League of Champions

The League of Champions is super hero team based in San Francisco and published by Heroic Publishing.

The group first appeared in a six issue mini-series published by Eclipse Comics in 1986 called simply "Champions", written by Dennis Mallonee with pencils by Carol Lay (in issue 1) and Chris Marrinan (issues 2 - 6). The line up consisted of the following:

• Flare, Terri Feran, with the abilities of strength and photonic energy. Created by Stacy Thain.
• Icestar, John Grayson, with icing powers, created by Glenn Thain.
• Rose, Julie Rich, whose psychic abilities are also accompanied by the scent of the flower she's named for. Created by Tom Tumey.
• Marksman, a former soldier with enhanced reflexes and various weapons produced through Henderson Electronics, the company he runs in his civilian identity of Donald Henderson. Created by Bruce Harlick.
• Giant, who can increase his size and strength with a special harness he wears.

Also appearing in the series was a wheelchair-using man who had been a hero under the name of Doctor Arcane, as well as his granddaughter, who becomes Lady Arcane. Another Champion, named Gargoyle, was referred to as being gone, but did not appear in the series. Also mentioned, but not shown, are the heroes Transpower, Dove, and Nightwind.

An ongoing Champions series was then published by Hero Comics (later Heroic Publishing), with the first issue dated September 1987. Hero also spun off the character Flare into her own comic. Membership of the Champions (before it became the League of Champions) expanded in the seventh issue (Vol. 2, March 1988) with the addition of Flare's sister Sparkplug (see Sparkplug (comics)) and Icestar's sister Icicle.

The team was also used as the example superhero team for the first three editions of the Champions role-playing game, but creative differences caused a rift between Heroic Publishing and Hero Games, leading to the role-playing game using a different team in later editions, and several of the characters in the League of Champions being retconned to change names and other details because they had originated with creators associated with Hero Games. ("Rose" became "Psyche"; "Marksman" became "Huntsman"; a mischievous character originally named "Foxbat" became "The Flying Fox".)

In 1992, The League of Champions teamed up with the Southern Knights (originally published by Comics Interview) for a multi-part story called "The Morrigan Wars".