Book Review: Marvel Superheroes Contest of Champions

Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions by Mark Gruenwald

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Contest of Champions has a lot of interesting backstory. In fact, I found myself a bit more interested to read Tom DeFalco's explanation of how the story came to be than the story itself.

Contest of Champions is really the first big superhero crossover event bringing together a massive number of Marvel's heroes.

Yet, the book is weird. Despite bringing so many heroes together, the two cosmic beings battling it out only choose twenty-four, so the rest of the characters are only there as spectators.

And the way the Challenge works, it's heroes battling heroes but there's no reason to cheer for one side, and everyone (except Wolverine who tries to kill Black Panther) takes this as a bit of a game. This feels very much like the Spring Training of Superhero events. It all ends up in a bit of an embarassing mix up because Marvel lost track of who was on what teams in what events, and given that there were only four events, this is a big error. Also, their attempts to feature international heroes leads to some awkward moments.

That said, this is not a bad book. It's fun to see these characters together and there are some fight scenes that are fun to reading and some interesting ways powers are used. I also did love the Thing telling Wolverine to not murder T'Challa.

Overall, this is okay, it's short, and if you want to read what can rightly be labeled as the first comic event, this is worth checking out for that reason alone.



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