Trivia / Champions (2016)

• Ascended Meme: The "Flyclops" meme revolved around Cyclops using his Eye Beams to lift himself off the ground, essentially allowing him to fly. Teen Cyclops actually does this at one point in the book, and happily comments on his ability to fly.
• Dueling Works: Champions is Marvel's answer to Teen Titans, but has this especially with Rebirth incarnation of the team as they launched roughly at the same time, both have diverse teams but differ in approach.
  • 2019 Retool of Champions to be bigger than before was set up to be this with return of Young Justice, another team promising a large, rotating cast, launching on the same month even. While critical and fan reaction were equally positive, money-wise Young Justice definitely won, with higher direct market sales. The competition with the highly-anticipated return of a fan-favorite series, on top of an artificial relaunch doing more harm than good, arguably lead to Champions being canceled, ending in November 2019.
• Out of Order: According to Word of God, issues 19 to 21 are set before the Incredible Hulk arcs Planet Hulk II and World War Hulk II, which both started before Champions 19.
• Reality Subtext: The last few pages of issue 18, Mark Waid's final issue of the title before its Marvel: A Fresh Start hand off, has Kamala complaining that the team had fallen off of their mission statement of trying to solve things without fighting and super powers, which may be a nod to the fact that the latter half of Waid's run, starting with the Secret Empire crossover, was all about that, something that frustrated Waid a lot.
• Screwed by the Network: Most people agree the January 2019 relaunch (when 2016 series ended in December 2018) was artificial and screwed the sales and the decision to have some of the most popular characters on the team leave to focus on their own books (some of which was, admittingly, Jim Zub's decision, but other cases feel like an editorial mandate) undid any benefit adding several minor fan-favorites had, leading to the series cancellation.

---