*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: Continuing our First Quenchers event featuring UK #1 issues! In the 1960’s, IPC/Fleetway launched not one, but two weekly adventure comics that were heavily promoted as “Companion papers to Valiant”, neither of which, peculiarly, ended up merging with Valiant; one such was Hurricane, which merged with Tiger, and the other was Champion. 1966’s Champion #1 looked a bit odd to contemporary audiences, because more than half its content (though the readers had no way of knowing it at the time) was reprinted from European sources. Among the new material, though, was some imaginative stuff, including ‘Return of the Stormtroopers’, ‘School for Spacemen’, and a bona-fide superhero, ‘The Phantom Viking’. Readers didn’t take to the imports, though, and after only fifteen issues, the title folded into Lion, with ‘Phantom Viking’, ‘Stormtroopers’ and a couple of humour strips making the leap across. Never possessing a very high print run, issues of Champion are seldom seen, and this debut issue is a superior copy, with none of the staple-rust plaguing other editions we’ve seen! VG at £40. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD