THE AVENGERS: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
by Brandon Jerwa

Let’s get this out of the way right now: I’m an Avengers fan. As a writer of comic books myself, I will shamelessly admit that my typing fingers long to wear themselves out on an Avengers script someday, but this column isn’t about sucking up.

Not this week, anyway.

When I was 8 years old, my parents gave me the gift that kept on giving: subscriptions to Marvel Team-Up and The Avengers. The first thin brown mailer to reach my hands was Avengers issue 223 and its cover is still one of my all-time favorites. An angry-looking Hawkeye is leveling an arrow towards us, with a tiny (but equally intense) Ant-Man gripping the arrowhead, ready to fly into action. If I hadn’t already been hooked on the title years prior, this monumental comic collecting moment would surely have sealed the deal. I received a comic book in the mail and it was awesome.

By now, it’s hard to be a Marvel fan and not love at least one era of the team dubbed “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”, because the team has included damn near every Marvel super-hero at one point or another. Surprisingly, the book managed to side-step the obvious choices for decades before Brian Michael Bendis came in and turned “doing the obvious” into “doing exactly what the book needs” with New Avengers.

Just as we’re all getting comfortable, though, Bendis repeatedly pledges that Marvel’s upcoming Civil War crossover event will alter Earth’s Mightiest Heroes significantly, bringing change to the Avengers once again. GOOD GRAVY, WHAT COULD IT ALL POSSIBLY MEAN?!

Trying to pry secrets out of a major comic publisher before an “event” is not a task for mere mortals like you and I, loyal reader. I’d suggest we not even undertake such a deadly mission. Instead, let’s bask in the glory of days gone by and take a look at where the Avengers have been as we brace ourselves for where they might be going.

AVENGERS # 1 debuted in 1963, another cornerstone in Marvel’s rising super-hero
empire. Perhaps Marvel felt DC’s Justice League of America needed some competition, or maybe it was just a natural progression after the success of Fantastic Four. The truth doesn’t really matter in the long run, because the Avengers assembled and have continued to stay strong for over forty years with no signs of stopping.

The first issue introduced a team of characters that had all previously appeared in anthology books such as Tales To Astonish, but perhaps weren’t quite household names yet. Iron Man, the Wasp, Giant-Man, Thor and the Incredible Hulk were brought together to combat a menace that no one single hero could face – in this case, Thor’s squirrely half-brother Loki, God of Mischief.

This was no simple case of “good friends and good times”, though. The book would set a standard for super-hero relationships, exploring the paranoia and insecurity that hangs like a shadow over the world of people who dress up in funny costumes and fight evildoers who harass the world with armies of android monkeys and oddball weapons that turn senators into cheeseburgers.

Okay, it wasn’t that wacky, but they had the Hulk as a member! You know - the angry green dude who has such a temper problem that even his pants have to suffer! This was bound to go wrong.

As expected, the Hulk didn’t stick around long. He departed the team in issue 3, paving the way for a character that would become a key player from that point forward: Captain America. The good Captain was found floating in a block of leftover Nazi party ice and later thawed out, only to find himself drafted into Marvel’s squad of do-gooders. His devotion was pretty evident from the start; so much so that he stayed on to lead a new team of Avengers when the founding members bailed in issue 16!

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (the children of X-Men villain Magneto) and the aforementioned angry archer Hawkeye stepped up to the plate in the absence of those who came before, leading Cap to turn these bush-leaguers into something special. The god Hercules and the Wakandan monarch known as the Black Panther would also pop in for a few issues as well, starting a rotation trend that at times seemed to involve 80 people showing up whenever someone yelled “Avengers Assemble!”

To be fair, Henry Pym, AKA Giant-Man, stuck around as Goliath, but that guy’s got so much to answer for in later issues it’s not even funny. He gets small! He gets big! He hits his wife! He makes a nice robot designed to make everything better and it becomes a murderous arch-villain! He probably also ate the last of the cookies on meeting day, too.

Those minor faults aside, Pym’s a great example of the character work that would become a trademark of The Avengers. Sure, these heroes were the gold standard of the Marvel Universe, but they were flawed to amazing extremes: Cap’s a man out of time struggling for relevance, Iron Man’s a stone-cold alcoholic with heart problems and the mutant Scarlet Witch and the android Vision raised all kinds of ruckus when they dared to get married!

Yes, the late 60s and early 70s were a crazy time for everyone. Iron Man, the Wasp and Thor would find their way back to the team and glorified guest stars would seem to be permanent (Swordsman, Mantis and Moondragon, I’m looking at you).

The team’s public profile also seemed to grow appropriately as the ‘real world” became more and more obsessed with celebrity. Movie-star super hero Wonder Man and the fuzzy, blue former X-Man called the Beast were perfectly depicted as being fond of the spotlight in what I like to call the “Disco Avengers” era. By this time, the book juggled plotlines like nobody’s business, delivering more than just “Villain A versus Heroes C-Z.”

By the dawn of the 1980s, the Avengers were going strong without featuring the hottest heroes of the Marvel Universe: Spider-Man, the Hulk and Wolverine were nowhere to be found, because the book had long since become its own franchise and simply didn’t need the star power.

While previous eras could possibly be viewed as a “boys club” due to the abundance of strong male leads, the 80s found the “sisters doin’ it for themselves” as the Eurythmics might say. The Wasp was a strong leader for the team, with She-Hulk, Tigra, a new female Captain Marvel and the Scarlet Witch right in the thick of things.

The males weren’t exactly dead weight, of course. Captain America, the Vision, Hawkeye, Thor and Iron Man were all hanging around, too. The amorous alien Starfox and the sword-wielding Black Knight were on hand as well. Even Dr. Pym continued to have a go at the super-hero lifestyle, with the usual chaotic results. By this time, though, the team was getting too big for their mansion, and drastic action was called for.

Thus, the West Coast Avengers were born, debuting in their own title. Hawkeye and his gal-pal Mockingbird were tasked with setting up a California field office of heroes, delivering bi-coastal action with the familiar faces Avengers fans had come to love. The book lasted over 100 issues before the plug was finally pulled. Not bad for a spin-off.

As the Avengers faced down the 90s, their roster would see plenty of adjustment; the old revolving door was getting a real workout. New members would include Quasar; Sersi; Crystal of the Inhumans; USAgent; Black Widow and the Sub-Mariner. I’m pretty sure Howard the Duck and Benjamin Franklin were in there, too.

Okay, that last part is a lie – but even as heroes came and went from the mighty Avengers line-up, that same gold standard was maintained and the team remained the first line of defense for major threats to the beleaguered Marvel Universe. In fact, several key Avengers heroically sacrificed themselves in battle against the evil menace known as Onslaught, only to re-appear pretty much alive and well in the late 90s “Heroes Reborn” event. Little did they know that change was right around the corner…

Just last year, Brian Michael Bendis brought the Avengers saga as we know it to a close, turning the Scarlet Witch against her team-mates in an epic encounter called “Avengers Disassembled” (the Witch also wiped the Marvel mutant slate clean, but that’s another story). The Avengers hobbled away from that event wounded in spirit and without a book of their own…until New Avengers debuted, that is.

Bendis had a plan for the Avengers and clearly, that plan was to create a team of Marvel heroes that could rival DC’s Justice League – a group of heroes made up of Marvel’s best and brightest with a few obscure faces thrown in. It was the obvious thing to do, but the results were explosive. Mainstays Captain America and Iron Man were joined by Spider-Man, Spider-Woman (no relation), Power Man, Sentry and…gasp…Wolverine. This was a team book that re-invented the wheel and rebuilt the team from the ground up without leading right back to the status quo. Fans – myself included – were reluctant, but fears were soon put to rest and all was right with the Avengers once again.

BUT NOW…yes, “but now”. What should we expect after Civil War? Is it going to be a trip down memory lane or a crazy ride into the future? We’ve come to expect the unexpected when it comes to the Avengers, but it’s a comfortable sort of fear because we know that the Avengers always come back around. I hope that the first time we hear “Avengers Assemble” after the Civil War is over, our eyes will grow wide with wonder, just as they did in 1963…1973…1983…1993…and when we first cracked the cover of New Avengers.

If the past is any indication, then the future looks incredibly bright.