Four men of action; a pilot, a diver, an acrobat, and an athlete survive a plane crash; believing they are living on borrowed time they vow to help the world by tackling the challenges no-one else can. Together they will face the unknown. The basic premise of The Challengers is a great one that opens up a lot of story-telling possibilities. Writer/Artist Jack Kirby exploits it to the full with stories of giant monsters, ancient wizards, super-scientists, time-travel and more. Unfortunately that is only the first half of this volume. Once Kirby moved off the title you can see an immediate slump in quality and imagination with a series of rote, simplistic tales from which The Challengers concept never really recovered. ( )

http://geekylibrarian.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/review-showcase-presents-challeng... ( )

Wow. I used to really like the Challs. I wonder if I encountered them in a different medium - either a book (rather than a comic book) or as guest stars in another comic, perhaps? Reading many issues of their own mag back-to-back, as in this book, really shows up the lack of originality in the stories. Let's see - 5-6 stories with small boxes with super-powers (of various sorts) in them, which are always grabbed by villains so the Challs have to put them down (usually with an antidote helpfully provided either in the boxes or by the scientist/alchemist who put the powers in the boxes). Another 4-5 with big boxes with Menaces From (outer space/the past/both (spacers frozen in ice!)/a different dimension...). A few scientists gone bad, a lot of assistants stealing scientists' work, a couple experiments-gone-wrong...bleah. Oh, and back in time and forward in time and across time/dimensions...And the taglines (borrowed time and the descriptions of each) in each issue. And June desperately trying to get them to take her seriously. And at least one issue of young guy teasing strong guy (Ace vs Rocky) - I'd love to get a timeline of that versus Fantastic Four (Torch vs Thing) and X-Men (Iceman vs Beast...though Beast handled it a lot better than the standard 'wait till I get my hands on you!'). Same writers? or that just suddenly struck everyone as funny? Overall, not _bad_, but definitely not as good as I was remembering the Challs to be. ( )

The Kirby/Wood art team is the stuff of dreams. ( )