While teams like the Avengers and X-Men have been Marvel's moneymakers for decades, the introduction of new, more youthful supergroups has taken some of their shine away. Two of those squads, the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Champions, have slowly become Marvel bestsellers over the past two decades.
Although the Guardians and Champions typically operate in many different areas, there's actually more overlap than you might think. Since the two have intersected in the way of the same enemies and even different iterations of the same member, we may as well compare the two teams straight-up. Focused mainly on the core, most popular and recurring members of each squad, let's see who comes out on top.
10 Heavy Hitter Advantage: Guardians
This isn't to say that the Champions don't have some heavy hitters, considering they have an incarnation of the Hulk, but the Guardians fairly easily take the advantage here. Between Groot and Drax alone, the Guardians are stacked with brute force.
That doesn't even take into consideration some of their strongest all-time members like the Thing, Captain Marvel, Gamora, and even Venom. All in all, there's really no competition when it comes to the Guardians' heavyweight advantage.
9 Tactical/Tech Advantage: Tie
Tactical and technological items are both major elements of the Guardians and Champions. Both teams heavily rely on their tech, whether that be some kind of advanced weapon, a special helmet, or even a full suit of armor.
Riri Williams' Ironheart armor gives reason to believe that the Champions should take this round, but between Star-Lord's helmet and all of Rocket's different weapons, the two groups manage to draw even. Plus, when you consider that both teams have had a different version of Nova, fully equipped with the iconic helmet, the tie feels even more fitting.
8 Main Inherent Ability: Guardians
The Champions have their fair share of members with inherent powers, but not nearly as prominently as the Guardians of the Galaxy. Most of their most notable members, like Drax, Gamora, Groot, and many others don't have much power at all outside of those of their natural form.
An argument could even be made that characters like Star-Lord and Rocket's powers are inherent as well, but we won't consider them since they mainly use external weapons in combat. Even though some of the Champions' top team members have inherent powers as well, but they just don't overpower those cornerstone Guardians.
7 External Power: Champions
The Champions have a number of members that make their advantage in external abilities a landslide victory. Between Riri William Ironheart armor, Nadia Van Dyne's Wasp suit, and Fernanda Rodriquez' Locust armor, a good majority of the most prominent Champions are equipped with some kind of full-body source of power. It may not give them the most significant advantage in an actual battle against the Guardians, but it's still a category in which the Champions dominate.
6 Cohesiveness/Teamwork: Champions
One of the Guardians' biggest weaknesses is their frequent inability to come together as a team. They're often battling one another, drawing attention away from the task at hand. In all fairness, their rifts and internal division is what makes the group hilariously likable.
However, for the purposes of this category, the Champions have significantly stronger cohesiveness as a team. They certainly have their moments in which things start to crack at the seams, but for the most part, they are one of the most teamwork-oriented groups Marvel has to offer.
5 Back-Up: Guardians
If a fight were to break out between the Champions and the Guardians of the Galaxy, one of their biggest strengths would prove to be those other heroes they're aligned with. Back-up could turn out to be critical, and if it were to come down to it, the Guardians would have a much stronger set of allies on their side.
Even though the two groups share several allies, such as the Avengers and X-Men, the Guardians have a much more extensive collection of back-up just in their former members alone. That list coupled with all their intergalactic back-up like the Nova Corps, Knowhere Corps, and the Starjammers gives them a remarkable roster of reinforcements that the Champions just couldn't compete with.
4 Enemy Power Level: Tie
Both the Champions and Guardians have fought incredibly top-tier villains over the years. Just about every major Marvel bad guy has gone up against one of either the Champions or Guardians of the Galaxy at one point or another. Names like Doctor Doom, Ego, Galactus, Hela, Thanos, and Ultron make up just a small sample of the incredible list of villains both teams have fought. So, there's really no way to give one group an advantage over the here as they've both gone up against the worst of the worst.
3 Established Victory: Guardians
Considering the villains they've gone up against, the prior victories of the Champions are undeniable. However, the same goes for the Guardians of the Galaxy, and arguably, to a much larger extent. Not only have they helped deal with the problems of the Earth, but their entire M.O. is fighting threats across the galaxy. The Guardians' advantage in established victories comes largely in part to their being around for 12 years as opposed to the Champions' three. Defeating the Skrulls, the Universal Church of Truth, and Thanos are just some of their massive achievements and the list goes on and on. The scale of the Guardians' past victories is what earns them the advantage here.
2 Leadership: Champions
Despite being a much more youthful group, composed of young heroes, the Champions actually have much stronger leadership on their team than the Guardians. Both squads have had different leaders at different points in time, but those of the Champions easily outshine those of the Guardians. That's in large part thanks to Ms. Marvel, Kamala Kahn.
Taking after her idol, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel has become one of the strongest female figures in the Marvel Universe, and an excellent leader that helped form the Champions. Her leadership skills, along with the inconsistency of those same skills throughout the Guardians, are just a part of what makes the Champions such a more cohesive group.
1 Winner: Champions
All things considered, the Champions earn the victory over the Guardians of the Galaxy. As powerful as they are and as successful as they've been, the Guardians lack in certain areas as a team where the Champions just so happen to thrive.
From their strength as a team and impressive leadership to their powerhouse members and unique combination of abilities, the Champions are a tough group to compete with. Although the Guardians certainly have a laundry list of strength that makes them a force to be reckoned with, they fall just short of the Champions. There will probably never be a situation that would pit these two supergroups against one another, but in the event that it does ever happen the Champions would likely come out on top.