The Avengers are one of the most well-known and popular superhero teams currently, with the success of the MCU making them a household name. However, in the comics, the group has steadily fallen down the sales charts, beginning with the end of Jonathan Hickman’s 2013-2015 run. Since then, the Avengers have fallen further and further, and no bit of MCU synergy could save them. Avengers #800 came and went, a milestone moment in the team’s history that no one at all is talking about. Earlier in the 21st century, the Avengers were Marvel’s hottest group, heading up numerous books. Now, they’re a shadow of what they once were.
Videos by ComicBook.com
However, this isn’t the first time this happened. The Avengers have an illustrious history, but they’ve also had some down times. They’ve always been able to bounce back, though. This time, it seems like it could be harder than ever to make them relevant, but as with many things in superhero history, the answers lie in the past. 28 years ago, the Avengers were in a bad place, having experienced a similar, although not as long but definitely more damaging, sequence of events and Marvel was able to pull out of the dive by getting writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Perez on Avengers (Vol. 3). This run holds the key to the team’s future, but not in the way you think.
The Avengers Need to Use the Example of the Past to Move Forward
Most people look at the Busiek and Perez run and think out of it as a textbook back to basics approach and there’s definitely something to that. Busiek honored the great Avengers writers of the past, and Perez, of course, had drawn the book back in the late ’70s. It was a team of classic Avengers like Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Carol Danvers (known at that time as Warbird), and Wonder Man, with appearances from Avengers stalwarts Hank Pym, the Wasp, Ultron, and, later, Kang. There were new members like Firestar and Justice from The New Warriors, Triathlon, who based on the old Marvel hero 3-D Man, and Silverclaw. It felt old school and that was actually refreshing after years of ’90s Marvel dreck of the highest order.
However, while that was certainly a big part of what made the book so great, that’s not what made it work so well, and it’s evident when you go back and read Busiek and Perez classics like “Ultron Unlimited”. See, one of the keys to this run on the book was the character development. Three members of the cast had their own books, but the rest of the cast didn’t. We got drama between Justice and Firestar based on their different opinions on what being an Avenger meant to them, the Scarlet Witch/Vision/Wonder Man romantic triangle, Carol’s alcoholism, whatever Triathlon and Silverclaw’s deals were (no one liked them, so no one remembers). The book had stories beside the main battles against evil, and that made all the difference.
When I say that the Avengers need to take a page from Busiek and Perez, I don’t mean they should just do Bronze Age Avengers again (which was what their run was; it was modern Bronze Age stories for old and new fans), I mean they should build a cast that has their own drama. The Avengers may have been created in the Justice League mold, but they aren’t the Justice League, where most members are popular and have a book. There was always character intrigue and stories in the books that kept readers coming back. Even in the ’00s, with Bendis’s New Avengers going all in on changing the team’s formula, there were still the characters without books and their stories in the Avengers titles. This has been missing for a long time.
As Marvel made Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into a showcase for the most popular heroes, it lost something. The team should have popular anchor characters, but it should also have characters whose home is the book. We should get to see them off work, as it were, dealing with how being a hero affects their life. The current Avengers team has only three characters without their own books: Sam Wilson as Captain America, Captain Marvel (although she’ll probably get one sooner or later), and the Vision. The team needs its own cast that it can develop and get readers hooked to. Just depending on the big names and the big threats is becoming a problem because if fans don’t like the fights, they’re stuck. However, the fight can be bad if the character sections of the book are good. Do you think all old school Avengers books are good? No, but the characters at least often were and it made reading the book better than it should have been. That’s what the team needs nowadays.
It’s Time to Change the Way the Avengers Work Again
The Avengers doesn’t need yet another back to basics reboot, at least not in the way we’re probably going to get it. It needs to remember the reason we keep reading comics: the characters. I don’t think that the team should be off-limits to characters with their own books, but I think there needs to be less A-listers and more characters with no home. More characters that can give the readers a reason to come back when the story itself wasn’t great. This was the key to the best runs of the team; they weren’t just amazing battles between good and evil, but great character stories.
When was the last time that there was a major character arc in an Avengers book? The Bendis era from 2005 to 2012? Hickman’s run was great, but it wasn’t a masterpiece of character (although it did focus on several characters and gave them their own stories, at the very least, if not sometimes an arc). Their books have become the big event books, but without the charm and character that had set the Avengers apart. I’m going to repeat myself: the Avengers aren’t the Justice League. It’s time Marvel remembered that and gave us the kind of Avengers stories that had worked for decades.
What do you think the Avengers need to succeed? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
Most Viewed
-
Courtesy of Cartoon Network
