Emboldened by the unsurprising success of Marvel Vs DC, the House Of Ideas (which was admittedly running low at this point in the late nineties) decided to go double-or-quits on their big event books that saw a load of superheroes fighting for no good reason with Contest Of Champions II, a spiritual successor to the 1982 miniseries of the same name with a suspiciously similar premise. This time, however, the series was written by Chris Claremont and pencilled by Oscar Jimenez and Michael Ryan (as opposed to Mark Gruenwald with art by John Romita Jr and Bob Layton), and the outcome of the fights between Marvel's biggest names would again be decided by the fans. Following the same model as Marvel Vs DC, it was the readers who voted for Iron Man to defeat Psylocke, the Human Torch to almost suffocate Spider-Woman, and Thor literally taking Storm's breath away by kissing her and inhaling her oxygen. Hm, starting to notice a pattern here...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
