The name belongs to two different teams
There are two Marvel teams called the Champions, forty-one years apart, with no roster overlap and no in-story connection. Any first-appearance question about the Champions has to pick one. There is the 1975 Los Angeles team and the 2016 team of teen heroes, and they are distinct books to collect and distinct stories to read.
Champions #1 (1975): the original team
Tony Isabella wrote and Don Heck drew the launch, cover-dated October 1975. The roster was the pitch's whole identity: a deliberately mismatched Los Angeles team of Ghost Rider, Hercules, the Black Widow, the Angel, and Iceman, a demonic biker, a Greek demigod, a Soviet-trained spy, and two X-Men, with little reason to share a book beyond the city. It ran 17 issues and folded in 1978. For decades "the Champions" meant this team.Champions #1 (2016): the teen team
Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos relaunched the name in November 2016 for an unrelated group. After the older heroes' infighting in Civil War II, Ms. Marvel, Miles Morales, and Nova walk out and start their own team built on idealism rather than punching, soon joined by Viv Vision, a time-displaced teenage Cyclops, and the Totally Awesome Hulk. The book reads as a deliberate rebuke of the adult Marvel Universe, and the name is the only thing it borrows from 1975.Which Champions do you collect?
If you want the first appearance of “the Champions,” it is Champions #1 (1975), the original LA team and the older, scarcer key. If you came to the name through Ms. Marvel and Miles Morales, your book is Champions #1 (2016), a recent issue that is easy to find in high grade. They are two keys for two teams that happen to share a cover logo.
