Funny enough, the Champions were almost foreshadowed in the person of Jeremy Briggs, the final villain/antagonist of Avengers Academy, who rejected training as a superhero because he saw them as merely perpetuating an endless cycle of violence and destruction and doing nothing to actually better the world with all their power. Of course, his solution was to have all the superheroes depowered and then grant powers to anyone willing and able to pay for them, so . . .