The Champions of Angor, also known as the Assemblers or the Justifiers, were an extra-terrestrial superhero team from the planet Angor.
History
The team first came into contact with the Justice League of America when their planet Angor was attacked by a spacefaring robot, which they defeated and attempted to track back to its source. Meanwhile, a similar robot attacked the Justice League on Earth, which they defeated and also tried to track. When the two teams met, each assumed the other was the enemy they had been looking for, and they fought. At that time, the heroes of Angor were Wandjina, Silver Sorceress, Blue Jay and Jack B. Quick.[1]
Post-Crisis
In a dimension separate from that of the Earth,[2] the Assemblers,[3] also known as the Justifiers, were a superhero team whose continued success against the villains of their world lulled them into complacency to the threat posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The heroes became figureheads[4] with celebrity status,[5] and were granted honorary military ranks.[6]
The Justifiers operated from a mansion headquarters located in their world's New York City, defended and maintained by their butler and mechanical robo-roaches. In addition to their world's supervillains—including their arch-foes the Mad Tinkerer, Savant, and Andro, the Living Machine—the Justifiers faced a number of personal struggles, from physical and psychological ailments to anti-mutant hysteria; which of the Justifiers' hardships was the greatest was a point of contention among them. One such debate was interrupted when the Justifiers were visited at their mansion by an erratic robot in the likeness of famed, thought-dead entertainer Mitch Wacky. Suspecting that it had been sent against them by one of their enemies, the Justifiers attacked, only for the robot to implode to their confusion. Shortly thereafter, they saw the debut of the Extremists, a new team of mutated supervillains whom the Justifiers first welcomed as a challenge, in contrast to the relatively few and minor threats of their prior foes.[7]
Caught up in their celebrity lifestyle, however, the heroes were blindsided the Extremists took control of the planet's nuclear arsenal, holding the world hostage and demanding that its people submit to them or be destroyed. Well aware of what their foes were capable of, the heroes took their threat seriously, and used a combination of magic and science to send a delegation—Wandjina, the Silver Sorceress, and Blue Jay—to seek aid on Earth. Instead, they came into conflict with the Justice League of America and found that the Earth also suffered from nuclear proliferation. They returned to their own world, where, in their absence, the Extremists made good on their threat, committing widespread genocide via nuclear holocaust and kiling most of their fellow heroes.[5]
The returned heroes worked to save the survivors; Wandjina called down rains in an attempt to heal the planet while the Silver Sorceress attended to the radiation-sickened people—including her teammate Captain Speed, whose hyper-metabolism accelerated his death. Their efforts were unsuccessful, however, and eventually the remaining population died out, leaving only the three off-world heroes[8] and the Bowman, the latter of whom was held captive by android duplicates of the Extremists and eventually tortured to death.[9]
With little recourse, these remaining heroes sought refuge in another dimension. Wandjina, Blue Jay, and Silver Sorceress arrived on Earth and attempted to destroy all of its nuclear weapons in the hopes of preventing the devastation that destroyed Angor from affecting Earth as well.[8] Eventually Wandjina sacrificed himself to prevent a meltdown in a Bialyan nuclear reactor, and Silver Sorceress and Blue Jay gave themselves up to Russian authorities.[10]
The Extremist Vector
Blue Jay and Silver Sorceress eventually escaped from prison. Blue Jay went to the Justice League for help, and Silver Sorceress returned to Angor. There, she discovered a group of overly realistic amusement park robot duplicates, who believed themselves to be the actual Extremists, captured her and forced her to take them to Earth, where they intended to take control of all the world's nuclear weapons.[2] After conflict with Justice League Europe, the team discovered the Extremists were robots, and their creator, Mitch Wacky, was brought to Earth to shut them off. It was revealed that the original Dreamslayer, not being human, had survived the nuclear holocaust on Angor, and was working with the robot Extremists. He was defeated by Silver Sorceress. Afterwards, Blue Jay and Silver Sorceress joined the JLE.[11][12][3]
Notes
- The team were conceived as a pastiche of characters from Marvel Comics' Avengers, whose battle cry "Avengers Assemble!" is referenced in the name "Assemblers."
Trivia
- The heroes of Angor were without a group name in their first appearance;[1] they were first identified as the Assemblers in Justice League Europe #19 while the name "Champions of Angor" originated in the DC Heroes Roleplaying Game's 1990 Justice League Sourcebook, and they were later referred to as the Justifiers in Justice League Quarterly #3 and Who's Who in the DC Universe #12.
See Also
- 7 Appearances of Champions of Angor (New Earth)
- 7 Images that include Champions of Angor (New Earth)
- Team Gallery: Champions of Angor (New Earth)
Links and References
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Justice League of America #87
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Justice League Europe #15
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Justice League Europe #19
- ↑ Who's Who in the DC Universe #12
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Justice League Europe #16
- ↑ Justice League Europe #21
- ↑ Justice League Quarterly #3
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Justice League #2
- ↑ Justice League Sourcebook
- ↑ Justice League #3
- ↑ Justice League Europe #17
- ↑ Justice League Europe #18