Champion

Champion is the greatest superhero Chicago has ever produced. Unfortunately, being Champion is not conducive to a long life: there have been six Champions to date.

All of the Champions have been Avatars, holders of the Champion Force. The Champion Force is a meld of a number of different spirits that have been combined by a mysterious process that sometimes occurs with high level avatars. There are at least four other Forces known: the Magus Force, the Astarte Force, the Dynamo Force and the oddly-named Fred Force.

Champion's name has been associated with pulp-era-style taglines over the years, among which are "Champion of Righteousness and Decency" and "Champion of justice and righteousness."

Redford waved that aside. “Okay, you may be in a position to answer a question that’s bugged me for YEARS. Where did ‘Junior Champion’ and ‘Miss Champion’ come from? I mean… that whole ‘Olympian’ thing was a complete mass of hogwash! HOW did he ‘pass along his powers’ to them?”

“Wow! An intelligent question! What a novelty! Okay, okay, sorry - yes, that IS a good question, and it’s one that I can actually answer. Where to start… Okay, first of all, as you just said, that whole ‘Olympian’ thing that Champ came out with was complete hogwash, it was SO corny that even I wouldn’t have used it. It took me years to figure this out, but as it turns out, Champ was NOT the recipient of some strange energy from some dying world. Rather, he was a mutant, a variation of a trait that they now call ‘Avatar’. Y’see, he sucked up spirits, devils, magical energy, spells, curses, all that, and he sort of mashed them all together into what they now call a ‘Force’, after the ‘Olympian Force’. The more spirits, hexes, and what all he mashed into that ‘Olympian Force’ the more powerful he got. By 1940, he was fucking FLYING!”

Redford leaned forward avidly. “What exactly IS ‘the Olympian Force’?”

Townsend shrugged. “Hell if I know. It doesn’t act like any spirit, godling, djinn, spell, hex, curse or blessing that I’VE ever seen.

Certain elements in the Syndicate have plans to try to steal the Champion Force.

Champion I

Harry Holbrook was the greatest superhero Chicago has ever seen. He was operating as early as 1934, and died in 1953, passing the Champion Force to Champion Jr. His uniform was blue tights with a white cape, a hood that showed the lower half of his face, trunks, gloves and boots, with a large red ‘C’ on the chest. He had two kid sidekicks, Miss Champion and Champion Jr. He thought his powers to be of Olympian origin, a belief he passed on to his successor.

Mephisto the Mentalist was one of his major opponents.

There's a great deal of information in Razzle Dazzle

He died just before the Kid Sidekick laws were passed.

He fought White Lady V.

Champion II

Ted Trent was the first Champion's kid sidekick. He took over the Champion Force when Harry Holbrook died in 1953. In addition to being an avatar he was also a Kinetic and could use pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, and psychokinetically created vibration, in the form of his ‘lightning vision,’ ‘polar breath’ and ‘thunder shout’, respectively. He found a potential successor, but since Kid Sidekick Laws prevented him from training the boy himself he instead took part in the founding of Whateley Academy, where the boy was enrolled. He was killed in 1969 with a volcanic glass knife he thought to be made of "Tartarium", a substance he believed to be capable of overcoming his defenses and therefore had a psychological weakness against. He passed the Champion Force on to Champion III, who was trained at Whateley.

Champion Jr's origin story is in the vignette Red Eagle

Champion III

Champion III (Steve Briggs) was in the very first class of Whateley students and waited until he graduated in 1970 before taking up the mantle of the Champion, a year after receiving the force. His action was to arrest the killer of Champion II, the killer attacking him with another glass knife that broke on his chest before being dragged off.

Gizmatic had an ongoing feud with Champion III, stemming from the time when both were students at Whateley. According to Gizmatic (as retold by Jobe), Briggs (who used the codename "Blue Blaze" before taking on the Champion identity) was a bit of a bully as a student—but then, neither Gizmatic nor Jobe can be relied as objective witnesses. After the death of Champion III, Gizmatic did not try to continue the feud with Champion IV.

“When Blue Blaze stepped up to become Champion, he went to work for the Chicago DA’s office as a special investigator. It’s a legacy thing. Gizmatic hears about this somehow, and having decided to go Black Hat anyway, decides that beating the crapola out of Champion would look very good on his resume, and it’s not like he didn’t hate Briggs’ guts anyway. So far, so ‘Silver Age Superman vs. Lex Luthor’.

“Anyway, while he was working for the Man, Briggs meets a rather smokin’ lady ADA named Lorna Langtree.”

...

“So, Briggs and Lorna start going out, and Gizmatic learns about it. Being just that kind of guy, Gizmatic conceives a massive passion for his arch-enemy’s girlfriend. And for the next 8 going on 10 years, Lorna becomes the ‘Lois’ in their rather juvenile feud.”

So, Steve Briggs was Champion for about a decade, at least.

Ms. Might (Champion Force)

Main article: Elizabeth Carson

After her divorce from Simon Stevens in '71 and the rising Feminist movement in the seventies, Liz decided she needed a more socially conscious ID and became Ms. Might. She continued an independent study in magic, doing so in her spare time as a teacher at Whateley Academy, with some guidance and insight from the master mage and trustee than talked her into taking the job in the first place, Ty West.

Champion IV

Wayne Sotherby was a decent guy from the start. He even saved Gizmatic once! In any case, Sotherby served nobly as Champion for 14 years before being killed by Deathlist.

Champion V

Nothing is currently known about Champion V.

Champion VI

The current (that is, late 2006) Champion is the sixth. He is probably the Champion who visited Whateley in Kodiak's freshman year.

Champion ?

The Champion active in August 2016 (who may be Champion VI or perhaps a successor) has been described as follows:

...a tall, chiseled man whose mask left is flowing blonde locks free in the breeze. He wore a blue body stocking that was, well, spangled with white stars in a random pattern that the mask was actually integrated into, leaving his chin clear. With this he accessorized gauntlet gloves that came halfway up his forearms, knee boots, and cape that came down to the back of his knees all in bright scarlet, with a white utility belt.

Notes

The following excerpt probably relates to either Champion III or Champion IV.

Belle walked up to a wax figure of a heroically built man wearing an odd suit consisting of a royal blue metallic looking armless and legless body sheath with shoulder plates, a wide golden belt with a thunderbolt design on it, white gauntlet gloves, high white boots, a long white cape and a large red triangular ‘C’ on the chest. The tabs holding the cape, and the greaves and bracers over the boots and gauntlets were gold metal matching the belt. “I don’t think that I have to tell anyone that this is a uniform belonging to Champion, the greatest superhero that Chicago has ever seen. This is the outfit worn by Champion during most of the 1970’s and early 1980’s. This really is one of his costumes, one that he wore during several of his battles of that period. This statue was on display at Madame Tassaud’s in Paris; when Champion changed his outfit in 1983, Tassaud’s made a whole new statue, and Champion asked them to deliver this one here.”

References to any of the Champions should be redirected here until there is a main page for that particular Champion. Then the "main page" feature should be used to refer to it from here.