This article may contain affiliate links.
I’ve been playing Marvel Contest of Champions, a mobile 1v1 fighting game, off and on since it launched in late 2014. I have loved it, I’ve left it behind on more than one occasion, and I have always come back, lured by the siren song of new champions, excellent character designs, and fun (if sometimes infuriating) gameplay.
Having grown up reading the comics that inspired so much of the current media, I pride myself on having a little more than average on-hand knowledge of where certain minutiae in one media might have come from.
For example, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, one of THE best Spider-Man movies made to date, might not exist if Beenox and ActiVision hadn’t made the excellent Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions video game, which inspired Dan Slott to write the (not so great) “Spider-Verse” event during his run of Amazing Spider-Man. And we all know Miles’ coming of age animated adventure in Into the Spider-Verse was born from the idea of this story.
What’s the point? (aside from “I’m a big nerd”) It’s that, simply put, where comic book based media are concerned–at least for Marvel–I know things. And I pride myself on knowing things.
Which is why I got gobsmacked right in the face today when I saw a reference to Marvel Contest of Champions. On Amazon, no less.
I’d logged in to continue shopping for computer parts, and in one of their featured sections (doubtless the one based on my shopping history, as it was mostly Spider-Man items) was posted a thumbnail for a Marvel comics publication that had, prominently in the title: CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS.
And it didn’t look like anything from the last 10 years or so. It looked OLD.
I had to investigate.
Billed as Marvel’s FIRST event series in 1982, “Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions,” as it’s properly titled, was a three-issue limited series that conceptualized the idea of a single, major event reverberating through the Marvel universe and affecting multiple superheroes, teams, and locations. It had been mostly completed years prior by Mark Gruenwald, John Romita Jr., and Bob Layton, intended as a celebration of the 1980 Summer Olympics, but got put on hold due to the United States refusing to participate in the Olympics in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. When it was finally release two years later, any references to the Olympics were scrubbed from the comics.
Without going into too much detail, here’s a quick and dirty setup. Elder beings of the Universe collect two teams of Earth superheroes to fight one another as pawns in a game that will decided whether or not the Collector, another Elder, will be resurrected or remain dead. This is a VERY similar situation to how the mobile fighting game is conceived.
I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS A THING!
For me, and I imagine many casual Marvel comics fans, the first major Marvel crossover event was the 1984 “Secret Wars” limited series. But no, not actually. “Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions” was doing crossovers well before it became the cool thing to do. And furthermore, it directly inspired what might very well be my very favorite mobile game, in both title and overall concept.
Consider my mind blown. I’ll be checking this series out at some point in the near future.
Spidey Librarian 