Marvel Needs to Figure Out How to Fix the Avengers

The Avengers are Marvel‘s greatest team. The Fantastic Four was first and the X-Men were the publisher’s first team to get noticed by the greater pop culture, but the Avengers was always presented as the most important team, the home to the greatest heroes on the planet and its foremost protection force. They were truly Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and over the decades amazing creators like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Neal Adams, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Jim Shooter, George Perez, Roger Stern, Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns, Alan Davis, Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, Mark Waid, and many more gave readers fantastic stories.

The Avengers became the focus of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the ’10s, taking their place at the top of the superhero pyramid for the general audience. One would imagine that Marvel did their best to put out the greatest Avengers books ever, but for years now the team has been something of an also-ran. It’s been almost a decade since they were actually great, and Marvel needs to figure out how to make them into the stars that they deserve to be.

Can Marvel Save the Avengers?

There was a time when the Avengers’ comics were the bestselling comics on the charts, and it wasn’t all that long ago. This started about 20 years ago, with New Avengers, and led to books like Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers, A.I. Avengers, Secret Avengers, and a relaunch of Avengers in 2011. The ’00s were a great time for Avengers fans, but things got even better in 2012, when writer Jonathan Hickman was given the keys to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The writer made the team into the most powerful version we’ve ever seen, and pit them against foes that were greater than anything they had ever faced before.

The Hickman Avengers run was flawless, and while that was going on, readers were treated to the rise of the Avengers Unity Squad in Uncanny Avengers, blending the team with the X-Men for a unique reader experience. From 2012 to 2015, fans were getting an embarrassment of riches, but since then, we’ve been trapped in a cycle of diminishing returns. Now, Marvel has definitely tried their best, putting A-list writers like Mark Waid, Al Ewing, Jason Aaron, and Jed MacKay on the books, and stacked the rosters with the most popular heroes out there. However, the team is all but an afterthought for readers.

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Face It, The West Coast Avengers Were the Best Avengers

Now, there have been some cool Avengers stories since 2015. “No Surrender” and “No Way Home” (not related at all to the Spider-Man movie) were a highlight of the era from 2015-2018. Avengers: Twilight was completely flawless, taking readers to a dark future for the team. However, books like Avengers and West Coast Avengers have either failed to keep reader attention (the former) or ended up not finding an audience (the latter). Marvel has lost the plot with the Avengers, and there’s really only thing one thing to do.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that the team works better when the creators concentrate on classic Avengers ideas. Too many writers in the last decade have tried to make them into Marvel’s Justice League, pitting them against massive multiversal threats, and forgot the things we love about the team. Their classic villains have been nowhere to be found, the B and C-list characters who the books built, like Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, the Vision, and more, all have get their own series where they’re developed, and the flavor of the book has changed completely. Even the modern books like New Avengers, Dark Avengers, or Uncanny Avengers found ways to change the game while using the ideas of the past. This is the key to success.

The Avengers Concept Needs a Refresh

The Avengers are in a dark place right now, and Marvel needs to remember what makes the concept work. The current team consists of numerous characters with their own books, so there’s really no reason to read the team for those characters’ fans. The few who don’t have their own don’t get any growth, and we haven’t seen classic villains like the Masters of Evil, Grim Reaper, Ultron, or Count Nefaria in ages. The new volume kicked off with a Kang story, but that was abandoned because Kang was no longer the focus of the MCU. The book is languishing.

Marvel has had to deal with this sort of thing before, and they did it by going back to the basics. Making the team into the Marvel Justice League is fun, but it only works with the best possible talent, which the publisher doesn’t seem to have anymore honestly. The group needs to embrace its past, building up lower-level heroes, and giving readers the villains we haven’t seen in years. I get that they’re hoping that MCU synergy — the current team has Captain Marvel, Sam Wilson as Cap, Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Black Panther — will drive sales, but it’s not working and hasn’t in a long time. They need to embrace the team’s old school comics and make readers come back who miss how the team used to be instead of depending on a fanbase who isn’t reading comics anyway.

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