeats him. This results in the following terribly awesome, or maybe awesomely terrible, line:

"Doom... must be obeyed... but i am Doom! Why does Doom not give me orders?? Why???"

I think it's safer to say that Doom was tired of controlling the entire planet, so he sent a defective Doombot out there to pretend to lose the battle. For all we know, we could still all be under Doom's control.

Doom has "reversed [his] armor's magnetic polarity", making him immune to direct attacks from Magneto. In fact, it allows him to redirect the attacks back at Magneto. Doesn't make sense? Listen, fella, it's super-science. Doom is smarter than you. Live with it.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Continues directly from Super-Villain Team-Up #14.

References:

• When fighting Angel, Magneto brings up the fact that he (Magneto) saved Angel's life in the Savage Land in Uncanny X-Men #62.
  
• Hercules references the fact that he's fought the Hulk before, in Tales To Astonish #79.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

FOOM#17 stated that future Champions stories would include Jack of Hearts joining the group, and a Hercules/Aries/Woodgod story.

I kind of think that could've been awesome

Jack of Hearts would seem a bit redundant. Champions already have Darkstar filling the ambiguous energy powers quota. Plus, what Champions needed was a voice or at least a better voice than being just another book for Mantlo to use Jack of Hearts in. Champions really needed something to differentiate them from chiefly the Avengers and Defenders (but also X-Men, FF, etc.) and make them unique. It never had it and was just a clunky team-up of c-listers with no purpose for being together other than the mutual inability to hold their own title. I find Mantlo's Champions perfectly perfunctory but definitely not ever justifying Champions existence.

Definite Doombot.

Doctor Doom reversing his armor's magnetic polarity almost sounds like a reference to Doctor Who, but this was written in the mid-1970s, and I don't know if back then an American like Mantlo would have possessed much knowledge about the Jon Pertwee era of the show.